Editing the Tales

The Brothers Grimm & German Fairy Tales

Course 1 · Chapter 5 · Editing the Tales

Between the first edition of 1812 and the last of 1857 the tales changed a good deal. Wilhelm, who handled most of the revision, added detail, smoothed the style, adjusted some moral and religious points, and in places made matters harsher as well as gentler. This chapter looks at what changed, what did not, and what it means to ask whether the Grimm tales are "authentic". Examples are from general knowledge and flagged "check", since individual tales and editions differ.

What Changed

Style

The language became more even and more colourful, with added dialogue, proverbs and descriptive touches, and a storytelling voice that sounds more like a single narrator (check examples). Wilhelm's own taste shaped it.

Detail

Tales gained length and incident in many cases. Combined versions drew on several tellers or sources, so that the printed tale is sometimes a composite (check which tales).

Content

Some matters considered unsuitable for families were removed or softened, while some violence, especially punishment of wrongdoers, was kept or sharpened (check specific cases).

Examples to Look For

Type of change (check each tale)	What scholars report
Mothers and stepmothers	In some tales, such as "Hansel and Gretel", a mother in early versions becomes a stepmother in later ones, which is often linked to a wish to protect the idea of the mother.
Pregnancy and sexual matters	A reference in an early "Rapunzel" to a pregnancy is said to have been altered in later editions.
Religious touches	Later editions added Christian wording and references to God in places.
Punishments	Cruel punishments at the end of tales, such as the villain's fate in "Snow White" or "Cinderella", were kept or intensified in the later texts.
Gender roles	Heroines are often described as obedient, industrious and patient in later versions (check how consistent this is).
Dialect	A few tales were printed in Low German dialect, such as "The Fisherman and His Wife", for local colour (check).

Not simply "cleaned up" The popular claim is that the Grimm tales were once much darker and were made nice for children. The evidence is more mixed. Some content became milder, some became harsher, and many changes were stylistic. The result was a more consistent book, not simply a gentler one (check how scholars now describe the direction of change).

Why Did Wilhelm Revise?

Readers. The success of a children's selection and the criticism of the first edition encouraged changes for a wider audience (Chapter 4).
Taste. Wilhelm preferred a certain narrative style, with the sort of manner he thought suited a tale told aloud (check how he described it).
Values. The middle-class values of the time, around family, religion and gender, appear in the later texts.
Scholarship. Jacob and others preferred a more faithful record, and the brothers did not always agree about how far to alter (check).

"Authentic" Folk Tales?

The question matters because the Grimms presented the book as a record of the German people's storytelling. Taken literally, that claim does not hold: the tales were selected, composed from several sources, and rewritten. But a different claim can hold, that the collection preserves tale types and motifs from wider traditions in a particular edited form. A fair reading says the Grimm collection is a literary work built on folk material, not a transcript of folk speech.

Why it still matters. The collection became a reference point for later folklorists, who used it to study tale types, and its editing affects their conclusions.
How to read it. Compare editions and cite which one you are reading. Where translations differ, find out which edition each follows.

A British comparison Compare the later "bowdlerised" editions of Shakespeare prepared for family reading by Thomas Bowdler in the early 1800s (check the date), which removed material thought indecent. The comparison helps to see that editing for a family audience was common in the period, though the Grimm case is more complicated, since the brothers also added and sharpened.

Check the details Claims about specific changes, such as mother to stepmother, are widely repeated but vary by tale and edition. Check against a scholarly edition that prints the early and late versions, and do not accept a single dramatic example as proof of a general rule.

Exercises

Exercise 1

List four kinds of change Wilhelm made across editions and give one possible example of each, marking those you would need to check.

→ Solution

Exercise 2

Evaluate the claim that "the Grimm tales were once much darker and were cleaned up for children", using the evidence in this chapter.

→ Solution

Exercise 3

Write a short plan for comparing the first and last editions of one tale, naming what you would compare and what sources you would use.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

Reviser: mainly Wilhelm, across seven large editions to 1857 (check)
Kinds of change: style, detail, content, religion, gender roles, dialect
Common claims: mother to stepmother; softened sexual references; sharpened punishments (check each)
The method: compare editions and name the edition and translation you read
The caution: "once darker, then cleaned up" is too simple