One of the most important factors in fairy tales are the important and basic needs of mankind, mainly- food, home, and clothes. Most of the fairy tales are based on the absence or presence of at least one of the components. Authors have written about the society norms and cultures during their time on account of these details. For example, in Beauty and the Beast by De Beaumont, the author has widely used the components of clothing and jewelry to express the people’s greedy and selfish nature. Beauty’s step sisters always yearned for expensive and materialistic things but finally ended up not being happy with their marriages. In this essay, I am going to talk in-depth about Hansel and Gretel’s story by Brothers Grimm, explaining about how the …show more content…
During times of famine, every piece of food is important to people. The norm of cannibalism, which existed during famine times is depicted with the help of this story. The author brings out the challenges faced by families in such crisis. One of the extracts from the story shows us how bad the effects of the famine was- “There was never much to eat in the house, and once, during famine, the woodcutter could no longer put bread on the table. At night, he lay in bed worrying, tossing and turning in his distress. He sighed and said to his wife: “What will become of us? How can we provide for our poor children when we don’t even have enough for ourselves?”” People resorted to cannibalism as their last option and would eat their own children to keep themselves alive. The author has shown this social practice of famine by showing the old woman as a cannibal. The piece of bread left for the children in the forest symbolizes their lifeline of staying alive in the forest. In the forest, the sight of delicious looking house made up of food of the cunning witch shows the depth of their starvation and desires to eat. They perceive it as the only hope of staying alive. This shows their desperation which is grown because of the lack of food. Just like Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella’s story also talks about food. She was treated as a maid in her own house, given all the harsh jobs of the house and not even given food until she finished her chores. So like this, authors have used one of the basic necessity of mankind, food, to change the course of the story and bring out a