Hansel and Gretel

For other uses, see Hansel and Gretel (disambiguation).

Illustration by Arthur Rackham, 1909

"Hansel and Gretel" (/ˈhænsəl/ or /ˈhɑːnsəl/ and /ˈɡrɛtəl/; German: Hänsel und Gretel) is a well-known fairy tale of German origin, recorded by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812. Hansel and Gretel are a young brother and sister threatened by a cannibalistic witch living deep in the forest in a house constructed of cake and confectionery. The two children save their lives by outwitting her. The tale has been adapted to various media, most notably the opera Hänsel und Gretel (1893) by Engelbert Humperdinck and a stop-motion animated feature film made in the 1950s based on the opera. Under the Aarne–Thompson classification system, "Hansel and Gretel" is classified under Class 327.

Plot

Hansel and Gretel are young children whose father is a woodcutter. When a great famine settles over the land, the woodcutter's abusive second wife decides to take the children into the woods and abandon them there so that she and her husband will not starve to death, because the children eat too much. The woodcutter opposes the plan but finally and reluctantly submits to his wife's scheme. They are unaware that in the children's bedroom, Hansel and Gretel have overheard them. After the parents have gone to bed, Hansel sneaks out of the house and gathers as many white pebbles as he can, then returns to his room, reassuring Gretel that God will not forsake them.

The next day, the family walks deep into the woods and Hansel lays a trail of white pebbles. After their parents leave them, the children wait for the moon to rise before following the pebbles back home. They return home safely, much to their stepmother's horror. Once again provisions become scarce and the stepmother angrily orders her husband to take the children farther into the woods and leave them there to die. Hansel and Gretel attempt to leave the house to gather more pebbles, but find the doors locked and escape impossible.

Illustration by Ludwig Richter, 1842

The following morning, the family treks into the woods. Hansel takes a slice of bread and leaves a trail of bread crumbs to follow home. However, after they are once again abandoned, the children find that birds have eaten the crumbs and they are lost in the woods. After days of wandering, they follow a beautiful white bird to a clearing in the woods, where they discover a large cottage built of gingerbread and cakes with window panes of clear sugar. Hungry and tired, the children begin to eat the rooftop of the candy house, when the door opens. A hideous old hag emerges and lures them inside with the promise of soft beds and delicious food. Unaware that their hostess is a bloodthirsty witch who built the gingerbread house to lure children to her to cook and eat them, the children enter the house.

The following morning the witch locks Hansel in a cage, and forces Gretel into becoming a slave. The witch force-feeds Hansel regularly to fatten him up, but he cleverly offers a bone and the witch feels it, thinking it is his finger. Due to her blindness, she is fooled into thinking Hansel is still too thin to eat. After weeks of this, the witch grows impatient and decides to eat Hansel anyway.

The witch prepares the oven for Hansel, but decides to kill Gretel as well. She coaxes Gretel to open the oven and prods her to lean over in front of it to see if the fire is hot enough. Sensing the witch's intent, Gretel pretends that she does not understand what she is being told to do. Infuriated, the witch demonstrates and Gretel instantly shoves her into the oven and slams and bolts the door shut. Gretel frees Hansel from the cage and the pair discover a vase full of treasure and precious stones. Putting the jewels into their clothing, the children set off for home.

A swan ferries them across an expanse of water and at home they find their father; his wife died from unknown causes. With the witch's wealth that they found, they all live happily ever after.

History and analysis

Illustration by Theodor Hosemann

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm heard "Hansel and Gretel" from Wilhelm's friend (and future wife) Dortchen Wild and published it in Kinder - und Hausmärchen in 1812. In the Grimm tale, the woodcutter and his wife are the children's biological parents and share the blame for abandoning them. In later editions, some slight revisions were made: the wife is the children's stepmother, the woodcutter opposes his wife's scheme to abandon the children and religious references are made.

The fairy tale may have originated in the medieval period of the Great Famine (1315–1321), which caused desperate people to abandon young children to fend for themselves, or even resort to cannibalism.

Folklorists Iona and Peter Opie indicate in The Classic Fairy Tales (1974) that "Hansel and Gretel" belongs to a group of European tales especially popular in the Baltic regions, about children outwitting ogres into whose hands they have involuntarily fallen. The tale bears resemblances to the first half of Charles Perrault's "Hop-o'-My-Thumb" (1697) and Madame d'Aulnoy's "Finette Cendron" (1721). In both tales, the Opies note, abandoned children find their way home by following a trail. In "Clever Cinders", the Opies observe that the heroine incinerates a giant by shoving him into an oven in a manner similar to Gretel's dispatch of the witch and they point out that a ruse involving a twig in a Swedish tale resembles Hansel's trick of the dry bone. Linguist and folklorist Edward Vajda has proposed that these stories represent the remnant of a coming-of-age rite-of-passage tale extant in Proto-Indo-European society. A house made of confectionery is found in a 14th-century manuscript about the Land of Cockayne.

The fact that the mother or stepmother dies when the children have killed the witch has suggested to many commentators that the mother or stepmother and the witch are metaphorically the same woman. A Russian folk tale exists in which the evil stepmother (also the wife of a poor woodcutter) asks her hated stepdaughter to go into the forest to borrow a light from her sister, who turns out to be Baba Yaga, who is also a cannibalistic witch. Besides highlighting the endangerment of children (as well as their own cleverness), the tales have in common a preoccupation with food and with hurting children: the mother or stepmother wants to avoid hunger, while the witch lures children to eat her house of candy so that she can then eat them. Another tale of this type is the French fairy tale The Lost Children. The Brothers Grimm also identified the French Finette Cendron and Hop o' My Thumb as parallel stories.

