![]() ![]() The older was ill-tempered, spiteful, and plain but the younger one was gentle, kind, and pretty. I remember those old tales very well, especially the beginnings: “Once upon a time there was a poor woodcutter who had two daughters. They turn up in films, plays, poetry, comic strips, advertisements, and dreams-and also in real life, which as usual imitates art.Ī friend whose parents were divorced when he was eight tells me that on his first paper route he would imagine himself the poor widow’s son going out into the world to seek his fortune and I had a similar experience. They do not appear only in novels, of course. What is striking is how often the stock situations and stock characters, especially the female characters, of the fairy tale keep reappearing. I have been thinking lately about the underground connections between fairy tales and modern fiction-between one of the oldest forms of literature and one of the most recent (or, between the first stories that were read or told to us and the novels we read now). ![]()
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