The Dark Originis Of The Grimms Fairy Tales

Every fairy tale ends with a happily ever after, right? Well, not to begin with, they didn’t…

If you had to recount the story of Cinderella right now, you could probably do it quite easily. Wicked stepmother, glass slipper, stroke of midnight, blah blah blah. You could probably also reel off the story of Snow White, or Little Red Riding Hood, without needing to really think about it too much. These stories are pretty well woven into our cultural DNA by now – and a lot of that is down to the work of the Grimm brothers. But the versions we know now aren’t the versions the Grimms originally published, and the stories weren’t originally intended for kids at all.
Back in the early 1800s, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were working as librarians. Born into a well-off family, their lives took a turn for the worse when their father died, and the brothers struggled through school and university in poverty. Librarians weren’t particularly well paid, either, but the Grimms were both keen scholars, and their work gave them both time and opportunity for their own research. And their research led them to put together a collection of folk tales.
It sounds like a kind of whimsical project, but actually the Grimms’ work was part of a wider political movement in Germany at the time. The country was split into 200 principalities, and many people – including the Grimms’ law professor, Friedrich von Savigny – wanted to see them united as a single nation. To that end, many writers and thinkers were turning to traditional folk tales to explore (or maybe define) a kind of German national identity. The theory was that these stories, passed down from one generation to the next, contained the collective hopes, fears, and morals of the German people. The Grimms weren’t the only ones putting together collections of folklore, but it’s their work that became the best known.

Their first volume of stories, Kinder- und Hausmärchen (or Children's and Household Tales) contained 86 stories, gathered together from the Grimms’ research, and from their friends and acquaintances. The Grimms included stories commonly told in other regions of the world if they thought they had German roots somewhere along the line (including rewritten versions of stories thought to be original to French author Charles Perrault) and all the stories were edited, both so that they used Germanic words and phrases, and so that they sounded authentically rustic. It’s hard to know, now, how cynically that might’ve been done, so maybe it’s best to give the Grimms the benefit of the doubt and assume they thought they were doing what they thought was best.
One thing they definitely were doing, though, was making sure to include all the gory details of the more didactic stories in their collection. You’ve probably heard that most fairy tales were much nastier in their original forms than they are in the later Disneyfied versions, but it’s still striking just how much darker they were. If you don’t feel like having your childhood illusions shattered, click away now, because I’m about to share some of the grisly details from the original versions of some much-loved fairy tales:

Snow White

According to Disney: Upset by her step-daughter’s beauty, a wicked stepmother orders a huntsman to take her young daughter out into the woods and kill her, bringing back her heart. The huntsman can’t do it, and lets Snow White escape into the forest. She finds a tiny house where singing dwarves, all named for their defining characteristics, live. They decide to let her stay, to keep house for them.
The wicked queen finds out, via her magic mirror, that Snow White isn’t dead, and sets out to kill her with a poisoned apple. Though the dwaves get revenge by driving the queen off the edge of a cliff, they can’t wake Snow White… until a passing prince comes and awakens her with true love’s kiss. And then they live happily ever after.
But originally: In the first edition of the story, it wasn’t a wicked step-mother at all. It was Snow White’s mother. And she didn’t just want Snow White’s heart – she wanted her lungs and liver, too. When she discovers that the huntsman hasn’t killed the girl, she sets out to try to kill her in three different ways: with an overly tight corset, with a poisoned comb, and finally with a poisoned apple. It’s not true love’s kiss that revives Snow White, it’s a good shake, as the prince attempts to make off with Snow White’s glass coffin – and the queen doesn’t get pushed off a cliff, she’s forced to dance herself to death in a pair of red-hot iron shoes. Ouch.

Cinderella

According to Disney: After her widowed father remarries and then dies, Cinderella is left at the mercy of her wicked stepmother and two ugly stepsisters. They force her to do manual labour and wear rags, but she’s so sweet, kind, and beautiful that even wild animals love her and help her out.
When the prince throws a ball, Cinderella’s fairy godmother appears and creates a dress, coach, and footmen for her, so she can go to the party. The prince falls in love with her, but the magic ends at midnight – so she has to run away, leaving behind only her glass slipper. The prince travels the country looking for the girl who fits the shoe, but her stepsisters sabotage her by smashing it. Happily, she’s still got the other one, so she gets to live happily ever after, too.
But originally: Well, originally, the Cinderella story appeared in a volume of Charles Perrault’s fairy tales. But in the Grimms’ more German version, Cinderella (or “Aschenputtel”, Ash-fool) has two beautiful step-sisters – they just happen to be utterly horrible. There’s no fairy godmother, just white doves sent to help Cinderella by her dead mother, and the prince actually holds three balls – at midnight on the third night, the prince lays a tar trap for Cinderella, which is where she loses her shoe. When her sisters get their chance to try on the missing shoe, they each cut off different parts of their feet in order to fit into the tiny slipper, but the blood dripping from their shoes gives them away. The prince eventually finds his girl, and at their wedding, the magic doves reappear to peck out the evil sisters’ eyes.