Adaptations

• It was adapted to an opera Hänsel und Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck, first performed in Weimar on December 23, 1893.
• The 1934 Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon The Candy House retells the Hansel and Gretel story. Oswald is cast as Hansel.
• "Hansel and Gretel" was first adapted for television by the BBC, who broadcast it on December 23, 1937.
• Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow incorporates flashbacks to three central characters engaging in a sadistic Hansel and Gretel fetish play.
• In 1982, Hansel and Gretel was a TV special directed by Tim Burton for The Disney Channel with Andy Lee and Alison Hong as the title characters, Jim Ishida and Michael Yama as the Wicked Witch.
• In 1987, a movie adaptation of Hansel and Gretel featured Hugh Pollard and Nicola Stapleton as the title characters, with David Warner, Emily Richard and Cloris Leachman as the Witch.
• Hansel and Gretel is featured in Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics under its Grimm Masterpiece Theater season.
• Hansel and Gretel appeared in Sesame Street with Hansel performed by Peter Linz in Season 36, Heather Asch in Season 37 and Matt Vogel in recent episodes while Gretel was performed by Noel MacNeal in Season 36, Leslie Carrara-Rudolph in Season 37 and Stephanie D'Abruzzo in recent episodes.
• Mickey and Minnie starred as Hansel and Gretel in a cartoon shown in Disney's House of Mouse.
• Hansel & Gretel, a 2013 direct-to-DVD mockbuster produced by The Asylum and directed by Anthony Ferrante, starring Dee Wallace, Brent Lydic and Stephanie Greco.
• In 2009 Lazy Bee Scripts came out with Hansel and Gretel, a short musical. http://www.lazybeescripts.co.uk/Scripts/script.aspx?iSS=928
• 2013 ballet for the Royal Ballet updates the story to the 1950s America, and draws on contemporary reports of children imprisoned for years, such as Austria's Fritzl case. The ballet premiered in the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio in Covent Garden, London, with a site-specific set designed by Jon Bausor. The dark, adult-orientated production opened to mixed reviews.
• Anne Sexton wrote an adaptation as a poem called "The Little Peasant" in her collection Transformations (1971), a book in which she re-envisions sixteen of the Grimm's Fairy tales.
• Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is a 2013 horror-action movie staring Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Famke Janssen, Pihla Viitala, and Thomas Mann. The story of the movie follows the titular duo as they survive the Witch of the Gingerbread House and grow up to become witch hunters. The movie has since gained a cult following for its original concept for the duo, its gory action sequences, and the chemistry between Renner & Arterton's Hansel and Gretel.
• Disability advocate and author Jewel Kats created "Hansel & Gretel: A Fairy Tale with a Down Syndrome Twist." This 2014 adaptation of the classic Grimms' tale includes the wicked witch and the poor siblings in search of food, but in this case, five-year-old Hansel is a mischievous, yet courageous, boy with Down syndrome. This book was illustrated in needle felt wool by Claudia Marie Lenart and published by Loving Healing Press.
• The Visit is a movie written and directed by M. Night Shamalan based of the Grimm's fairytale premiering on September 11, 2015. Two siblings are sent away by their mother to visit their grandparents in another state. They are not to leave the room after 9:30 p.m., but when curiosity gets the best of the children, they look outside their room and discover horrible secrets their grandparents are hiding.
• In the Supernatural season 10 episode About A Boy, both the witch from Hansel and Gretel and Hansel himself appear. Hansel works for the witch, turning adults into children for her to eat. Hansel transforms Dean Winchester but he escapes. Hansel later tells the Winchesters that the story of Hansel and Gretel is true but was just given a happy ending. He claims that he and Gretel were tortured by the witch and when they tried to escape, she captured them and made Hansel eat Gretel's heart. Hansel offers his help in stopping the witch, but is revealed to actually be evil, having been working for the witch of his own free will. Dean reverses the transformation spell and kills Hansel with a knife. He then burns the witch in her own oven, the same way she died in the original story.

See also

• "Brother and Sister"
• Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
• "Molly Whuppie"

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

• Delarue, Paul (1956). The Borzoi Book of French Folk-Tales. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Lüthi, Max (1970). Once Upon A Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales. Frederick Ungar Publishing Co. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Opie, Iona; Opie, Peter (1974). The Classic Fairy Tales. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-211559-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Raedisch, Linda (2013). The Old Magic of Christmas: Yuletide Traditions for the Darkest Days of the Year. Llewellyn Worldwide. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Tatar, Maria (2002). The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. BCA. ISBN 978-0-393-05163-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Vajda, Edward (26 May 2010). The Classic Russian Fairy Tale: More Than a Bedtime Story (Speech). The World's Classics. Western Washington University. {{cite speech}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Vajda, Edward (1 February 2011). The Russian Fairy Tale: Ancient Culture in a Modern Context (Speech). Center for International Studies International Lecture Series. Western Washington University. {{cite speech}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• Project Gutenberg e-text
• SurLaLune Fairy Tale Pages: The Annotated Hansel and Gretel
• Original versions and psychological analysis of classic fairy tales, including Hansel and Gretel
• The Story of Hansel and Gretel
• Collaboratively illustrated story on Project Bookses
• A translation of the Grimm's Fairy Tale Hansel and Gretel