“The most influential of modern fairy-tale theorists was Bruno Bettelheim, who propounded the thesis in ‘The Uses of Enchantment’ (1976) that fairy tales are fantastic psychodramas that enact the real fears of children and end with the reassurance that all will be well in the end, when they grow up. Most American children slay their demons and satisfy their appetite for righteous mayhem with cartoons and video games, but in Perrault’s day, European children had direct experience with the horrors portrayed in fairy tales. In the reign of Louis XIV, France was ravaged by famines; thus the story ‘Hop o’ My Thumb,’ in which the parents abandon their little sons to die in the forest because there isn’t enough food for all, wasn’t a bizarre, monstrous fantasy but a plausible reality.”
— Jamie James reviews a new edition of Charles Perreault’s “The Complete Fairy Tales.”
