Hansel and Gretel in the First Paragraph,

Hansel and Gretel

In the first paragraph, Bruno Bettleheim discusses the very real predicament of a man and woman without money who have little children to care for and little mouths to feed. He states, "Even on this surface level, the folk fairy tale conveys an important, although unpleasant, truth: poverty and deprivation do improve man's character, but rather make him more selfish, less sensitive to the sufferings of others, and thus prone to embark on evil deeds" (273). When one is need, the instinct is to feel concern more for oneself than others, even if those others include your children or other relatives. Though parents are supposed to have a protective instinct towards their children, this instinct can be limited when the extermination of the self is imminent.

Children are complex psychological creatures. In "Hansel and Gretel," the children begin the story in a crisis. They are cognizant that their parents are plotting ways to be rid of them. Until this time of trauma, the parents had been fully able to provide for their children. It is only in recent times that things have become dire. With this turmoil in the household, the children pick up on the tension and assume the worst scenario possible, in this case that the parents will starve the children (273). Bettleheim says the mother is more culpable in the child's feelings of abandonment. The child is aggravated "when Mother is no longer willing to meet all his oral demands which leads him to believe that suddenly Mother has become unloving, selfish, rejecting" (273). It is then incumbent on the child to determine their destiny and assume the identity that parent has shirked.

In taking on this role or responsibility, Hansel and Gretel effectively assume the identities of their parents. They go from being the victims of a starving authority to becoming the perpetrators when they start eating the gingerbread house. Bettleheim states that the gingerbread house is evocative of the children's mother and by consuming it, they are consuming mother (275). The eating of the house satisfies the children's oral fixations. Since they are children, they lack the ability to control their urges and do not stop when they are full.

If the house is the childs' desire to destroy, then the witch then embodies the "destructive aspects of orality" (275). Satisfying oral obsessions to the point beyond fullness is destructive as is giving in to any desire past the point of satisfaction. Bettleheim argues that the true moral of the fairy tale is that there is a major difference between discussion of satisfying impulses and the actuality thereof. Indeed "dealing in symbols is safe when compared with acting on the real thing" (276). It is only when faced with the witch's true desires, that is to say eating them, that they are able to differentiate between true mother and false and see the dangerous implications of their own actions.