Y'all take your fairytales very seriously. I've always tended to believe that fairytales were violent because that was what was popular in entertainment during that time period...Some of that, of course, has to do with a society that pushes limits, but much of it also has to do with changing ideas of entertainment.
I think you're right in saying that this was popular in entertainment. I want to point out though, that more than just entertainment it was
folk entertainment, 'old wives tales' meant to be told outloud, not read, so we probably have a limited amount of all the ones that existed (although the orality makes it sketchy to even pinpoint at an origin). A lot of them were passed down from mother to daughter and while I subscribe to the view that superficially they were cautionary morality tales, I think there was also a vicarious pleasure in narrating the violent demise of evil doers. I like to think of it in terms of the Middle Age mentality of living in fear and these tales as providing some sort of comfort in the uncertainty. Because of course nothing in fairy tales tends to be uncertain (the handmaiden was EVIL she deserved her fate!).
Anyway as far as this displays women's (often devalued) creativity I feel there is something subversive about them. Kind of like fanfiction (in that it exists outside the sphere of commodification). That is right up until fairy tales got coopted by the bourgois salons and aspiring (male) writers. Then it was watered down (gah, imagine how nasty they must have been if what we always get has been edited already), made palatable to the upper classes and sent forth as quaint little tales that they could enjoy as they continued oppressing the lower classes.
alcyone
