Unraveling the Dark Origins of "Hansel and Gretel"

Have you ever wondered about the grim origins behind your favorite childhood fairy tales? 

Join Fran from Melancholy Mentor and Evan from Mystery Mythos as we unravel the dark, fascinating story of Hansel and Gretel. Together, we journey through the original tale preserved by the Brothers Grimm, exploring its unsettling themes of cannibalism and survival. We also dive into the moral lessons of cooperation and self-preservation hidden in these stories. Our conversation shifts to a modern perspective, appreciating Angela Carter's literary contributions and re-examining the portrayal of witches, considering their historical roles as healers and midwives.

Chapters

• 0:00 Exploring the Brothers Grimm Tales
• 9:06 Radio Drama Channels and Collaboration
• 14:46 Continuous Learning and Growth

Transcript

Fran: 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to Melancholy Mentor, where classic literature meets the vibrant world of radio plays. I'm Fran and I'm joined by Evan from Mystery Mythos. Together, we're your guides on this creative journey. During each episode, we'll dive into stories featured on the Melancholy Mentor channel, allowing fresh ideas to flourish, inspiring you to dream big and unlock your creative potential. Get comfy, open your mind and embrace curiosity. Let's get started.

Fran: 0:39

Hello, I'm Fran and I'm Irfan, and today we're exploring Hansel and Gretel Gretel, do you like that word? Yeah, lovely, right. So we're exploring Hansel and Gretel by the Brothers Grimm. It's a radio drama episode that we've got on the channel Melancholy Mentor, and this no doubt came from me because I'm a great lover of fairy tales, and when I say fairy tales, um, I'm not talking about the Disney-fied ones and there's nothing wrong with that.

Fran: 1:16

They're just not for me. Talking the, the origins of the fairy tales and the, the ones, a lot of them were actually quite barbaric, yeah, but I like short stories so I do enjoy fairy tales. So we kind of put this out there and I think it's it's the only brother's grim, isn't it, that we've got on the channel yeah, because possibly we could add some more if we find any more.

Fran: 1:40

It's a little bit about the brother Grimm. So they were Jacob and Wilhelm. So Jacob was born in 1785 and he perished in 1863. And Wilhelm was born in 1786 and he perished in 1859. 1786 and he perished in 1859. I have to be very careful about those numbers. It's just a little bit of um, a little bit of personal information here about me. I've got dyscalculia, which means that I mix numbers up a lot. Yeah, like the bane of my life. Um will and it's a hard word to say Wilhelm, wilhelm.

Fran: 2:27

I presume the British version or the English version would be William William yeah, I would think. Jacob is just the same. So Wilhelm and Jacob were German academics who together collected and published folklore. Don't know if they actually wrote any of their own stories. I do know that they collected them because a lot of the folklore would have been um.

Fran: 2:55

It wouldn't have been written down, it would have been passed through um just oral stories yeah yeah, they would have gone around collecting the oral stories and the folklore from from different regions and which is a really cool idea to do and then actually writing them down and documenting these stories and putting them into a collection of works. And the other person who, in more recent times, did a wonderful collection of fairy tales is Angela Carter. Yeah, who's um? An author who's also sadly died? Angela Carter's. I think it might have just been Angela Carter's. It was Angela Carter's fairy tales. Yeah, I really enjoy that book and that was stories from around the world yeah, very very interesting and a lot of those were just a page long but,

Fran: 3:46

quite like short stories, due to my the capabilities of my attention span, let's just say that the short stories really work for me. So, among the best, they were among the best known storytellers of folk tales. Hansel and Gretel is a German fairy tale and it was published in 1812 as part of the Grimm's Fairy Tales, and it's about siblings, a brother and sister, who were abandoned in the forest and they fall into the hands of a witch who lives in a house made of sugar, cake and bread. A lot of the depictions of Hansel and Gretel look like a gingerbread house covered in sweeties.

