Gretel & Hansel's Family Origin Holds a Dark Yet Predictable Secret (2024)

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Gretel & Hansel's Family Origin Holds a Dark Yet Predictable Secret? ›

GRETEL'S DARK BLOODLINE

The true story of Hansel and Gretel may have its roots in the great flood and great famine of 1314. 1314 was a year of continuous rain and this continued throughout 1315 and 1316. The wet conditions resulted in crops rotting in the ground, harvests failing and livestock drowning or starving.

Hansel and Gretel's Dark Origin

Many of the elderly forewent food, choosing to starve to death to save the young people in their families and communities. Others chose to murder or abandon the mouths they couldn't feed, and cannibalism probably happened. So this fairy tale, like so many others, is rooted in truth.

They were actually very dark, violent allegories that scared children and adults alike. Take the cannibal witch from Hansel and Gretel. The trope of the evil old lady in a creepy hut in the woods lying in wait for victims is something we see often, even outside of the fairy tale genre.

However, as she looks down, her fingers turn black just like the witch's, which is a mark of evil in her veins. Gretel was warned all witches have this darkness inside them, it's a matter of who gives in; reminding us, again, of the debacle Rey faced with the Light and Dark sides of the Force.

As the poem's title would suggest, darkness is important here. It symbolizes the weight of Gretel's trauma and guilt, which envelop her "years" after the incident with the witch. Notice how the "witch's cry" comes through "the moonlight"—that is, at night.

There is a long tradition of tales in which children outwit the ogres who capture them. The horror of Hansel and Gretel being abandoned by their parents is thought to have roots in the Great Famine (1315-21) when poor families couldn't afford to keep their children.

The adaptation movie of Grimm Brothers' Hansel and Gretel (1812), Gretel & Hansel (2020), aimed to break the patriarchal ideologies in the source story focusing on the issue of the female main character, Gretel, being placed as the secondary gender compared to her male brother, Hansel.

The witch in Hansel and Gretel lives in a candy house. She uses this to lure the children inside and eventually eat them. She intends to eat Hansel, but she is unsuccessful. She is malicious and evil.

'Gretel in Darkness' was first published in The House on Marshland, Glück's 1975 collection. It uses the traditional story of “Hansel and Gretel” to explore loss, grief, fear, and trauma. In this particular poem, the poet depicts Gretel's horror at the memories of the witch she murdered to save her brother.

Are Hansel and Gretel a couple? ›

Hansel and Gretel are siblings who are abandoned in a forest and fall into the hands of a witch who lives in a bread, cake, and sugar house.

What Makes Her Pure Evil? She cannibalizes children by using her home, a gingerbread house, to lure them into it to be eaten, as well as masquerading as a kind old woman. Locked Hansel in a cage to be fattened up enough to be eaten. Made Gretel into her slave and gave her nothing but crab shells to eat.

That's because fairy tales were intended not just to entertain children, but also to educate them about the consequences of evil deeds [source: Evans].

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

The wine could be seen as condoning the use of alcohol. The wine was also the reason behind other challenges. Hansel and Gretel was challenged in CA in 1992 because it teaches children that it is acceptable to kill witches and paints witches as child-‐eating monsters.

Gretel & Hansel | 2020 | PG-13 | – 2.5.

The witch sticks her head into the oven to show Gretel, and Gretel shoves her inside and latches the door. The witch burns to death, and Gretel rescues Hansel. The children gather the witch's treasure, and set out for home.

'Gretel in Darkness' was first published in The House on Marshland, Glück's 1975 collection. It uses the traditional story of “Hansel and Gretel” to explore loss, grief, fear, and trauma. In this particular poem, the poet depicts Gretel's horror at the memories of the witch she murdered to save her brother.

She later goes to the woods surrounding the cabin where she sees the souls of the children the witch had killed and frees them. However, right after this, Gretel's fingers turn black, just like Holda's. The mark of evil tells Gretel her choice to use her powers solely for good may be harder than she expects.