Sleeping Beauty

According to Disney: A king and queen throw a huge party to celebrate the birth of their daughter, Aurora. But though they invite three good fairies, who each give her blessings, they didn’t invite the evil fairy Maleficent. Angry about being snubbed, she gatecrashes the party and gives the girl a curse: before she turns 16, she’ll prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die. One of the good fairies manages to modify the curse, so that Aurora won’t die – she’ll just sleep until she’s awoken by true love’s kiss. (Yup, that again.)
The fairies try to hide the girl, and she even meets and sings to the prince in the forest, but curses can’t be hidden from, so she eventually does prick her finger and fall asleep. Maleficent locks the prince in her dungeon so he can’t break the curse, but the good fairies rescue him. Maleficient turns into a dragon, because that’s awesome, but the prince pushes her off a cliff and wakes Aurora with a kiss. Cue the happily ever after bit.
But originally: This is an interesting one, because the Grimm version of the story is actually pretty close to the Disney version: there’s a magic frog at the beginning, thirteen fairies instead of three, and lots of dead suitors stuck in the forest surrounding the castle, but otherwise, the story is pretty similar.
However, the story was published by other authors before the Grimms got their hands on it, and those versions are pretty nasty. In Giambattista’s version from 1634, once the prince finds Sleeping Beauty, he rapes her, and she only wakes up when one of the children she bore while asleep sucks the splinter out of her finger by mistake. And though Perrault’s 1697 version removes the rapes, it chucks in an epilogue with an evil stepmother who tries to eat the happy couple’s children, and ends up being thrown into a pit of vipers. Says something when the Grimms’ version is nicer than the others, doesn’t it?

Rapunzel

According to Disney: Disney’s adaptation of Rapunzel, Tangled, is very recent, and not very traditional. Rapunzel gets a lot more agency than most other Disney princesses, and her prince isn’t a prince at all. But the elements of a sanitised Rapunzel story are there: a beautiful princess is kept captive by a witch, who uses the girl’s long hair to climb in and out of a tower prison, and it’s only when she meets a man that she gets to escape.
But originally: According to the Grimms, the reason the wicked witch gets to make off with baby Rapunzel is that her dad stole herbs from the witch’s garden to meet his wife’s cravings, and when he got caught, he agreed to hand over his first-born. Rapunzel gets stuck in the tower, letting down her hair for the witch, but when a passing prince hears her singing, he decides to pay Rapunzel a visit himself. He visits her, secretly, several times, and the witch only finds out because Rapunzel gets pregnant, and innocently asks why her belly’s getting so big.
In a rage, the witch cuts off the girl’s hair, uses it to lure the prince back into the tower, then chucks him off the top, letting him fall into a thorn bush that plucks out his eyes. Eventually, though, there is a happy ending where the couple get back together, and Rapunzel’s tears heal the prince’s eyes.
Disturbed enough yet? There’s more. In some of the Grimms’ stories, there’s an unpleasant seam of anti-Semitism. For example, in one story, the hero tortures a Jewish man by making him dance on thorns until he’s torn and bleeding, as punishment for some imagined sins. When the man cries for help, the judge sides with his torturer, and the Jew is hanged as a thief. The racism, combined with German patriotism, might explain why the Nazis saw the Grimm fairy tales as such a great match for their propaganda: in films aimed at kids, Little Red Riding Hood gets rescued by a man in an SS uniform, while Puss in Boots morphs into a kind of Hitler figure at the end. Scary stuff.
That’s jumping a long way into the future, though. Back in the 1800s, after the first edition of the collection was published, the Grimms were criticised for writing stories that were unsuitable for kids. In response, they re-edited some of the stories to soften their rough edges, and later editions were split: ‘Large’ editions contained all the stories, with academic annotations by the brothers, while ‘Small’ editions contained selected re-edited stories deemed suitable for kids. Those edits created a wider audience for the Grimms’ books, and probably ensured that their stories endured.
After all, no-one wants a bedtime story that gives them nightmares.

