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adarkrainbow · 1 year ago

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Question: In the world of fairy tales, how much the concept of "wishing" is really important?

Obviously, "Wishful thinking" and "careful what you wish for" are important tropes of the fairy tale genre, but I never considered them to be genre defining or that much important for the narratives.

But the upcoming Disney film Wish made me rethink some things.

While the film itself is meant to celebrate Disney animation and their history of "quest for a dream" and "dreams come true" tropes, I wonder how much of these tropes have any basis on the original folk tales or the literary tales inspired by them.

Disney made the connection between fairy tales and "wishing", but they seem not to be the first or the only ones.

On the most famous example besides Disney, Sondheim's Into the Woods seamed to think there was a link between the Grimm and English fairy tales and the concept of wishing, to the point it's a foundational plot point to the story.

The Frog King or the Frog Prince, a tale that is known to always open the Grimm's fairy tale collection across several editions, literally starts as:

"IN the old times, when it was still of some use to wish for the thing one wanted, [...]"

or depending on the translation

"IN the olden time, when wishing was having, [...]"

Well wishes DEFINITIVELY are a key part of fairytales, but maybe not in the sense we understand today...

As in the idea of "wishes coming true" all on their own is something purely Disney like. I can't say anything about the Grimm stories, but when it comes to French fairytales the idea of wishing is definitively present... But as a "desire".

For example, good fairies and fairy godmothers keep granting people's wishes in French literary fairytales. But they just do not pop up whenever someone makes a wish. For example take Cinderella, in Perrault's version, the fairy godmother asks Cinderella if she wishes (aka wants) to go to the ball, and since she says yes, the fairy godmother agrees to grant her the wish - but she does mention "and since you have been so good". This is a recurring topic in these French fairytales - wishes are granted as rewards for a good action or a good behavior, just wishing in itself does nothing (as Perrault evokes in some of his fairytales morals "Sometimes all you need to be rewarded in life... is to have a fairy godmother because else you're stuck in your misery.") There is also very often the topic of a fairy asking a person they want to reward to choose between various gifts and select precisely which "wish" they want more than another. For example there was this story by madame de Murat called "Anguillette" where a fairy saved by a princess offers her three possible gifts: wealth, beauty or intelligence, and she tells her to carefully make her "wish". (Though this fairytale is actually a twist on the trope of the choice since, unlike other fairies in this situation, this fairy ends up giving the princess all three gifts at once just because she is that good - but that's an exception)

In folk-fairytales the topic of wish is also present, but more in the "be careful what you wish for". Just recently I read a folkloric tale about the wife of a man who was friend with a local magical dwarf - and to obtain a horse (or a cow I can't remember exactly), the magical dwarf told the wife to go to a nearby village of dwarfs. But he warned her to be very precise in how she formulates her "wish" - for example she has to precise that the beast must have ears, eyes, legs... And ultimately she does get the animal, but forgets one thing in her specifications: the tail.

So I am speaking here only for the French branch of fairytales - but given Disney was as much inspired by them as by the Grimms I think it is a fair standing point. Wishes, the concept of granted wishes is definitively present in fairytales, for sure... But not the "power of wishes". Wishes in fairytales as a symbol of hope, wishes coming true all on their own because you "believe", wishes as just a power and force in itself, is something that is definitively part of Disney's specific brand and topic. Because in French fairytales, a wish is either a request/desire made to a supernatural being, or a reward for a good behavior. Wish is not "hope" but "desire" ; and yes wishes are granted, but as in "what you desire the most will be granted" ; and they are not granted randomly just because you believe. They are granted because you were a good person in the eyes of a supernatural power - a supernatural power which might force you to choose between specific options what you "wish" or "desire" more. And sometimes, fairies don't even grant the wishes, but go against them. I am not even speaking of wicked fairies, but good fairies too!

Take Donkeyskin. This is something that was very highlighted and focused on by the musical movie adaptation, but that was already present as a one-line joke in the original text: the princess, before fleeing the castle, ends up not wanting to fight her father's incestuous desire. She doesn't particularly wish to escape or to not be loved by her father - it is the fairy godmother that has to point out to her that no, this is not a good situation, and it is her that will force her to do all sorts of things she did not ask for. Similarly in these literary fairytales, a lot of the time good fairies are actually here to warn people that what they wish is dangerous, or that what they desire will be self-destructive or cause everybody harm. So overall, while wishes are present in French fairytales, they are not very prominent or important in themselves - rather, the logic of these fairytales is one of reward and punishment, and one of desire both good and bad - desire granted or desire denied, desire encouraged or desire fought off.

And in fact.... A lot of the time these supernatural rewards are not even based on wishes. Very often supernatural beings just decide on their own what would be the most fitting reward. For example take "Diamonds and toads" - the girl never wished for the riches given to her by the fairy, but that's her reward. Or rather, an example more telling would be a VERY famous fairytale of France. Its most famous version is from Bretagne, but it exists in numerous regions of France and was even found in northern Africa - it is the story of "The two hunchbacks and the (insert your local supernatural being here)". In France it is a lutin, or a variation of the lutin/dwarf (in Bretagne, the korrigan). The principle is always the same: there are two brothers who are hunchbacks, one is good one is bad. The good brother ends up stumbling one night upon a party of dancing and singing magical little beings, and he makes the party even merrier/plays well some music instrument/completes an unfinished songs of the lutins. The lutins decide to reward them - and without asking him what he want, or without the good brother asking anything, they remove his hunch, making him a normal man. When the bad brother, envious of the good brother's fate, goes to the same lutin party but acts poorly there, he demands a reward - and this reward is the hump of his brother, added onto his own.

