Fables, Folktales, Fairytales

There is an element of magic or the magical in the myths, fairytales, and folktales under analysis here. Without this element, they would not be myths, fairytales, and folktales.

The Creation Myths are filled with magic from evil presences that take the form of serpents who speak to and the creation of woman from a male rib, “And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man” (133). In Prometheus and Pandora, we see that a jar contains all of the world’s evils and by opening it Pandora unleashes an eternity of burdens upon mankind. Both of these myths are quite derogatory to women, as they blame the world’s ills and man’s burden on the female sex, “Men were burdened with women, through whom every other suffering and misfortune they experience...comes to them...Hope remains...but so does Pandora’s legacy” (144).

The magic found in the fairytale and folktales is more positive with respect to the portrayal of women. In the fairytales the women are beautiful and innocent and the magic is typically used against them or to save them. In the Princess and the Pea the princess is so sensitive she magically is bruised by a pea under twenty mattresses and twenty “eider-down beds” (99). In Sleeping Beauty a kiss after a hundred years of sleep awakens the princess and her family and the entire court. In the folktales, we

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ns but there are royal personages included. In the fairytales the characters are typically royalty, princesses, or princes even though persons of low origins are included. In the folktales we have a king in The King’s Favorite, but we see he is not noble like the royalty we see in the fairytales. Instead, he is treated with devotion by his favorite concubine but once she becomes aged he turns on her, “When Mi Tzu-hsia’s beauty began to fade, the king’s affection cooled” (17). In The Lost Horse, we see an interpreter and his father. The interpreter experiences some misfortunes but his father tries to tell him he cannot know if they are blessings in disguise. When they are saved due to being lame (something the son complained about earlier) the father tells him, “Truly, blessing turns to disaster, and disaster to blessing: the changes have no end, nor can the mystery be fathomed” (17). Changes and fickleness pervade the folktales, such as when the wife in Urashima the Fisherman tells her husband, “We promised we’d be as true as gold or the rocks of the mountains! How could a little homesickness make you want to leave me?” (19). In the fairytales there is more outright evil (i.e. the wolf, Rumplestiltskin, etc.), but the mai
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Approximate Word count = 1393
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)