Bahasa Inggris 2: Tugas ke 3

Exercise 32 : Enough
  1. People enough
  2. French enough
  3. Enough time
  4. Fast enough
  5. Soon enough
  6. Enough early
  7. Hard enough
  8. Slowly enough
  9. Enough flour
  10. Books enough
Exercise 33 : Bacause/Because Of
  1. Because of
  2. Because of
  3. Because of
  4. Because
  5. Because
  6. Because
  7. Because of
  8. Because of
  9. Because of
  10. Because of
Exercise 34 : So/Such
  1. So
  2. Such
  3. Such
  4. So
  5. So
  6. So
  7. Such
  8. So
  9. So
  10. Such
  11. So
  12. So
  13. Such
  14. So
  15. So
Exercise 35 : Passive Voice
  1. The president is called by somebody every day.
  2. The other members are being called by John.
  3. Mr. Watson will be called by somebody tonight.
  4. Considerable damage has been caused by the fire.
  5. The Supplies should be bought be the teacher for this class.
Exercise 36 : Causative Verbs
  1. Leave
  2. Repaired
  3. Typed
  4. Call
  5. Painted
  6. Write
  7. Lie
  8. Send
  9. Cut
  10. Signed
  11. Leave
  12. Washed
  13. To fix
  14. Published
  15. To find

Passive Voice

Use of Passive

Passive voice is used when the focus is on the action. It is not important or not known, however, who or what is performing the action.
Example: My bike was stolen.
In the example above, the focus is on the fact that my bike was stolen. I do not know, however, who did it.
Sometimes a statement in passive is more polite than active voice, as the following example shows:
Example: A mistake was made.
In this case, I focus on the fact that a mistake was made, but I do not blame anyone (e.g. You have made a mistake.).

Form of Passive

Subject + finite form of to be + Past Participle (3rd column of irregular verbs)
Example: A letter was written.
When rewriting active sentences in passive voice, note the following:
  • the object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive sentence
  • the finite form of the verb is changed (to be + past participle)
  • the subject of the active sentence becomes the object of the passive sentence (or is dropped)

Examples of Passive

Tense Subject Verb Object
Simple Present Active: Rita writes a letter.
Passive: A letter is written by Rita.
Simple Past Active: Rita wrote a letter.
Passive: A letter was written by Rita.
Present Perfect Active: Rita has written a letter.
Passive: A letter has been written by Rita.
Future I Active: Rita will write a letter.
Passive: A letter will be written by Rita.
Hilfsverben Active: Rita can write a letter.
Passive: A letter can be written by Rita.

Examples of Passive

Tense Subject Verb Object
Present Progressive Active: Rita is writing a letter.
Passive: A letter is being written by Rita.
Past Progressive Active: Rita was writing a letter.
Passive: A letter was being written by Rita.
Past Perfect Active: Rita had written a letter.
Passive: A letter had been written by Rita.
Future II Active: Rita will have written a letter.
Passive: A letter will have been written by Rita.
Conditional I Active: Rita would write a letter.
Passive: A letter would be written by Rita.
Conditional II Active: Rita would have written a letter.
Passive: A letter would have been written by Rita.

Passive Sentences with Two Objects

Rewriting an active sentence with two objects in passive voice means that one of the two objects becomes the subject, the other one remains an object. Which object to transform into a subject depends on what you want to put the focus on.

Subject Verb Object 1 Object 2
Active: Rita wrote a letter to me.
Passive: A letter was written to me by Rita.
Passive: I was written a letter by Rita.
.
As you can see in the examples, adding by Rita does not sound very elegant. Thats why it is usually dropped.

Personal and Impersonal Passive

Personal Passive simply means that the object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive sentence. So every verb that needs an object (transitive verb) can form a personal passive.
Example: They build houses. – Houses are built.
Verbs without an object (intransitive verb) normally cannot form a personal passive sentence (as there is no object that can become the subject of the passive sentence). If you want to use an intransitive verb in passive voice, you need an impersonal construction – therefore this passive is called Impersonal Passive.
Example: he says – it is said
Impersonal Passive is not as common in English as in some other languages (e.g. German, Latin). In English, Impersonal Passive is only possible with verbs of perception (e. g. say, think, know).
Example: They say that women live longer than men. – It is said that women live longer than men.
Although Impersonal Passive is possible here, Personal Passive is more common.
Example: They say that women live longer than men. – Women are said to live longer than men.
The subject of the subordinate clause (women) goes to the beginning of the sentence; the verb of perception is put into passive voice. The rest of the sentence is added using an infinitive construction with ‘to’ (certain auxiliary verbs and that are dropped).
Sometimes the term Personal Passive is used in English lessons if the indirect object of an active sentence is to become the subject of the passive sentence.

sumber = https://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/grammar/passive