Fairy Tales

The Wild Swans
This weekend I was cleaning out my bookshelf and I have books piled all over the floor. When I was having trouble falling asleep, and saw heaps of books, a crazy idea overcame me! READ!!! I saw on the top of the pile, there was a book of fairytales that I remember my Aunt giving to me when I was little. Honestly, I never had my Grandmother read anything to me unless it was Beauty and the Beast, or it had tons of horses. This time when I opened the book, I realized that there were many stories I wasn’t familiar with.
I like fairy tales to this day, but for a completely different reason than I did when I was four. Fairy tales can tell you so much about culture and history. It is interesting to me that almost identical tales can be found all over the world.
One of the stories I read was about the Wild Swans…
It had the classical “snow white start”. A queen wanted a beautiful daughter with raven hair and pale skin. Through the whole skin desire, we are shown that during medieval times, pale skin was desired, and a characteristic of the wealthy.
One thing I really enjoyed about this piece was the fact that the main character (a woman) was the one who was saving the men. So often it is the male saving the damsel in distress, which to me is a little repulsive and honestly…monotonous. Not only does this girl save men, she saves 12!!!!
You see aspects of history through the descriptions of clothing. For example, the girl (who is surprisingly nameless throughout the story) must make 12 cloaks for the men she is trying to save from a terrible curse that forces them to be swans all day, and can only return to their natural human state at night. Also, social classes show us that this story happened centuries ago. Princes ruled over towns in castles full of servants and court members. Due to the fact that the men were turned to swans, and not cranes or parrots, I think it is safe to conclude that this story took place somewhere in Europe.
I would have to say that the main theme or moral in this tale is to keep trying and never give up. The girl saving the swan men must stay absolutely silent until she finishes her robes, which proves to be hard through certain tasks, but nonetheless, she achieves it in the end.
Fairy tales are yet another way to look into the lives of others, and try to understand where they are coming from. Yes, I do agree that The Wild Swans isn’t probably the most in depth story, but they do exist and many are quite complicated. Nonetheless, I really did enjoy this story. I love the power to the women! (since it is often not so much the case in fairy tales)