Transcriber: Tijana Mihajlović Reviewer: Denise RQ
Every month, every week, every night, for years on end,
I read the same fairy tale.
I read it out loud to my then young sons, Sam and Lucas.
Every night I would suggest to them
to read something else, some other fairy tale:
Snow White or Little Red Riding Hood,
which had always been my favorite as a child.
But no, they wanted to hear "The Wolf and the Seven Kids",
or as we say here, in the Netherlands, "The Wolf and the Seven Goats",
over, and over, and over again.
So last month,
when Lucas, my younger son, and me were clearing out his room,
we came across this drawing of the wolf and the seven goats.
And he had made it in the kindergarten at the age of 5.
So apparently, there was something about this particular fairy tale
that absolutely fascinated him.
So, maybe there's a fairy tale that you remember from your childhood
that fascinated you,
or there's a fairy tale that you as a parent like
or do not like to read to your children.
Have you ever wondered why?
Why of all the millions of stories that are known to mankind,
fairy tales seem to affect us in a wondrous way?
Time to wonder about fairy tales.
When I immersed into my PhD research project,
I immersed deeply into the world of fairy tales.
And I was amazed
by the number of fairy tales and fairy tales versions that exist.
But it is even more amazing
how many theories and ideas exist about fairy tales.
Many scientists and many non-scientists have had ideas, plenty,
and theories about what it is that makes fairy tales so unique,
and so powerful, and so timeless.
In the 1970s
- and we heard about the 1970s before; quite interesting age, apparently -
the notorious psychoanalyst, Bruno Bettelheim, claimed
that fairy tales are basically all about suppressed sexual urges.
So for him, fairy tales were a reflection
of castration anxiety, penis envy,
and subconscious incestuous longing.
In his book "The Uses of Enchantment",
he claims that the house of the 7 dwarfs in "Snow White"
represents the female sex.
And this will not surprise you,
but he claims that the seven dwarfs are really seven phalluses.
But could it be less shocking than that?
Psychologist Sheldon Cashdan wrote an interesting book,
which is called "The Witch Must Die".
In this book he says that fairy tales reflect the seven deadly sins.
I hope I'll get them all seven;
if not, you'll help me, because you know them, of course.
It's vanity, greed, lust, envy,
laziness - we talked about that before -
deceit, and the last one maybe you don't know,
gluttony or excess of eating.
Right.
Excess of eating we can easily recognize in the fairy tale of "Hansel and Gretel",
because in this fairy tale, everybody is obsessed with eating.
The father and the stepmother have such an enormous craving for food
that they leave their children behind in the woods.
And the witch locks up Hansel in a cage in order to eat him once he's fat.
But the children, too, are guilty of excess of eating
because they cannot stop themselves
from eating candy off the gingerbread house,
which causes them a lot of trouble.
So what Cashdan says is that when a child hears a fairy tale,
he will recognize one or more of these sins also within himself.
And when then, in the fairy tale, the witch dies,
he will see the sin disappear,
and the sin that he has inside,
and that undermines his relationships in the family,
can make that disappear from himself.
And he can then become a better person and start building better relationships.
But can it be less complicated than that?
The famous fairy tale scholar, Jack Zipes,
says that the power of fairy tales lies in the memes,
and the meme behaves a bit like a gene.
A meme can be seen as an idea worth spreading.
So in storytelling, a meme is an element that we remember, and we pass on
because it is useful.
It can help us overcome challenges in life,
or it can even help us survive.
So think of the mother warning Little Red Riding Hood
not to stray from the path.
It was the brothers Grimm who, 200 years ago,
added this prologue to the fairy tale.
My research showed that if you ask people today
to retell their version of the "Little Red Riding Hood",
hardly anyone skips this warning; everybody mentions it, practically.
So apparently, the message of being careful
when you go out on your own into the unknown world
is as useful for today's children as it was for the children 200 years ago.
A lovely book was written by Gianni Rodari called "The Grammar of Fantasy".
There's quite a few speakers here that will love to read it;
I'll tell you about it.
Gianni Rodari says that in many fairy tales
the main characters leave home.
So, whether voluntarily or involuntarily,
Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel,
go away from home out into the unknown world
where they face all kinds of challenges.
So Rodari says that this, for a young child,
mirrors the fear of being abandoned by or becoming separated from his loved ones.
And he says that it is OK for us
to read a fairy tale to a child over and over again,
because he can then explore his own anxieties
in a safe and warm social context,
because he will know that it will give him confidence.
He will know that in the end all will be well,
and they will live happily ever after.
When I was reading this last theory, it suddenly dawned on me
that maybe this was the reason why my sons had their preference
for "The Wolf and the Seven Goats".
It was not because they were going away from home,
but because it was me leaving home,
because, as a working mom, and not unlike mother goat
- who you see over there -
I went away to go to work every day and left them with a nanny.
But could it be simpler than that?
The well-known academic, Theo Meder, from Meertens Institute in Amsterdam
says that the power of fairy tales lies in their simplicity.
Fairy tales shine in simplicity.
They give us hope, and they breed optimism,
and they have done so long before TED talks existed.
Because no matter if you're the youngest or the smallest,
no matter how desperate the situation in a fairy tale is,
by a magical spell, by being smart, or by sheer luck
your chances can change,
and you get to inherit the kingdom.
So if you're swallowed by a wolf, a hunter will stop by,
and he'll get you out of the belly.
And if you're a dirty nobody, you still get to marry the prince.
And if you have a cat, buy him a pair of smart boots;
he will make sure that you get very, very rich.
So that brings me back again to why "The Wolf and the Seven Goats"?
When I was preparing this talk, I asked Lucas to think really hard.
"Come on, help me, I need to prepare the talk.
What was it that you liked so much about 'The Wolf and the Seven Goats'?"
And he said, "What I liked most was the youngest goat
hiding in grandfather's clock,
because every time, when we would go to our grandparents' house,
I would see a similar clock,
and it reminded me of the fairy tale and vice versa."
Simple as that.
So how does my tale end?
Remember that I said in the beginning that we were clearing out Lucas's room.
This was because he was moving out.
He is now living here in the city of Breda, where he's studying.
Although he never cared much for Little Red Riding Hood,
he is confident enough, and he's full of optimism.
And I as a parent know that, like any young person who leaves home,
he will meet challenges along the way,
but I'm sure that he will live happily ever after.
Thank you.
(Applause)