I like Darnton's article more because immediately dismisses the overly analyzed version of the stories. A fairy tale is a story, and not a symbol. The emphasis on how the tales are based in history, evolving instead of being created for a specific and set purpose. I think Bettelheim over analysis the phycological aspect of why children like fairy tales. Children love hear stories full of adventure and fantasy because they are exciting. Their create dreams of the impossible future of becoming a princess or going on a quest. Children are enriched by the fairy tale morals because children are essentially copycats and will follow the example of the protagonist as if its a game until it becomes ingrained in their persona. The horrific nature of the stories evolved to be fluffier when parents began to protect their children from mental scaring, so they once horrific tales of blood and gore became candyfloss. Darnton expresses fairy tales as evolving histories that are art of world culture, while Bettelheim nitpicks for a reason, modivation or symbol around every corner whether they exist or not.
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I think Bettelheim is trying to explain why the stories CAN BE good for children, and not why the children enjoy them when they read them. It's assumed that the psychoanalytic ideas he proposes aren't supposed to be understood by the children, but by their educators.
ReplyDeleteYou also mention an important point. Bettelheim doesn't intend to dissect the stories as symbols, but rather hopes to read their educational value, and to do this, two things are important. 1, that the symbols he finds are relative to his point, the psychological advantage of the child readers, which even Darnton responds rather harshly to (he doesn't mention Bettelheim's purpose in finding symbols, which was written in the essay just before his). 2, as you mention, the version (fluffy or not) must be the one that children are reading for it to be relevant to his cause.
The nitpicker may very well be the first critic Darnton references, but not so badly with Bettelheim.
It seem as if you are saying that fairy tales are a sort of romanticized version of a certain historical backdrop; and that is something that I agree with. They are set up in a simple fashion which allows easy access to the purpose of the story for anyone but particularly children. The watered down versions which exclude some of the violence and gore serve to further the stories' accessibility.
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