Hansel and Gretel Stories

Comparison of Hansel and Gretel and Baba Yaga

 

Title	Characters	Setting	Actions	Theme
Hansel and Gretel by the Grimm Brothers (1812) can be viewed here	Hansel, Gretel, Woodcutter, Stepmother, Witch.	Great Forest	In this tale, the stepmother coerces the father, against his better judgment, to abandon the children in the woods so she doesn’t have to share food with them. Hansel and Gretel, hungry and alone, stumble across little house made of gingerbread and cakes and start eating it.  An old woman comes out of the house and sees them eating it and invites them in and feeds them and gives them a comfortable place to sleep.  The old woman was really a witch pretending to be kind to lure them in so she could eat them.  She locked Hansel in a cage and made Gretel a servant. Hansel was fed great meals in an attempt to fatten him up for the witch’s dinner, but Hansel tricked her into believing he was not getting fat.  After four weeks, the witch grew impatient and decided to eat both of them, she told Gretel to climb in the oven to see if it was hot enough, but Gretel played dumb and asked the witch to show her how to check the temperature.  When the witch stuck her head in, Gretel pushed her in and locked the door, then freed Hansel from his cage.  They searched the witch’s house and found chests of jewels and filled their pockets before leaving the little house.  When they return home to their father, he is overjoyed to have them home and the stepmother has mysteriously died.  With their newfound wealth, the three of them live in perfect happiness.	This story revolves around two children who are abandoned at the behest of their stepmother.  Gender roles also are quite poignant in this story with Hansel being the clever one and Gretel being very emotional.  Even when caught by the witch, Hansel is the prize and is caged and fed good food, while Gretel is turned into a servant and served scraps.  In this version of the story, The stepmother is again the evil character who creates the plot and in the end it is the father who most loves the children and is rewarded by their return with all the jewels.  The theme for this version seems to revolve around rewards for cleverness and love as well as the don’t trust strangers angle.  An interesting note is that the evil stepmother seems to mysteriously disappear at the same time as the witch is killed opening the possibility that they are one and the same.
Baba Yaga by Blumenthal, V.X.K. (1903) can be viewed here.	Father, Stepmother, Boy, Girl, Grandmother, Baba Yaga, the mice, black cat, birch tree.	A forest somewhere in Russia.	In this version, the stepmother sends the children to Baba Yaga, a witch who lives in the forest and eats children but the children are able to escape with the help of some talking mice, a talking black cat, a talking tree and some magical items given to them by the cat.  Upon returning home to their father and telling him what happened, he sent the wicked stepmother away and never neglected the children again.	In this story the father, a peasant who remarries to bring order back into his house, appears innocent and is trying to recreate a nuclear family environment in which the woman takes care of the house and kids. The stepmother and Baba Yaga, the witch, are painted as the evil protagonists to the children, who overcome the evil by being good and kind.  The story presents a couple of interesting themes: (1) A good person will eventually win, (2) The male is ultimately the most important figure in a child’s life while the woman that went against her husband was banished. (3) Don’t trust strangers.

 

            The Grimm version (1812) is a German fairy tale that reflects the culture of the time through the Father’s job as a woodcutter and in the names of the children, Hansel and Gretel.  It also revolves around food and hunger, which is a common concern throughout the world, but during the early 1800s, there appeared to be a great famine that swept across Europe and lending a strong connection to the story.  In the case of Baba Yaga (1903), The father is a peasant on the edge of a forest in Russia, which depicts a very common state of being for the region.  Names are not given to any except for Baba Yaga, the etiology of which seems to derive from the Russian babushka (grandmother) and ved’ma (pronounced with a ‘y’ sound), which means witch, so we have the grandmother witch.  Baba Yaga, also relies heavily on magic and imagination, which was very prominent in the poor areas of Russia in the early 1900s.

            Both versions of the story depict some commonality and play on universal themes.  In each case there is a brother and sister who are abandoned by a loving father at the behest of a second wife and cross paths with a cannibalistic witch.  In the end, good triumphs over evil and the children return to their loving father and the evil stepmother is punished.  Each story includes very common fears for children throughout the world in the shape of starvation and evil witches, while at the same time reinforcing the idea that bad things happen when you trust a stranger.