Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Iron Hans
It is interesting to see how battle and war has finally made its way into the fairy tale genre, and I don't think it is a coincidence that it is present in the story about "wild" men. Violence and war stems from the uncontrollable nature of man and perhaps the Grimm's brothers have illuminated this aspect of peasant culture in these Iron Hans and Wild Man stories. Hair is also an interesting motif to study in the fairy tale genre, and in Iron Hans we have a slight inconsistency within the motif. Hair usually represents health and stature rather than beauty, but the "golden hair" of the boy dazzled and bewildered everyone in the story, including the young princess who actively pursued her attraction to this glowing golden hair. It is interesting to see how the gendered nature of hair here has been reversed as golden blond hair is usually sexualized and characteristic of the female gender. Yet this youth, this naughty boy who couldnt control where his ball landed, who couldnt properly guard a well, rose to military and popular fame all as a result of his roots back to his wild nature and his bond to Iron Hans. Perhaps the inner beast in man can be a good thing when tamed.
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In this post, I think it is interesting how male stereotypes, battle and war, are tied in with those of women, hair and beauty. It is very clear the gender roles in this story.
ReplyDeleteI think war is not very prevalent in fairy tales is because it is somewhat antithetical to the genre, because it always takes place on a mass scale, you need lots of people to create armies to run a war. Although each soldier is an individual with individual stories, but war takes place on a vast scale, and fairy tales usually focus on a single individual and his/her, relatively small life (that usually ends in marriage and coronation of some sort). Even in Iron Hans war is sort of off-screen, we don't get any in-depth, blow-by-blow description of the battles or the tactical planning or camp life, I think other than this story there is one reference to the father/king leaving for war in one of the all-fur stories. War, as you mention, is probably too chaotic for the Grimms, since it is primal, yet it seems strange that violence is so prevalent, yet war, large scale violence is not.
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