BOOKS
475
T he fun is incidental, and what seems sill y may point, we' re ready
to
be told-and to believe-to our own resistance. It is certain tha t Dr.
Bettelheim 's interpreta ti ons enlighten , and also, I beli eve, endan ger
our understanding o f fairy tales.
It is fascina ting to learn how to read "The Three Little Pigs" as
three stages of the p syche en route to ma turity, and the bi g bad wolf as
the animal aspect of human na ture which m ust be subdued . "Cinder–
ella," says Dr. Bettelheim, " teaches" the child that she must survive
sibling riva lry and overcome the "oedipal hurdle" so tha t she can
marry the p rince, i. e., "form happy sexual relations ... mutuall y
sa ti sfying and meaningful ," and inherit the kingdom which means to
rul e wisely and well after her own emoti ons and body.
Dr. Bettelheim sees each story as " dealing with" a different phase
of p sych ological growth : H ansel and Gretel 's gingerbread ho use
"represents" their oral regression and Jack's beanstalk "stands for " the
magical super-phallus which he must cut down before he can mas ter
hi s real o ne. Only after successful passage throu gh the successive crises
of the p rimal p redi cament can the hero-child regain in the rea l world
the los t fantasy paradise in which he dwelt with the good mo ther.
Dr. Bettelheim tells us wha t we must have known all along, tha t
the fairy-godmother is the witch is the stepmother is the real mother all
of whom coexist in the child 's everyday experience. Fairy tales allow
the child to hate, without guilt, the stepmo ther who suddenl y, inexp li –
cabl y, threatens, forbids, or disappears on an afternoon trip downtown
abandoning the child as if in the darkest middl e of the forest. He needs
to punish th e witch by rolling her downhill in a nail-s tudded barrel,
without losing the mother he needs to cook his supper and tuck him
into bed . In the world of fantasy onl y, h e can kill her, and have her too.
Dr. Bettelheim warns against today's seemingly harmless, nonvio–
lent, " relevant" children 's litera ture. It either deals in the meager
p lausibilities which refuse to acknowl edge the child's confusions, his
" mortal an xiety," or interprets realisticall y what he may need
to
keep
preconscious. Dr. Bettelheim sugges ts that it isn ' t the children , it's the
parents who are afr aid-who do not know how to use enchantment. H e
seems a t times to be saying tha t our children may hardl y make it to a
hea lthy ma turity without the aid of these profound fantasies on which
they can ring their own changes according to need. T hey can choose
not to understand what it would troubl e them to know. Bettelheim
writes movingly of the "consola tion " in the'fantas tical promises which
this las t, leas t, this dumdum of the oedipal triangle understands to be
true in the world o f fairy onl y, but which he needs, as one needs the
