Hansel and Gretel: a complex tale of parent-child interactions

ABSTRACT

Hansel and Gretel is a familiar and iconic tale of siblings struggling in the face of poverty, abandonment and fear, but it is also a tale of the children’s ingenuity and capacity to work together. Freud, Klein and more recent child development research have all added to our understanding of the significance of sibling relationships. In this paper the author briefly notes what is known about the original tale recorded by the brothers Grimm and describes and reflects on the story on a ‘scene by scene’ basis. In The Uses of Enchantment, Bettelheim emphasises Hansel and Gretel’s ego development and resilience. In the author’s reading of the story, consideration is given to the children’s inner worlds as described by Klein and the complex nature of interactions between parents and children. These interactions can be seen on a continuum – from familiar, ordinary experiences to those which have relevance to our understanding of children in adverse circumstances. In addition, the story poses different options for growing up – either the wish to bypass or the capacity to embrace the slow and often painful process of development. The tale of Hansel and Gretel has been told and re-told in many versions and through different mediums but continues to provide an opportunity to explore both phantasy and reality through the lens of our imagination.

KEYWORDS:

• Fairy tales
• unconscious phantasy
• siblings
• Klein
• adverse circumstances
• development

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Sylvia Wilson and Nina Harris for their helpful and insightful comments on this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Dr. Debbie Hindle is a consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist, trained at the Tavistock Clinic. She was the Head of the Clinical Training in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy in Scotland and worked in specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service for many years. She has written extensively, including editing and contributing to three coedited books, Personality Development: A Psychoanalytic Perspective, The Emotional Experience of Adoption, and Sibling Matters: A Psychoanalytic, Developmental and Systemic Approach. Now retired, she teaches and supervises in affliation with Human Development Scotland.

Notes

1 There remains a question as to why ‘mother’ was changed to ‘stepmother’ in the Grimm’s 4th Edition. Might this ‘softening’ of the story have been a way to make it more palpable, thus protecting an implied ‘good birth mother?’

2 Although there is a long history of gingerbread shaping and decoration in Germany and elsewhere, gingerbread houses became popular after the publication of Hansel and Gretel, particularly around Christmas.

3 It was the first complete opera to be broadcast on radio from Covent Garden, London in 1923.

4 The lyrical music of the ‘Children’s Prayer’ forms part of the Overture of the opera and variations of the theme are referenced throughout, making it one of the themes that unifies the opera as a whole. Only later did I think of this quasi-religious take on the story and the three white birds that make their appearance at different points in the story as perhaps symbolizing the familiar Christian symbol of the Descending Dove.

5 Although both fairy tales and fables have their origins in the oral tradition, fairy tales tend to engage children’s imagination in undertaking an adventure or overcoming a difficulty in which there is usually a happy resolution, whereas fables convey a moral tale with an uncertain outcome depending on the lesson to be learned.

6 The fact that fairy tales and children’s literature in general are vessels for emotional containment of childhood anxieties is well documented by Margaret and Michael Rustin (1987) in Narratives of Love and Loss: Studies in Modern Children's Literature.