The Brothers Grimm were Prudes (and PR Geniuses)
If you picture Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm as two kindly old men wandering the Black Forest looking for magic, I have some bad news.
They were hardcore academics. They were librarians and linguists who cared more about German grammar than glass slippers. In fact, they didn’t set out to write a “children’s book” at all. Their original 1812 manuscript was a scholarly attempt to preserve German oral history.
It was also… intense.
In the original versions, Rapunzel got pregnant in the tower (Prince Charming wasn’t just climbing up for a chat), and it was Snow White’s biological mother who wanted to eat her liver with a side of salt.
The public was horrified. So, Wilhelm Grimm spent the next 40 years doing one of the greatest PR cleanup jobs in history. He realised that to sell books, he needed to make them “family friendly.” He cut the sex, dialled down the gore, and—most famously—invented the “Evil Stepmother.”
Why? Because in the 19th century, mothers were sacred. You couldn’t have a mom trying to kill her kid. But a stepmom? That was fair game.
So, the next time you read a fairy tale, remember: you aren’t reading the original folklore. You’re reading the sanitised, PG-rated version edited by a nervous librarian who just wanted to sell some books.
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