Fantasy Dilemma

"And then the big bad wolf dressed up as the old granny," I heard a little voice say. "Red Riding Hood came to her granny's house and knocked on the door and the wolf said come in. When Red Riding Hood came in, the wolf jumped up from the bed and ran to eat her."
 
"Red Riding Hood shouted Papa Papa and her father came running in and chopped off the head of the wolf with an axe. And then Red Riding Hood and her granny and her father sat on the floor and shared the basket of goodies Red Riding Hood's mother had sent for the granny."
 
"They ate jam and bread and cake and apple and biscuits and chips. Do you know what the wolf was doing? It was lying on the floor, dead. Blood was everywhere, red blood. But no one looked at the wolf, they sat next to it and ate their food..." 
 
I listened, horrified, just outside the door. This was my four-year-old cousin telling a very graphic version of Red Riding Hood. Listening intently, with her head slightly to one side, her eyes and mouth wide open, was her two-year-old sister. She'd oohed and aahed at exactly the right places, so I knew she'd heard the story many times before.
 
My first instinct was to rush in, deny all blood and killing, and try to tell a story about the wolf running away into the forest. But I stopped myself. They had heard the outline of the story from me, so I couldn't suddenly start saying something else. But I hadn't provided all the horrifying details. I certainly hadn't said anything about a bloody feast. My young cousin had added herself, helped largely by the picture of a dead, bleeding wolf in her storybook.
 
That's when I started thinking about fairy tales...
 
Fairy tales, we tend to believe, are all sweetness and light. About Cinderella finding her prince and the ugly duckling turning into a swan. But there's a darker, almost sinister side, to fairy tales as well. Think of Hansel and Gretel.
 
The father agrees with the wicked stepmother to abandon the children in the forest... The witch puts Hansel in a cage... Gretel pushes the witch into the hot oven (or boiling pot, depending on which version you know) and leaves her cooking, while she frees her brother and they both go up to the attic and fill their arms with gold coins and jewels. Then these two "angelic" children run off home, where their father greets them with open arms, the stepmother having thoughtfully gone away.
 
What are you telling your youngsters? That the father is weak and ineffectual and that bringing the riches home is important for winning his love. That it's perfectly natural for an old woman to want to eat a young child and equally natural for another child to kill that woman. The witch must have screamed and screamed, but there's no mention of that.
 
Think of Snow White. Her stepmother is determined to kill her and tries all kinds of things - poisoned ribbon, poisoned comb and poisoned apple. I didn't think too much about this story, until my young cousin asked a question.
 
Is Snow White very foolish, Didi, she asked. No, I said. Yes, yes, she is, she insisted. After one stranger has given her a poisoned ribbon, why is she talking to another stranger and taking things?
 
I had no answer.
 
We talk about violence on television and films. Isn't it time we had a good, hard look at fairy tales?