Jack & The Beanstalk is about

[Guest Mnytime]

This goes in the you learn something-everyday dept. The Discovery Channel is showing a show called Giants: Friend or Foe. Part of discusses the Jack and the Beanstalk story. According to this show the story is supposed to have been about Sexual Awakening and Coming of Age.

Myself I was never really into children's stories. I know the stories and their outlines but I never actually read the stories and no one read them to me. Different cultures after all so different stories. Never read the Grimm stories either. I just wasn't the children's stories type. I was into more grown up books when I was at the age most would be reading these stories.

Yea I knew the whole Phallic Beanstalk thing but not having read the story the rest never crossed my mind. A cow represting his mother? The cow without milk his mom milkless?

So I went looking online and found on this site about a quarter of the way down the site

http://faculty.virginia.edu/kononenko/text...res/oct_15.html

Hansel and Gretel - orality

Little Red Riding Hood - sex and girl's Oedipal

Jack and the Beanstalk - boy's Oedipal

Snow White - parent/child Oedipal conflict and Freudian inversion - attribution of own desires to usurp onto parent

Also latency and symbol of sleep

Cinderella - post-Oedipal and sibling rivalry

Now the question I have is why would anyone write stories for kids that are about sex and how in basically puritan/Victorian countries did these stories get so big and accepted? Is it possible that no one else caught on to the meaning a behind these stories before?

They than go on into more detail explaining for each story.

For the Beanstalk story for example this site has this:

Jack and the Beanstalk

According to B. - two parts

The trades

7 cows

First 3 trade for - magic stick

Singing bee

Fiddle

Jack uses these three to win princess

Task to get princess - must make her laugh

Bee and fiddle make her smile

Stick beats up other suitors - she laughs

They marry and go to bed - for 3 nights Jack does nothing

Princess complains and Jack thrown to wild beasts

Stick beats up beasts

Jack and princess live happily ever after

Jack shows control of stick (esp. over beasts)

Not just power and aggression; prowess = control

Princess recognizes live happily ever after

Beanstalk part

Milky White - cow, also symbolizes mother

Jack now alone with mother, father gone

Traded for some beans

Beans thrown out window by mother

Beanstalk grows at night and Jack's journeys up beanstalk occur at night

Journeys to utopian, narcissistic land of plenty

Comfort in own body and esp. newly discovered magical part (which grows at night)

But in land of plenty, in heaven - ogre, giant

Both angry father - angry about what Jack has been up to (note Jack's alliance with the giant's wife - like wished for Oedipal alliance with mother)

And ogre, animalistic, uncontrolled part of self

Mother/giant's wife help Jack out in various ways,

But ultimately must control (chop down) himself

Subsidiary points

insecurity in new masculine role - leads to regression to orality - Jack's behavior at table of giant

His inability to take care of mother when left alone with her and need to trade only cow

His trade of it for something that produces beanstalk

Egotistical (and fearful) regression into self - autoeroticism

Jack looking at hairy legs of giant coming down beanstalk

His fear of sexuality

Edited June 17, 2003 by Mnytime

[Jim Alfredson]

Peter Gabriel talked about this. Supposedly there is some book about it out there. He wrote some of the songs on "Us" with these things in mind.

[Guest Mnytime]

Peter Gabriel talked about this.  Supposedly there is some book about it out there.  He wrote some of the songs on "Us" with these things in mind.

As you can see this former College Boy doesn't know everything.

Close to everything but not everything.

But than I was never big on reading about sex. I was more of the active participant type myself.

Edited June 17, 2003 by Mnytime

[Guest Mnytime]

Never heard Us. I really don't care for solo Gabril especially later day Gabriel. I thought Us was supposed to be about his relationships?

Edited June 17, 2003 by Mnytime

[Jazzmoose]

First of all, these stories weren't created for children.

Secondly, the versions we currently have are nothing like the original versions (if the originals can even be found).

[Guest Mnytime]

First of all, these stories weren't created for children.

Secondly, the versions we currently have are nothing like the original versions (if the originals can even be found).

Yea, I forgot to add that in. It was during the Victorian Age that the sexual references was added into the written versions. Why anyone would want to add the sexual references to what had become children's stories by than I have no idea.

In the original version of Jack instead of the Sex it was a lot more violent and set in the time of King Arthur.

Edited June 18, 2003 by Mnytime

[J Larsen]

This doesn't necessarily apply here, but does anyone else get tired of lit crit types interpreting anything longer than its width as a phallus?

[Guest Mnytime]

This doesn't necessarily apply here, but does anyone else get tired of lit crit types interpreting anything longer than its width as a phallus?

It seems while Psychologists and Psychiatrists are turning their back on Freud that Lit Critics seem to be even more influenced with every passing year. I think it has more to do with the Sexual problems of the Critics.

[Jazzmoose]

This doesn't necessarily apply here, but does anyone else get tired of lit crit types interpreting anything longer than its width as a phallus?

It seems while Psychologists and Psychiatrists are turning their back on Freud that Lit Critics seem to be even more influenced with every passing year. I think it has more to do with the Sexual problems of the Critics.

[Alexander]

The sexual nature of most fairy tales is far from explicit. In Little Red Riding Hood it is largely a matter of symbolism.

The Red Hood is read as a symbol of menstral blood and sexual maturity.

The woods are often a symbol for sexual confusion and danger.

The stranger that waylays a child, in this case a wolf, is a common trope in children's literature (think of the Witch in Hansel and Gretel).

The theme of devouring (the wolf eats grandma and then Red Riding Hood herself).

The theme of rebirth (the huntsman cuts open the wolf's stomach and brings Red Riding Hood and her grandmother through the opening).

The theme of the mature male who comes to the rescue (the huntsman).

Red Riding Hood is highly sexual, without ever showing any explicit sex.

And that's just one of the most obvious examples.

[jacman]

didn't Sigmund Freud once say, "Somethimes a cigar is just a cigar." ?

Edited June 19, 2003 by jacman

[Use3D]

Very interesting..

[connoisseur series500]

Actually, all stories and novels can be reduced to sexual interpretations if you approach it from that viewpoint. Lit. Crit people are useless drones. I know, I have a M.A. in Literature. Nothing but a waste of time.

[jacman]

Actually, all stories and novels can be reduced to sexual interpretations if you approach it from that viewpoint. Lit. Crit people are useless drones. I know, I have a M.A. in Literature. Nothing but a waste of time.

is the 'waste of time' the Lit Crit's analysis, or the M.A. in Literature?

J/K...i couldn't resist.