Thought fairy tales were all pampered princesses and happily-ever-afters? Think again.
The original versions of some of our best-loved fairy tales are a far cry from their Disney-fied incarnations. With violence, gore, sexual threat, abuse, and poverty all part of the plot. We’ve glossed over the true nature of these nursery songs and bedtime stories for the best part of a century.
So here are the darkest fairy tales from the bookshelf revealed.
Little Red Riding Hood
“From this story, one learns that children, especially young lasses, do very wrong to listen to strangers. Alas! Who does not know that these wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!”
Today we’re more familiar with the Brothers Grimm version of this tale, where a girl and her grandmother are gobbled up by a wolf, but rescued by a huntsman. In Charles Perrault’s original, there is no happy ending. And the wolf represents a sexual predator. In those days, a girl who lost her virginity was said to have “seen the wolf” and Perrault makes his moral explicit at the end.
Sleeping Beauty
Source: Kidspot
“As he tried to wake her, she seemed so incredibly lovely that he began to grow hot with lust.”
The Disney film, based on a later version film, based on a later version by Charles Perrault, saw a lovely princess put to sleep when she pricks her finger on a spindle. She sleeps for 100 years until a prince kisses her and lives happily ever after.
However, in this earlier version by the Italian poet Basile, the king does not wake Talia, the sleeping girl, with a kiss, but rapes her. She gives birth to two children (helpfully attended to by fairies) and one sucks her finger, eliminating the curse. Talia falls in love with the king, but the king’s jealous wife kidnaps their children and orders the cook to kill them and feed them to the king. The jealous queen also threatens to burn Talia to death, but the king has his wife burnt to death instead.
Bluebeard
“After some moments, she began to perceive that the floor was all covered with blood, on which lay the bodies of several dead women, ranged against the walls.”
A beautiful girl is persuaded to marry a wealthy and mysterious aristocrat, who has a blue beard and several unaccounted-for previous wives. He wins her over by throwing lavish parties and leaves her the keys to the château when he goes abroad but forbids her from entering a room beneath the castle. Curiosity gets the better of her, and she discovers the room’s floor is awash with blood, with the murdered corpses of Bluebeard’s former wives hanging from the walls on hooks.
As she and her sister plan to flee, Bluebeard returns home and is furious to discover blood on the room key. Before he can behead her, however, her brothers arrive and save her. Perrault’s tale is believed to be based on the real trial of Gilles de Rais, a 15th-century aristocrat, and soldier who was hanged and burned for the murder of between 60 and 200 children in 1440.
The Little Mermaid
Source: People’s Choice
“Before the sun rises you must plunge this knife into the heart of the prince; when the warm blood falls upon your feet they will grow together again and form into a fish’s tail and you will be once more a mermaid.”
Forget the happy capers of Disney’s Ariel and Flounder, the original tale is a gory and depressing story about the self-sacrifice and agony of love. A young mermaid visits the sea’s surface, where she saves a prince from drowning and falls in love.
She visits a sea witch and trades her tongue for legs, even though it will feel like she’s walking on jagged swords and she’ll be turned to sea foam if the prince rejects her. The prince is mildly interested in this mute girl, particularly when she dances for him – so she does, despite the excruciating pain, and watches him marry the princess he wrongly believes saved him. The original ending saw the mermaid turn to seafoam, but it was amended to have her become a “daughter of the air” for not killing the prince, even though it would save her.
Cinderella
“Then her mother gave her a knife and said, “Cut the toe off; when thou art Queen thou wilt have no more need to go on foot.”
Variations of the Cinderella story have been recorded in ancient Greece, during the Tang Dynasty in China and in medieval Europe. The heroine in the Greek version is called Rhodopis – or “rosy-cheeked” – but the story of a prince vowing to marry the owner of a sandal remains very similar to the modern version.
A more sinister variation by the Brothers Grimm sees the nasty stepsisters cut off parts of their own feet in order to fit them into the glass slipper hoping to fool the prince. The prince is alerted to the con by two pigeons that peck out the stepsisters’ eyes. They spend the rest of their lives as blind, lame beggars while Cinderella lives in luxury with the prince.
Pinocchio
Source: Geek and Sundry
“Wind began to blow and roar angrily, and it beat the poor puppet from side to side, making him swing violently, like the clatter of a bell ringing for a wedding. And the swinging gave him atrocious spasms. His breath failed him and he could say no more. He shut his eyes, opened his mouth, stretched his legs, gave a long shudder, and hung stiff and insensible.”
