In 1812, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published their first edition of Children’s and Household Tales, featuring 86 fairy tales collected from throughout Germany. By the time the final edition was released in 1857, the tally of what became more commonly known as Grimm’s Fairy Tales had risen to 211 and contained some of the most well-known stories in western culture.
Popular legend holds that the Brothers Grimm traveled the various municipalities of their German homeland, collecting works from the oral traditions of the populace so that they could be preserved for prosperity. The television drama Grimm, however, suggests that their motives were more sinister. According to the show’s mythology, fairy tales are real and Children’s and Household Tales is a resource guide for their descendants to help them combat supernatural evils.
While Grimm is obviously fictional, comparative literature historian Jack Zipes believes that Jacob and Wilhelm had ulterior motives for writing Children’s and Household Tales as well.
“What fascinated or compelled the Grimms to concentrate on old German literature was a belief that the most natural and pure forms of culture – those which held the community together – were linguistic and were to be located in the past,” he explains in The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World. “They were intent on using the tales to document basic truths about the customs and practices of the German people and on preserving their authentic ties to the oral tradition.”
Germany was not a single nation at the time but a series of individual municipalities under various jurisdictions. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm themselves were “nationalists” who believed in a united Germany, especially after the Napoleonic Wars of the early part of the nineteenth century.
The period also witnessed unrest within the feudal system that still governed the region, as well as the rise of the German bourgeois. The Brothers Grimm were initially born into the upper class of society but were reduced to poverty after the death of their father in 1796, only to later ascend the cultural ladder by means of their own academic achievements.
Despite popular belief that the brothers traveled the region for first-hand accounts from peasants, in actuality the majority of the stories were told to them by friends and other members of academia. Grimm’s Fairy Tales is also not exclusively German, as many of the narratives are French in nature. Still, Jacob and especially Wilhelm edited and re-wrote the myths to reflect their own beliefs regarding both the German people and society in general.
“Through socially symbolic acts of compensation, they enabled readers to gain pleasure from different depictions of powerful transformation,” Jack Zipes writes. “The tales celebrated the rise of seemingly ineffectual, disadvantaged individuals who were associated with such bourgeois and religious virtues as industry, diligence, cleverness, loyalty, and honesty. Moreover, the critique of unjust social and political conditions in most of the Grimms’ fairy tales was realized metaphorically by magical means that reconciled the readers of their tales to their helplessness and impotence in society. Paradoxically, the result was a rationalization of unjust conditions through magic, which also provided hope that alternative ways of living were possible.”
As already noted, the stories of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm likewise have ulterior meanings on Grimm – the tales are real and the brothers recorded them to assist their decedents in defeating the supernatural entities at the heart of the narratives. Portland police detective Nick Burkhardt is one such descendent, and as such has the ability to “see” the beasts that lie beneath human exteriors.
Ironically, it his Aunt Marie – a legendary slayer of supernatural creatures – who explains the role of a “Grimm” to Burkhardt despite the stereotypical depictions of women in the actual Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
“For the most part these heroines indicate that a woman’s best place is in the house as a diligent, obedient, self-sacrificing wife,” Jack Zipes explains regarding Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White. “In the majority of these tales and their imitations, the male is her reward, and it is apparent that, even though he is an incidental character, he arrives on the scene to take over, to govern, and control her future.”
While Aunt Marie is a deviation from the original text, the Blutbad – aka “Big Bad Wolf” – who goes by the human name Monroe is a continuation of another Grimm tradition. It turns out that Monroe is “reformed” and enters an alliance with Nick Burkhardt as the newly baptized Grimm makes his way through the supernatural world in which he suddenly finds himself.
“If a Grimm protagonist does not communicate with helpers, whether they be beasts, fairies, devils, giants, or hags, he or she is lost,” Jack Zipes writes in The Brothers Grimm. “It is interesting that the Grimm protagonist is nothing alone, by him or herself, but becomes omnipotent when assisted by small creatures or outsiders – those figures who are marginal and live on the border between wilderness and civilization, between village and woods, between the earthly world and the other sacred world.”
It is also fitting that Portland, Oregon, was chosen as the locale for Grimm both within its storyline as well as the site for production of the series. The picturesque region is filled with the types of forests and mountains that dominated nineteenth century Germany and served as the setting for fairy tales. Many episodes of Grimm take place in the forest, including the abduction of a modern day Little Red Riding Hood and the contemporary equivalent of Goldilocks stumbling upon a cabin inhabited by a family of Jägerbars.
“Inevitably they found their way into the forest,” Jack Zipes observes about the Grimms’ fairy tales, but he could just as easily be writing about Grimm itself. “It is there that they lose and find themselves. It is there that they gain a sense of what is to be done. The forest is always large, immense, great, and mysterious. No one ever gains power over the forest, but the forest possesses the power to change lives and alter destinies. In many ways it is the supreme authority on earth and often the great provider. It is not only Hansel and Gretel who get lost in the forest and then return wiser and fulfilled.”
Nick Burkhardt likewise becomes lost in the forest of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and emerges wiser as a result, determined to be a different kind of “Grimm” than mere slayer of the supernatural. He also develops a compassionate understanding for the creatures he encounters. Not only does he befriend the Blutbad known as Monroe but later allows a Jägerbar “Papa Bear” assist in finding the young couple taken hostage for an ancient coming-of-age ritual for his son.
While the original intent of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm was to preserve the traditions of the Old World through the fairy tales that they collected, the stories also offered a path to a new and better society.
“The Grimms’ tales reflect the concern and contradictions of different civilizing processes, and despite the atavistic aspects and patriarchal discourse, their tales still read like innovative strategies for survival,” Jack Zipes explains. “Most of all, they provide hope that there is more to life than mastering the art of survival. Their ‘once upon a time’ keeps alive our longing for a better modern world that can be created out of our dreams and actions.”
In the television drama Grimm, the hope for a “better modern world” rests on the shoulders of Nick Burkhardt as he attempts to balance the “once upon a time” nature of his calling with the contemporary times of the twenty-first century. In this sense, Grimm not only offers a fantasized interpretation of Grimm’s Fairy Tales but contains strains from the original intent of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm themselves – the possibility of a brighter future through the lessons of the past.
Anthony Letizia