"Whether openly stated or only hinted at, oedipal difficulties and how the individual solves them are central to the way his personality and human relations fold. By camouflaging the oedipal predicaments, or by only subtly intimating the entanglements, fairy stories permit us to draw our own conclusions when the time is propitious for out gaining a better understanding of these problems. Fairy stories teach by indirection" (201). This is an excerpt from Bruno Bettelheim's "Snow White" essay from the text
Uses of Enchantment. The essay itself describes the sexual and oedipal undertones of the popular fairy tale and how the psychological aspect of the story is based on human emotions. Through this essay, I wish to establish my analytical view on "Snow White" and the reasons why I do not agree with some of Bruno Bettelheim's works.
Growing up, fairy tales were a part of my everyday life. As a child, I'd loved leaning against my father's arm as he flipped through our family's dusty, blue
copy of "Grimm's Fairy Tales". I could've listened forever to the ageless
stories of princesses and elves and all those other magical elements, which
weren't a part of the normal human being's life. Never did I think that someone out there in the world was dissecting these beloved stories and making a
psychology project out of it. And that is exactly what Bruno Bettelheim has
done. Not only has he made a project out of harmless fairy tales, he has
triggered a unnatural response from scholars and feminists all over the world
who come to argue and dissect the stories even more.
Bruno Bettelheim, asserts in The Uses of Enchantment (New York: Vintage, 1989)
that fairy tales have a psychological function for children in that they gain an
understanding of nature not through rational comprehension of it but by making
it familiar in imaginative play. Bettelheim writes: "[The child] can achieve
this understanding, and with it the abilit...