Bettelheim and Darnton

I found Bettelheim to be somewhat convincing. I agree that fairy tales play a more important role than providing entertainment. As children grow up, they need to learn more about life, struggle, and morals, and I agree that it is best to learn them through imagination and stories such as fairy tales. Bettelheim claims that a good children’s story “must entertain him and arouse his curiosity. But to enrich his life, it must stimulate his imagination, help him to develop his intellect and to clarify his emotions; be attuned to his anxieties and aspirations; give full recognition to his difficulties, while at the same time suggesting solutions to the problems which perturb him.” All of this sounds great to me. It may be unrealistic to hope for all of these aspects within one story, yet, a story may have quite a few of these traits to it, and that is something to aim for. That being said, I did not fully agree with everything Bettelheim said. He talks about how a “clean cut” fairy tale can make a child a monster in his own eyes because they may not always be good when everyone in a fairy tale is. I do not agree with this. I think it is good to have some fairy tales that have less than perfect lives and personalities, and it is okay to have some hardships and violence. But I do not see anything wrong with having some fairy tales show the brighter side of life. The child knows that most of these stories take place in a fantasy world, so it should be okay to want a happy ending. I do not agree that a child would see a monster in himself if the hero did not struggle with some flaws. This could help show the child how to be optimistic, and it can provide role models for children. Therefore, I do not see any big issue with cleaning up some fairy tales – they do not all have to be cleaned up, but it is okay for some to be.

Darnton’s view on fairy tales was definitely different from Bettelheim’s view. Bettelheim focused on the psychological aspect of fairy tales while Darnton focuses on the historical, more literal aspect. Therefore, even though they are completely different viewpoints, I believe that it is okay to agree with both Darnton and Bettelheim. If they both focused on the psychological aspect but had different points of view, it would be different, but since this is not the case, I think they can complement each other. I did not, however, find Darnton to be particularly stimulating. He did not agree with focusing on the psychological aspect of fairy tales, which I disagree with. He made some excellent points about how some people analyze fairy tales and its symbolism too much, but I think we should still analyze them somewhat. I agree that we probably could used fairy tales to study life during the Enlightenment only because we do not have anything else to study. I believe that fairy tales would be rather inaccurate, but since there is nothing else, we can learn something. Yet, I still find this to be not as enticing as analyzing the psychological aspect of a fairy tale.