Hansel and Gretel Again

Next time, I'm asking for directions, Hansel.

Hello, reader. This week, I wanted to talk about the story Hansel and Gretel again. I covered it once before on my blog, but I could stand to talk about it again. If you wanted a refresher, the story of Hansel and Gretel is at that link, then read on and analyze it with me here.

I can't get over the dynamic between the father and stepmother in this story. Typically, we think of women as the ones being abused in a relationship, but the father is clearly being abused by his wife. I wonder how long they courted before they got married, or if the father just needed someone to help raise his kids and his new wife needed to be married to survive. Clearly, it wasn't working out well for either of them, whatever the reason they got married. I feel bad for the father being bullied into leaving his children to die twice. I wish he had stood up to his wife, but I suppose if he had, the witch in the forest wouldn't have been killed, at least not by Gretel. The father also would not have ended up rich.

I also wanted to touch on something I mentioned briefly last time: the idea that the witch and the stepmother might be the same. As I read the story again, this seems less likely. The witch has terrible eyesight, but a keen nose. The stepmother has good eyesight (or else she wouldn't have seen Hansel looking back at the house when they went into the woods) and she didn't seem to notice when he went outside to get stones, so not such a keen nose. It is an interesting idea for her, though, to marry men she could bend to her will and convince them to abandon their children in the same forest she had set up a house made of food. As it is, the stepmother isn't given that much agency. She is just a desperate woman who chooses to try to live instead of feeding her stepchildren, herself, and her husband when they're in poverty. Obviously, she didn't make the right choice, but there is a twisted logic in why she acted the way she did. And she ended up mysteriously dying for it. When there were no witnesses. I'm not saying the father killed her, but I'm not disagreeing with the idea either.

The moral of this story is don't be a jerk. Alternatively, if you're taken captive by a witch who is going to try to eat you and your brother, pretend to be stupid because you're smart enough to kill her.

Have another moral of your own? Have a story you want me to talk about? Just feel like chatting? Comment below! If you like this blog, don't forget to subscribe so you get a lovely email about new posts.