Off with Their Heads!: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood

by Maria Tatar

Book Overview

When Hansel and Gretel try to eat the witch's gingerbread house in the woods, are they indulging their "uncontrolled cravings" and "destructive desires" or are they simply responding normally to the hunger pangs they feel after being abandoned by their parents? Challenging Bruno Bettelheim and other critics who read fairy tales as enactments of children's untamed urges, Maria Tatar argues that it is time to stop casting the children as villians...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691000883
• ISBN13: 9780691000886
• Release Date: October 1993
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 332 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.2"