Evan: 4:35

Yeah.

Fran: 4:38

And it was set in medieval Germany and the witch in the story bit of a spoiler here. The witch in the story has cannibalistic intentions. Yeah, a lot of witches in fairy tales like old and new. They are horrific creatures, yeah, whereas real witches a lot of them were actually very early midwives or herbalists. They were able to cure ailments and they got branded as witches, yeah, yeah, during the witch trials. So I kind of wonder how we've made witches into barbaric creatures yeah, yeah, they're depicted as like evil, aren't they?

Fran: 5:39

and old crones, yeah yeah, yeah, um, so the moral of ansel and gretel, or one of the morals of the story, is about working together. So in working together, um, the siblings are able to outwit the witch. Yeah, and it also symbolises how people will be rewarded or punished based on being either greedy and selfish or kind and caring, you know. And then the whole do not trust strangers thing, whole stranger danger I mean, that's quite evident because she lures them in with sweeties um, got a lot of mixed thoughts and feelings on this whole thing about being either selfish and greedy or kind. And, you know, because selfish isn't necessarily a bad thing, because selfish also means self-care, it also means preserving yourself first. So therefore you can help others. And greed, I guess greed isn't. Suppose it just depends on what your interpretation of greedy is. Um, yeah, if it's sort of gluttonous, and I guess that's not very healthy, is it? It's not a good way to be. No, all kind and caring. So I think it was probably the, the boy in the story, hansel, that was greedy and um, what was the other thing? Greedy and selfish, selfish, um, I'm like what was he? Literally just tongue-grain, looking out for himself, like is that such a bad thing? Yeah, yeah, such a bad thing. You know, we're told now that in the event of a drama, you know you, you put your own oxygen mask on first so that you can help others. But I guess his actual intentions were literally just to fill his boots and look after himself and not, you know, care for his sister.

Fran: 7:41

So this particular story I looked up about, like which was the most graphic of the Grimm stories, and apparently it's actually one called the Juniper Tree, and apparently it's actually one called the Juniper Tree. Okay, and the Juniper Tree? Because a lot of fairy stories were actually quite graphic. They were quite horrific. They had very moralistic tales woven into them, but a lot of it was, you know, a lot of drama and sorrow wrapped up in there. So the Juniper tree actually features quite high on lists if you look at various lists of, you know, horrific fairy tales. The juniper tree is about a woman who cuts her finger and as the blood falls onto the snow, she thinks that she wants a child. It's red as blood and as white as snow. It's not actually snow white, it's a completely different story, because it is actually another story about rose red, and I think it was. Was it rose red? And um, maybe it was snow white, but they, that was a different thing as well, yeah, but yeah, apparently the juniper tree is most horrific, not Hansel and Gretel, wow. So, yes, any information about the actual video itself. So just a little overview.

Fran: 9:06

On the YouTube channels, we've currently got two channels. We will be adding more, so they're both for radio dramas at the moment. So this one is um, for melancholy mental, which mainly features classic literature, and the other one is mystery mythos, which is very heavily sci-fi. Sci-fi, yeah, yeah, what we do is we put a video to go alongside the audio. Yeah, you can listen to the audio only as a play or you can actually watch a video along with it. And on the Mystery Mythos channel, the videos are completely different. Yeah, more kind of AI generated, aren't they? And they're completely different. On the Melancholy Mental channel, it's mainly me that goes around doing the filming. So what have we got for this channel?

Evan: 9:57

right, channel for this episode, this episode, yeah this is a lovely, lovely video, it's where we have permission to film somebody's pond, um, and it's there's a lovely koi fish, um, in this, in this pond I remember this the koi fish is huge, yeah, yeah. So it's a really cool video to go alongside the story and the story itself is like 20 minutes long, so it's quite a quite a quick one yeah and we've had like 92 views on it.

