I have decided to use this post as a study guide for the first exam. These notes are not written in correct grammar and sentence structure, but they are for my own notes. Here is a breakdown and summary of all of the Tatar fairy tales we have discussed:

Little Red Riding Hood:

The growth of LRRH has shown her to transition from a strong girl who could take care of herself to a weak girl who must be saved by others.

The Story of Grandmother (told by Louis and Francois Briffault) – The wolf has the child eat her grandmother. The girl tricks the wolf and finds her escape when she says she needs to relieve herself outside. Reference to pins and needles
Little Red Riding Hood (Charles Perrault) – story written for children and adults in which a helpless girl enables her own rape. This story changed LRRH forever because she no longer defeated the wolf. Perrault presents a moral message portraying her demise as her own fault.
Little Red Cap (Brothers Grimm) – The one I knew growing up. The wolf ate granny and LRRH, but a hunter comes and saves them and kills the wolf by filling his stomach with heavy stones. This LRRH teaches children that they should always obey or be subjected to death. The hunter calls the wolf “you old sinner.” An obedience tale
The Little Girl and the Wolf (James Thurber) – a short story that shows an intelligent Red only getting 25 feet from the bed and knowing the wolf wasn’t granny. She shoots the wolf and the moral is given: It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be.
The False Grandmother (Italo Calvino) – The little girl gives items to obstacles on her way to granny’s house and is thus allowed to pass them. She does not eat her grandmother and stalls for time. The ogress allows Red to relieve herself outside and then chases Red. The ogress cannot get past the obstacles and dies in the river. She is a planner and thinks on her feet.
Goldflower and the Bear (Chiang Mi) – Goldflower saves herself and her brother by tricking the bear to go outside and open its mouth to allow spears to kill it. This Red is tough, smart and takes care of what needs to be done.
Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf (Roald Dahl) –granny, the wolf, and LRRH know the traditional tale and notice when they deviate from it. At the end, Red whipped a pistol from her knickers and shot the wolf dead. She ended up with a lovely furry wolfskin coat.
The Three Little Pigs (Roald Dahl) – An extension of LRRHATW mixed with the three little pigs. The last pig calls Red and Red kills the wolf. Then Red turns and kills the pig as well and makes a pigskin travelling case.

Snow White:

SW has a stable core identified by 9 episodes: origin (birth of the heroine), jealousy, expulsion, adoption, renewed jealousy, death, exhibition, resuscitation, and resolution. It is the reflection of a young woman’s development. Most critics point to the strong mother/daughter conflicts.

The Young Slave (Giambattista Basile) – 1st recorded story of SW. SW was left in the coffin to her uncle and his wife. The wife became curious and found the girl and became jealous of her b/c she thought she was sleeping with her husband. SW (Lisa) is somewhat magical and is a stronger character than most. She affects her own reward for being beautiful and as an apology from her uncle. The reward is marrying the prince.
Snow White (Brothers Grimm) – The story we all know. The stepmother used witchcraft to change her appearances and create poisonous objects, and she was jealous of SW’s beauty. She wanted to eat the heart and lung of SW when she was left in the woods thus ingesting her beauty. SW cooks and cleans all the time, and she is too dumb to stop the stepmother from killing her. She is pretty, naïve, and passive.
Lasair Gheug, the King of Ireland’s Daughter (Scottish tale) – The stepmother is jealous over an inheritance and the mirror is switched out for a fish. The conflict then turns to one over beauty. The old hag tells the stepmother to kill things the father loves and finally he takes SW out and cuts off three of her fingers (and she says it doesn’t hurt because he is the one doing the cutting). SW saves the prince by releasing the enchantment on his cat form. The stepmother found out she was still alive and sent her a gift that would kill her. SW’s husband locks her in a coffin and eventually remarries. The new wife finds her, and SW has the new wife marry her father. SW got around the oath by getting on a wild boar’s back and not baptizing her three children.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Anne Sexton) – SW is dumb and passive and only worthwhile because she is a virgin. This one used a bit more satire and seemed to be a poetry and shortened version of the Grimm’s SW.

Hansel and Gretel:

This fairy tale is shaped by food. The evilness in these stories is often women: the stepmother at home and the witch in the forest. This children triumph over the adults which is a message for the lower class to let them know that they can rise above their status. The father is typically reunited with his children while the stepmothers are often killed or divorced.

