Hello everyone! Once again, super sorry for the delay in posting. I should be back to a decently normal schedule now! I went to Europe for a month, have been sick since getting back, moving, etc. You get the drill, adult people.

I wanted to talk today about a book rather than a movie or television series, so what better to talk about than the Brothers Grimm?

Recently, I was like ‘damn, I could really enjoy reading the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales because I love fairy tales and I love scary shit.’ So yeah, that’s really what happened. I’m going to talk about the two that really freaked me out.

Hansel and Grethel

We all THINK we know this story, right? A young brother and sister venture out into the woods near their home and come across a house made of candy. A witch lives in the house and she tricks Hansel and Grethel into the house because she likes to eat little kids. The witch tries to trick Hansel and Grethel into the oven by asking them to see if it is hot enough and the kids get away by pushing the witch into the oven. Yeah, sounds kid friendly…kinda.

The Brothers Grimm tell us a slightly different version of the classic story, in which Hansel and Grethel are children of two extremely poor parents. Because food supplies are running so low, their mother manipulates their father into leading the two kids out into the woods so that they are not able to find their way back home, relieving the parents of their unfathomable obligation to provide food for their children. It is then that Hansel and Grethel find their way to the home of the witch, where Hansel is locked in a cage and Grethel is forced to make him eat an obscene amount of food in order to plump him up for the witch to eat him. While Hansel is locked in his human cage, he uses the fact that the witch is nearly blind to trick her into thinking that he has not gained any weight and therefore cannot be cooked and eaten by handing her a bone of another child found in the cage.

Sleeping Beauty

Okay, this one freaked me out so much that I had to stop reading for a while. As someone that is not easily disturbed, I remember being frightened even by the Disney version when I was little. In the story that Disney presented to us, we know that Princess Aurora pricks her finger on a spindle and falls asleep for 100 years. Then, her prince finally kisses her, she wakes up, and they live happily ever after.

In our original version, the Brothers Grimm tell us that Princess Aurora actually is put to sleep because of a prophecy that must be fulfilled. While she is asleep, a king rapes her. Nine months later, she is still asleep, and gives birth to two children. One of her children then sucks on her finger, which removes a piece of flax that had been keeping Aurora asleep. She then wakes up to find that she had been raped and is the mother of two children.

For those of you that have read these tales in their original publication, which ones scared you the most?