Hansel and Gretel

Hans is the character that experiences a transformation in this fairy tale by the Grimm brothers.  Hansel and Gretel comes from a poor family. They have an evil stepmother who convinces their father to lead them out in the forest to die. There seems to be a link between the cruel and guiltless stepmother and the old witch. When the witch dies the step mother dies. When the stepmother is hungry she sends the children out in the forest expecting them to get lost and die. Coincidence? I think not. Even though Hansel and Gretel makes it back, they are lead out into the forest a second time, only this time they have to endure many struggles and pass plenty obstacles before they find their way back. 

One of the obstacles is the candy house in the middle of the forest, when they come across it they are starved and cannot withstand the temptation of a “little house that is made of white bread” (p.56) the roof is of cake and the windows of sugar. So food is represented here by sweets “And they did not bother to stop eating or let themselves be distracted. Since the roof tasted so good, Hansel ripped off a large piece and pulled it down, while Gretel pushed out a round piece of the windowpane, sat down and ate it with great relish” (p.56) The house is so extravagant and their hunger is so bad that the relief and happiness they feel when eating the sweets seems calming. The old lady can therefore trick them very easily into thinking they are safe and then trick them into letting Hansel get turned into the meal. Her choice of feeding the boy instead of the girl seems to be related to the shape of the house’s sweets, nothing is pointy like the phallus. Therefore it seems likely that Hansel will be more attracted to the “milk and pancakes, with sugar, apples and nuts” given to them by the witch. it is all round and magical, deeming it everlasting, feminine and unreal. Round food is also softer to eat, therefore more desirable for children. Freud states in his paper Negation (1925) about the oral that “the pleasure – ego wants to interject into itself everything that is good and to eject from itself everything that is bad” (Read Freud's "Negation" here p.237) which could in this case mean that the old witch wants to have Hansel’s male innocence interjected into herself.

The old witch has made the house in a palatable way. With bread as the foundation of the walls and the dessert situated higher up, the children still manage to rip out the sweets and eat them straight away. The witch displays how to tempt the prey (children) to your home, doing so with sweets.  She also displays the culinary method through how to contain or preserve the food before it is cooked:

1. Ideally the food should rest on white sheets for some hours and then you should  choose the thickest and throw it in a cage.
2. The next step is to make the next ingredient do all the work so you can sit back and wait for the thickest and finest ingredient to become even thicker.
3.  Look for a swelling in fingers (make sure you feel the skin if you are a bit blind).
4. The cooking requires a large bowl and lots of water.
5. Light the fire under the bowl early in the morning, it should be extremely hot.
6. Also heat up the oven so you can bake bread as a side dish.
7. Knead the dough and make sure you are the one that ends up in the oven.

       Easy enough right!

Hansel’s transformation is a physical one; he expands in size because the witch intends to eat him and will not have anything but a fat child. He does not grow in height therefore showing an anxiety about sweets slowing down the growth of a child, deeming the child closer to an early death. Sweets are what can make him fat quickly enough. Cake is usually colourful, but it is not described as colourful in this text, perhaps this is because of the blind witch who has made sweet food dangerous, which the hunger that the children experience is making them blind to colours and danger. The moral of eating sweet food in this text is that you should not eat any food that is offered to you by strangers, even if it is sweets given to you by an old and blind lady. There is an anxiety about people who are strangers wanting to eat you. The change in Hansel’s form is received by the other characters in in two ways, good and bad. For the cannibalistic witch the desire for him to become fat is exhilarating while for Gretel it is terrifying. Perhaps this is because throughout the story Hansel has had the responsibility of being Gretel’s protector and now the roles are reversed. Gretel saves the day and happily they have killed an old lady which goes against my belief of respecting your elders, but oh well! The point is that the children and the father live merrily for the rest of their lives.

Read Hansel and Gretel here
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Brothers Grimm. Hansel and Gretel (1812)

O'Neil, M. K. & Akhtar, S. On Freud's "Negation”. Karnac Books. 2011