Hansel and Gretel (Brothers Grimm) – The typical story where Hansel starts out as the hero in taking the breadcrumbs but Gretel ultimately saves them both from the evil woman in the house. In this story, many references to God are made which turns this tale into a Christian moral story. The wife had died and they lived happily ever after with their father.
The Juniper Tree (Brothers Grimm) – The father’s son was killed by the stepmother and the little girl was made to believe she slapped his head off. The sister buried the bones under the juniper tree and the brother is reincarnated into a bird. When the bird sings outside of the house, it makes the father and sister happy but the mother becomes terrified. She is killed and the boy is brought back to life. This story also makes references to goodness and God (the devil got hold of her).
The Rose Tree (Joseph Jacobs) – The same as the Juniper Tree but this time it is a little girl that dies and the brother buries her. This time the mother dies, but the girl is not brought back to life.
Little Thumbling (Charles Perrault) – The youngest of seven boys (and the smallest) is the hero in this story. He outsmarts the ogre to save his brothers and even gain his family wealth so that they no longer have to worry about starving. It also ends with him having only taken the boots and getting money as a courier in which lovers pay a lot and wives pay little.
Pippety Pew (Norah and William Montgomerie) – Much like the juniper tree in that the little boy was killed because the wife had tasted too much of the rabbit and ate it all. The boy as a dove killed the wife and the father and daughter lived happily ever after.
Molly Whuppie (Joseph Jacobs) – Much like Tom Thumbling, the characters were girls instead of boys. Again, the youngest saves the three daughters. This time, she is sent on several quests after rescuing the sisters, and each time a sister is given a husband as a reward. In the end, Molly has to steal the giant’s sword, the giant’s purse, and the giant’s ring to get her prince of a husband.

Cinderella:

Two main tales differentiated by the influence of the father. The catskin tales stem from a misplaced lust of the father and the Cinderella tales are from an absent father and a cruel stepmother. In the catskin tales you have: a lustful father, incest, voluntary “ugliness”, active heroine, takes place out of the home, mothers are dead, and the fathers repent and are forgiven. In Cinderella you have: a stepmother, hatred/domestic slavery, “ugliness” forced upon her, passive, absent or powerless fathers, rescue by a prince, and mothers and stepsisters are not reconciled.

Yeh-hsien (Chinese Cinderella) – girl loved the fish, but the stepmother killed and cooked it. The fish bones granted any wish Cinderella wanted, and she went to the festival where the king fell in love with her. She lost her shoe and he found her because of it. He became greedy with the fish bones and thus lost them.
Donkeyskin (Charles Perrault) – The original mother tells the husband to marry only the girl who is more beautiful, more accomplished, and wiser than she was. He only finds his daughter, and she runs away out of fear of marrying her father. Her godmother suggested she have her father make her two dresses and kill the magical goat. He does, and she runs away with the donkeyskin as a disguise. She found work as a scullery maid and would often try on her dresses. One day the prince spied on and found her, and he wanted to make her his wife. Donkeyskin put her ring in the prince’s cake and he set out to find her. They married, and she forgave her father.
Cinderella (Brothers Grimm) – The stepmother made her a servant and made her lie in the ashes. When the father went to town, she only wanted a branch from the tree that brushed his hat. She planted the sprig on her mother’s grave and it grew into a tree where a dove sat. The dove was the fairy godmother who gave her dresses to go to the ball in. The shoe was lost, and each of the stepsisters cut off parts of their feet to fit into the shoe. Cinderella married the prince and the mother and sisters got their eyes pecked out.
Catskin (Joseph Jacobs) – She was going to have to marry a rough old man so she ran away to eventually work as a scullion. She had hidden her dresses and went to the ball dressed in them. The young lord wanted to find out about her, and she gave him riddles. Catskin saved him because he wouldn’t eat without marrying her. The father was forgiven for trying to sell her off.
The Story of the Black Cow (Alice Elizabeth Dracott) – the male version of Cinderella. The boy did not have a loving home, but he loved a cow that would give him sweets. When the stepmother found out, she was going to kill the cow so the cow and the boy ran away together. The boy wished to be made of gold, and this caught the eye of the princess who eventually married him.
Cinderella (Lin Lan) – Beauty and pock face were stepsisters. One of her shoes slipped off and she asked three passersby to pick it up. She finally married the scholar and they were going to live happily ever after. Pock Face pushed Beauty down the well and she and her mother told the scholar that Beauty had smallpox. Then Pock Face pretended to be Beauty and went back to the scholar. Beauty was transformed into a sparrow, then bamboo shoots, then a bed, and finally her shadow convinced an old woman to sell a bag to her husband so that she could tell Beauty’s story. Beauty killed the stepsister and sent her roasted bones back to her mother.
The Princess in the Suit of Leather (Egyptian folktale) – The mother made her husband promise not to marry again unless the woman could fit her anklet. The princess was the only one on which it fit, so she ran away to a hide tanner who made a suit of leather for her. She began working for a queen. She followed the household to a ball and sprinkled sequins to cause a divergence. The queen suggested that the prince find the woman and marry her. He waited for her, and she pulled off his ring in her haste. She baked it into a cake and he knew who she was. They were married, and she forgave her father who gave half of his kingdom to her.