The Disney film version Pinocchio had some dark themes, such as the part where naughty boys are turned into donkeys and sold into slave labor. But that’s nothing compared to the original story published in 1883 as the novel The Adventures of Pinocchio. That story was meant to serve as a warning against bad behavior, and so Pinocchio was depicted as an evil character with no redeeming qualities. For instance, Pinocchio starts kicking Geppetto as soon as the carpenter has finished carving his feet. Once he’s fully built, he laughs in his creator’s face, steals his wig, and runs away. The police then find Pinocchio and assume he was being mistreated, so they put Geppetto in prison. Pinocchio then returns home and kills the talking cricket that has lived there for over a hundred years.
Eventually, Pinocchio gets what’s coming to him as his enemies hang him from a tree. His death is described in vivid detail.
Hansel and Gretel
“Now, then, Gretel,” she cried to the girl. “Let Hansel be fat or lean, tomorrow I will kill him, and cook him.”
During a famine, an evil stepmother orders her husband to abandon his children in the woods, but the son, Hansel, overhears the plan and leaves a trail of pebbles to guide him and his sister home safely. The next time they are abandoned, Hansel drops breadcrumbs, which are eaten by the birds. Lost and starving, they stumble upon a house made from gingerbread, only to be captured by the wicked, cannibalistic witch who lives inside. She enslaves Gretel and imprisons Hansel, fattening him up to eat.
When she orders Gretel to heat up the oven to cook Hansel, she tricks the witch into leaning into the oven and pushes her in. The children rob the house of riches and return to their father, to find that their evil stepmother has died.
Peter Pan
Source: Youtube
“The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out.”
Peter Pan was originally a play that premiered in 1904, and the playwright also turned the story into a novel that was released in 1911. In that version of the story, it’s implied that Peter would sometimes kill the Lost Boys if they grew too old. In the novel, staying in Neverland only slowed down the aging process, it didn’t completely stop it.
The story also vaguely implies that Peter would disfigure the Lost Boys to get them to fit into their hideouts inside hollow trees.
“You simply must fit…but if you are bumpy in awkward places or the only available tree is an odd shape, Peter does some things to you, and after that, you fit.”
But this didn’t mean that Peter Pan was evil. Instead, he was depicted as an innocent character that couldn’t understand the consequences of his actions. In order to stay childlike, Peter Pan had to always live in the moment. He would do whatever occurred to him at the time and forget about it immediately afterward. In this way, the story showed how it’s important to eventually grow up.
Rapunzel
“Enraged at the sight of Persinette’s maladie, she seized her hair and cut the precious cords.”
The original story, Persinette was penned by French noblewoman – and royal mistress – Mademoiselle de la Force. Persinette was kidnapped at birth by a fairy, who locked her in a tower with all the things she could ever wish for. The fairy was her only visitor and, as the tower had no stairs, she climbed Persinette’s long hair whenever she visited her.
However, a prince sees Persinette, climbs up her hair to the tower, seduces her and she falls pregnant. When the fairy discovers her swollen belly she banishes Persinette. The next time the prince visits, he finds the fairy in the tower who blinds him. The lovers eventually find each other and the prince’s sight is restored by Persinette’s tears.
Beauty and The Beast
Source: Daily Mirror
“They had hardly finished their meal when the noise of the rich beast’s footsteps was heard approaching, and Belle clung to her father in terror, which became all the greater when she saw how frightened he was.”
Obsession, entrapment, and a message for young girls amounting to “you’ll learn to love him”: this is no Disney love story. A lost merchant stumbles upon a grand palace, with a banquet left for him by an unseen owner. As he leaves, he plucks a rose for his beloved youngest daughter, Belle, and is confronted by a hideous beast who only releases him on the condition that he sends Belle back.
The beast lavishes food, clothes, and gifts upon Belle, and asks her to marry him every night, being refused every time. She begs to be allowed to visit her family for one week, and he permits it, as long as she takes an enchanted mirror which allows her to see what is going on at the castle. Her jealous sisters persuade her to stay, hoping to anger the beast, but when Belle looks in the mirror, she discovers the beast is dying of heartache. She rushes back, weeps and announces her love for him, whereupon he turns into a handsome prince.
