Paganism
Column: the Woman in the Refrigerator and the Girl with Two Mothers
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At the beginning of this semester, students in my undergraduate college course on Grimms’ Fairy Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen) read the prefaces to the two volumes of the first edition. In the preface to the second volume of 1815, Wilhelm Grimm responds to criticism of the first volume of 1812 after asserting that the collection of tales should serve as an “educational primer” (Erziehungsbuch):
Objections have been raised against this last point because this or that might be embarrassing and would be unsuitable for children or offensive (when the tales might touch on certain situations and relations – even the mentioning of the bad things the devil does) and that parents might not want to put the book into the hands of children. That concern might be legitimate in certain cases, and then one can easily make selections. On the whole it is certainly not necessary. This argument is often heard today.