Fran: 10:29

So so far so far so far, which is really good. We're very grateful yeah that it's not one of our bigger um stories. Possibly because people generally gonna make a general statement here that they equate fairy stories with children um, which, yes, is true as well.

Fran: 10:48

But these, particularly, you know, the Grimm's fairy stories, work very much um for adult reading yeah yeah, so I think that, um, fairy stories are for adults too, because a lot of it's, as I said, it's based on folklore. Yeah, I guess it's the way that, um, a lot of them have since been Disneyfied and changed a little bit to make them more generic and, you know, more for a younger audience.

Evan: 11:15

Yeah, yeah.

Fran: 11:18

Is there any information about the actual who recorded the radio?

Evan: 11:23

drama, Nothing. I can't find anything out about it. The recording itself is lovely though, isn't it? It's lovely and clear.

Fran: 11:30

It's a clear recording. I think it's a sounding voice. Yeah, recording, and it sounds quite old. It does no idea of what year or nothing.

Evan: 11:43

I couldn't find anything. It's just out there on its own floating about,

Fran: 11:50

It's quite a regular thing for us actually to not have much information about the origin of the radio dramas that we feature on the channels, and I'm going to remind everybody again to get involved. Drop some comments and if you've got any information about the recordings, please share it. You know we'd love to know more about it. If you've got any information about the recordings, please share it. You know we'd love to know more about it. If you've got any thoughts or you know beliefs about the stories or you know, come and tell us because we like we like the engagement and we like to hear about what people think. Definitely, um, and we're never worried if somebody knows more than us oh no, no, it's interesting welcome it.

Evan: 12:32

We're welcome going different things. Knows more than us? Oh, no, no, it's interesting welcome it. We welcome going different things out that you don't know.

Fran: 12:35

That's great absolutely, because this is like the ultimate collaboration, then, because then you get to learn and grow and you get to find out more. Yeah, I'm never worried about um, somebody having possibly more information than me on something, because I welcome the knowledge yeah, me too.

Evan: 12:53

I like it if someone's got a lot of knowledge, and even if they're more knowledgeable than me, it's good, isn't it just to pick the brain about things.

Fran: 13:01

So yeah, and I would love to write stories. I mean, apparently there's a book in everybody and I'm yet to find mine.

Evan: 13:11

I mean some of some of.

Fran: 13:12

I mean how people write is just fantastic yeah we're completely in awe and and those individuals as well, that can put these radio dramas together and do the production of them absolutely incredible. So what we're doing is we're just building up a collection of all of these and we're highlighting them and showcasing them and bringing them to new audiences. Yeah, for some context about each of us, I'm an nlp coach, so I do neurolinguistic programming. I'm also a burlesque and cabaret performer, so that's where the creativity side comes into it. So I like to embrace creativity. Creativity and stories and evoking emotion and the portrayal of of stories. You know the depictions of them and you're more on the tech side, aren't you?

Evan: 14:04

side. Yeah, putting the videos together and yeah, just like interesting that's been a big learning, hasn't it? Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting and always learning, always learning about that. So, yeah, because I'm obviously I'm still not where I want to be with anything, so it's just constantly learning but it's about celebrating where you are now and and planning.

Fran: 14:30

You know, realizing and planning for where you, where you want to be, yeah, um, but always celebrate where you are now. So I think that by learning and growing, you know it's the way to be, isn't it? Yeah, definitely for us. Anyway, it works, definitely for us. I've done so much different learning in the last couple of years I wasn't always um into neuro linguistic programming.

Fran: 14:54

I formerly. I'm mostly a carer, and a carer for over 25 years, so doing care works is completely different. So, you know, keep learning, keep growing, keep looking into new skills and things that you want to explore. Um, you know, we've always with the intention behind it of you know what's that going to bring to you? Um, we do this because we love it. We bring this to you because we want a new audience to reach these stories. Yeah, we would love some input as well and some more information. So please do get involved, listen to um, this episode on the melancholy mentor channel and we will see you soon. Bye.