Fitcher's Bird- A Tale of Horror

Of all the tales we were supposed to read for this week, I thought the Grimm's "Fitcher's Bird" and "The Robber Bridegroom" were by far the most ghastly. I don't know about you, but the descriptions of girls being hacked to pieces were quite dreadful- especially the part in "The Robber Bridegroom" where the maiden's sobs and screams were unheeded as the robbers "tore off her fine clothes, put her on a table, chopped her beautiful body to pieces, and sprinkled them with salt." The scene of the basin of girls' severed and bloody body parts stewing in the dark was also not very appetizing, either. Granted I don't go out of my way to watch horror movies, but if these two stories were adapted to a movie screen, the would make a nice rated "R" movie. (Insert hint of sarcasm here.)

So what purpose does the sense of horror in these two stories serve? If you compare them to, say, Perrault's "Bluebeard" or Thackeray's "Bluebeard's Ghost," the two Bluebeard versions appear quaint, and they act as an admonition or slap on the wrist to young women who let their sensibilities get in the way of reason. Perrault and Thackeray attempt to criticize bad female conduct either in court or in high society, and try to show that a woman's curiosity can overwhelm her moral compass and logic. However, the truely graphic nature of the Grimm's tales shows that a woman's curiosity is well founded. If it weren't for her snooping around, the female character of "The Robber Bridegroom" would have fallen prey to the robbers the same way the other maiden had, and if the youngest daughter hadn't used her wits, she and her sisters would have shared the same bloody stew for a grave.

But besides proving that women do, indeed, have a brain for a purpose, the graphic nature of "The Robber Bridegroom" and "Fitcher's Bird" are meant to disgust the reader. In both stories, the murderers are men that beg and steal. They do not work for an honest living, and they prey upon those that do (especially maidens.) They lack the industriousness and God-fearing piety that a good German should have, and the Grimm Brothers portray their antagonists this way to stress that beggars and thieves should be feared for more than just their potential violence. They should also be feared for their lack of contribution to the economy and morality of Germans- and other peoples as well- because their lifestyles harm those that live around them. The Grimm Brothers portray the beggars' and theives' means of income as revolting by creating a dramatic scene in their stories that illustrates the grotesqueness of their ways of living.