When we start talking about fairy tales, a few questions always pop up. ĆOne of them is about the truth in fairy tales. Are they just made-up stories for kids or stories written and adapted after real people and real events? How much truth (by 'truth' we don't mean universal truth or moral or something similar but simply something that really happened) in these seemingly children's tales created to entertain and teach?

Was there a real Rapunzel or Snow White? How about Andersen's characters, especially if we consider his love to include autobiographical elements?

As usual, we will provide an answer with three examples.

The answer is simple - yes and no. The fairy tale genre evolved from love novels, where real folk and the environment was always mixed with the fantasy of the author and the expectations of the audience. This means everything real or already written could be included - starting with mythology. On the other hand, after fairy tales became popular and the questions about the truth started, historians and their amateur counterparts started exploring locations connected with specific tales or biographies of authors to find if there exists a similar story (and folk) in reality.

Here are three ways to find the truth in Little Red Riding Hood:

it can be seen as a metaphor for nature's cycles: the sun (could be portrayed in red color) is symbolically eaten by night (represented as a wolf) and is 'reborn' at the beginning of the next cycle (it may be a day, but even more as a year) just like Red Riding Hood is 'reborn' from wolf's stomach;

it is also an echo of several myths, among which the one about Persephone (Red Riding Hood), being kidnapped by Hades (the wolf), the king of the Underworld is saved by her mother (look at her in the role of the hunter or woodcutter) but not completely back in her own world (just like Red Riding Hood became a different person after learning a lesson in the fairy tale;

it should be also seen as a critical view of Charles Perrault's environment (he worked for Louis XIV) where older men (wolfs) constantly prayed after young naive girls (Red Riding Hood) which is further echoed in French phrase where the girl's lost of virginity is: elle avoit vu le loup or: she had seen the wolf.

There's also a project where more of the truth behind the fairy tales and popular stories is explored: https://truth-behind-the-stories.mozello.com/