This is something very prominent in these folk-tales: do not ask for a reward out of the blue. Only ask for a reward if you are offered a voice, only wish for something if the supernatural being encourages you to wish for something or allows you to. To ask for something, to enforce your wish upon a supernatural being, always turns up badly. A variation of the two brothers tale is even more revealing of this theme: in this story, the good brother is offered to choose between lot of gold, or having his hump removed. And when the bad brother arrives, he demands "what my brother left behind", meaning the gold - but the lutins/dwarfs/korrigans/fairies decide to understand it as "the hunched-back my brother left behind".

Because this is something that is very prominently said in literary fairytales of France: fairies (and other assorted supernatural beings) are not low-beings or powerless creatures. They are not to be commanded, they are very high on the social AND cosmic hierarchy. Fairies for examples, in French fairytales, are repeatedly said to be either equal to kings and queens - or SUPERIOR to any kind of human royalty that exists. This is notably why so many of them end up being godmothers of princes and princesses, or marrying kings, or making ennemies out of royalty. Again, fairies and other enchanters of French classical-literary fairytales are inheritors of the gods and goddesses of the Greco-Roman mythology, crossed with some folk-Christianity of saints and Virgin Mary, so there's still this idea that the human is naturally inferior to the supernatural, and should always treat it with respect. Just like how you do not ask a king to gift you something, you do not ask a fairy to grant you a wish - else you want it interpreted in a bad way. You rather do good things in hope of gaining the king's favor so he rewards you.

Anyway, after twisted digressions, to return to your original post: as you said, the topic of "wishes" is not as genre-defining as it might seem today. Disney really took this element and expanded it and focused the light on it and insisted upon it, to the point that we can say definitively today that the topic of the "power of wishes" IS a defining genre of the Disney fairytale. But it does not mean wishes and their importance wasn't in fairytales before... But the wishes themselves did not have the power - the supernatural beings had the power and granted the wishes. Hope in these traditional fairytales isn't about wishing something or believing in something. In these fairytales manifesting "hope" means staying kind and true and good-working and gentle to everybody and everyone and enduring all your pain and all your hardships and miseries, because doing so might earn you the favor or pity of a powerful cosmic royalty who will decide to reward you by granting you what you desire the most or what is the best for you. If someone simply wishes something, it probably won't come true in a fairytale - the best way to make sure your wish comes true is to go feed old hungry women and save frogs from being eaten by birds ; but if you just "wish upon a star", you'll probably get nothing. However if you cry out your heart upon some given plants or in front of some given birds, they might help you by bringing you good counsel or some food - but no wish granting.

And as I said, even then, your personal wish and desire ultimately might not be what is actually good for you, and many warning tales of the literary fairytale era were about "Here's how you will die when your wish is granted". Typical Psyche and Cupid tale: the wife wants to see her husband, and this wish leads her to lose everything. Typical Beauty and the Beast tale: the girl wishes to go to her family, and it almost kills the beast. And of course, the wishes and demands and desires of bad people ultimately become their undoing... Unless you are one of those fairytale antagonists with a fairy godmother on your side, in which case your wish and demands become the main reason the protagonists are suffering (madame d'Aulnoy's The Blue Bird is the most revealing case, as it is the first French literary fairytale where the evil step-sisters gets a fairy godmother who ends up cursing the princess' beloved into the titular blue-bird, simply because she does everything she can to please and grant the wishes of the person she is the godmother of).

As for the Grimm fairytales... I honestly do not think wishing is an important part of them? Wishing does get its fair share in French fairytales in a very nuance and complex take ; but the Grimms? Beyond the line you evoked in the Frog Prince, where are the wishes in Hansel and Gretel, The Wolf and the Seven Goats, The Robber Bridegroom? There is Rapunzel but the mother's desire is not a wish, rather a craving. There's Snow-White, where indeed the wish comes true - but it backfires massively since in the original version the mother ends up hating her own daughter, and in the later version the mother dies soon after giving birth. But beyond that? I don't see many wish-stories. Oh yes, except the Fisherman and his Wife - a very traditional "wish" story, but even then... Wishes are depicted as ultimately negative, since the wife is driven by greed and ambition that augments with every wish.

So yes, Disney probably is the only one of the entire corpus of fairytales who decided to depict wishes as purely and entirely good.

#i am sorry i can't other more insight on the topic #but i never pondered much about the power of wishing #in french fairytales it truly isn't an important topic #i mean its there but it is never the core or focus of the stories #and again the be careful what you wish for trope is SO strong in fairytales and folktales #it almost over-rides everything since the ones with happy endings are often the ones who do not wish for everything #basically the moral would be only wish if you are asked to wish #and even then choose your wish very carefully #fairytales #fairy tales #wish #wishing

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