Jewish Fairy Tales and Stories

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The Turtle and The Swan

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The difference between animal brides and animal grooms is made obvious in the Japanese tale of “Urashima the Fisherman” and the Scandinavian fairytale “The Swan Maiden.” There are two types of stories about relationships between humans and beasts – The Man on a Quest for His Lost Wife and The Search for the Lost Husband . In the stories about a woman with an animal husband, she is usually faced with a terrifying beast or otherwise disgusting animal who then later has his curse broken and becomes a handsome prince. (This does not apply to the story “The Tiger’s Bride,” in which the beautiful woman is transformed into a beast and becomes more like her husband.) In the stories with animal brides, however, the woman does not usually remain a human. In most of these stories, the woman becomes human because of her love for a man. They spend time together, usually getting married, but then one day the woman, either through her becoming her animal form once again or through a folly of her h...
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Rugrats, Different Cultures, and Little Red Riding Hood

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Comic Published: 8/2/1998, Writer: Scott Gray, Artist: Kyle Baker Link To Website In this 1998 social cartoon, writer Scott Gray and artist Kyle Baker discuss the different versions of the famous fairytale Little Red Riding Hood. In this comic based on the hit 90’s television show, “Rugrats” Tommy’s grandparents, Minka and Boris, try to tell the story of Little Red Riding Hood, but both remember very different details of the story. This is a perfect example of how the same story can exist in many different cultures with the same basic storyline with different details. Stories such as “The Tale of the Tiger Woman” and “T sélané and the Marim o” have the same basic story line as the western versions of LRRH (ex. Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood” or the Brothers Grimm’s “Little Red Cap”) but different villains. Just like how the grandparent’s in this comic cannot decide whether the villain was a wolf or a goat, there are also different types of trickster characters in each resp...
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1 Beard, 2 Beard, Redbeard, Bluebeard

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  I’m not sure why, but I really enjoyed the various Bluebeard stories we read for class, but If I had to pick a favorite it would be Margaret Atwood’s “Bluebeard’s Egg.” My favorite types of stories are ones with nuance, and for me this modern retelling was nuanced in which character matched up with which traditional counterpoint, as well as if the symbols and motifs meant the same things. Something that particularly interesting to me was the concept of the Egg, and how it relates to Ed in Atwood’s story.  In the story, the narrator Sally reads the story of Bluebeard in one of her classes and reflects “Ed isn’t the Bluebeard: Ed is the egg. Ed Egg, blank and pristine and lovely. Stupid, too. Boiled, probably.” (223) This is particularly interesting to me, since the character of Bluebeard in this story is not as obvious and is left up to interpretation over whether it is Ed or Sally’s friend Marylynn who is the Bluebeard figure. The image of the egg itself is also very intere...
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