Recently someone whom I will dub X claimed that it was Gretel who thought of handing the visually impaired wicked witch a chicken bone and claiming that it was Hansel’s finger (so the witch wouldn’t think he was fat enough to cook in her oven and eat). However, I ran across a copy of the tale that had Hansel thinking of this idea.
We got to talking about the story and somebody else, named Y, said he remembered that the witch wanted to bake the children into cookies, but I said that was probably just a later version. Meanwhile, I can’t find my copy of the excellent TALES OF ENCHANTMENT I think the title was, by the now politically incorrect Bruno Bettelheim (at least this book is good).
IIRC, Bettleheim’s book is THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT.
There’s probably several different versions floating around, it’s not as though there were a canonical text. There are versions where the witch ate the prior children she had caught, and so presumably baked them into gingerbread (cookies) to eat. In some modern versions, when the witch dies, the other children come back to life, they were simply enchanted into gingerbread (pieces) and were part of her house (which always bothered me, I mean, Hansel and Gretel were nibbling on that, does that mean that one of the children reappeared with an ear or nose nibbled off?)
My guess is that the confusion between gingerbread qua cookie and gingerbread qua house is what led to a version where she bakes them into cookies, not into gingerbread at all.
On whether Hansel or Gretel thinks of the stick = finger trick, I dunno. Always seemed pretty stupid to me, who could possible confuse a stick with a finger?
At least the part about them dropping a trail of poker chips to find their way home, that’s consistent in all the versions.
Does this book explain how it is really an allegory about the attempt by Rome to take over the profits of the Hanseatic League?
don, you lost me. Is the General Question here “what is the ‘correct’ plotline of Hansel and Gretel?”
I suppose I’m old enough to have heard some of the less “civilized” versions of H&G. The versions I always heard (and recall, perhaps incorrectly, reading) have Hansel coming up with the ruse to fool the nearly blind witch into thinking he was not plump enough to cook.
In most of the versions of H&G I remember, the witch wasn’t interested in anything as innocuous as cookies, but cannibalism. Had she been a more conteporary character, perhaps “Silence of the Lambs” might’ve featured a female character instead of the now familiar Hannibal Lechter. Of course, the one version I remember best, H&G were rescued by Bugs Bunny, so I can’t exactly claim to be an expert on folk tales, now can I?
~~Baloo
Yes, my question is what is the plot. And also was it Hansel or Gretel (in the plot) who had the idea of the chicken bone.
Also, I benefitted from all answers and good luck to BAloo–you should have done like Al always says (now in reruns nightly, thank goodness) whenever he has a chance to make a speech: “DON’T GET MARRIED.” Al Bundy, that is, on MARRIED WITH CHILDREN.
I remember Gretel as having the bone idea, and it would confirm the ageold role in so many fables of Woman As Inspirer, the brains and Muse behind the man (who BY THE WAY is supposed to HELP him after she inspires him to marry her, not find a new boyfriend!) But I feel I am hijacking my own topic, so anybody have more about the witch et. al.? (But I can’t resist mentioning that it was the stepmother who INSPIRED the poor dumb father of these children to lose them in the woods TWICE!
The Brothers Grimm version does not specifically assign the origin of the idea to either of them.
I don’t remember ever hearing about “crab-shells”. Where would she get crab-shells in the middle of the woods?
Ah, that would be the ever-elusive Bavarian tree-crab. They used to be quite common but were hunted to extinction when it was discovered that their claws made ideal beer bottle openers.
Pity.
~~Baloo