On Fairy Stories and Environment: two missing commandments arise in the father/ children family story

                              On
Fairy
Stories and Environment

                                             Julio Enrique Correa 

Dr. Julio Enrique Correa M.P. 40.353 Médico Psicoterapeuta. Terapia Familiar

Dirección : Pacheco de Melo 2949 2º"D"    (1425) Buenos Aires Argentina TE.: (54 11) 4-8025950

e-mail: jecorrea@retina.ar <mailto:jezhivago@yahoo.com.ar>

Into the Woods is a 2014 film, with Meryl Streep and Johnny Depp amongst other actors, directed by Rob Marshall, and adapted to the screen by James Lapine from his and Stephen Sondheim's Tony Award-winning Broadway musical of the same name^{[Burlingame, 2015]}. It features the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales characters ("Little Red Riding Hood", "Cinderella", "Jack and the Beanstalk", “The childless baker”, "Rapunzel") interacting in a genre crossover that centers in the correction of their individual archetypal behaviors^{[Kit, Siegel, 2013]}, into group articulated behaviors. The melting pot for such transforming bricollage is the forest, the woods, offering an appropriate “fairy-story” stage for the adventures of men in the Perilous Realm or upon its shadowy marches ^{[Tolkien, J.R.R.]}. Such environment would come to express ancient limitations from which fairy-stories offer a sort of guidance to follow:  ^“Our fates are sundered, and our paths seldom meet. Even upon the borders of Faërie we encounter them only at some chance crossing of the ways” ^{[Tolkien, J.R.R.]}. According to W.G.Sebald, there are many forms of writing, but only literature can undertake an attempt to restitution. “Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark”, recited Dante Allighieri - From The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri:

                                                             Inferno, Canto I

                                              Dante Alighieri, 1265 - 1321

Midway upon the journey of our life

  I found myself within a forest dark,

  For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say

  What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,

  Which in the very thought renews the fear.

So bitter is it, death is little more;

  But of the good to treat, which there I found,

  Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

I cannot well repeat how there I entered,

  So full was I of slumber at the moment

  In which I had abandoned the true way.

But after I had reached a mountain’s foot,

  At that point where the valley terminated,

  Which had with consternation pierced my heart,

Upward I looked, and I beheld its shoulders,

  Vested already with that planet’s rays

  Which leadeth others right by every road.

Then was the fear a little quieted

  That in my heart’s lake had endured throughout

  The night, which I had passed so piteously.

And even as he, who, with distressful breath,

  Forth issued from the sea upon the shore,

  Turns to the water perilous and gazes;

So did my soul, that still was fleeing onward,

  Turn itself back to re-behold the pass

  Which never yet a living person left.

After my weary body I had rested,

  The way resumed I on the desert slope,

  So that the firm foot ever was the lower.

And lo! almost where the ascent began,

  A panther light and swift exceedingly,

  Which with a spotted skin was covered o’er!

And never moved she from before my face,

  Nay, rather did impede so much my way,

  That many times I to return had turned.

The time was the beginning of the morning,

  And up the sun was mounting with those stars

  That with him were, what time the Love Divine

In this occasion the poet is not alone and meets other poets singing different verses accounting to their respective tasks. As in William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night's Dream” play, various interconnecting plots unroll, connected in between by a celebration of the wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and the Amazon queen, Hippolyta, which is set simultaneously in the woodland and in the realm of Fairyland, under the light of the moon. “Into the woods” fairy land is located in the woods in close relation to a Swamp eco region, which naturally holds a big number of species of plants and animals. Poetry and drama evolve through the magic of fairies, elves and artists that connect to the lovers as if were inspired by the Greek names and their myths and philosophy. Here so, the swamp banishes the witch and her magic, attempting to preserve Rapunzel from contamination with the other character stories. Therefore Fairy
Stories creativity seems to align with Environmental creativity...

Although fairy tales refer to supernatural events, those are always related to common events in nature. The village in the story is itself located at the edge of the woods. Protagonists celebrate “more than life/ more than jewels” as these would turn equivalents in the poetic realm, all of them are directly (Birds in Cinderella) or indirectly (Cow in Jack and the beanstalk, Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood) helped by animals and hopefully sheltered by trees. . Flocks of “little birds, from leaves and eaves, over fields, out of castles and ponds”, “the woods are just trees, the trees are just wood, into the woods and down the dell, the path is straight, I know it well”, an oak tree for Little Red Riding Hood’s granny’s home. The witch makes her “potion” cooking all together, characters’ animals (“a cow as white as milk”), body or spirit (“a cape as red as blood”), plants (“the hair as yellow as corn”) and metals (slippery as pure as gold”), respectively related to harvest/ alchemy mythologies. Poetic language nurtures fairy tales storytelling searching to re-discover meanings enclosed in their messages (see excerpt Correa, 2006a).

             The archetypal patterns express in a concrete way the main images and symbols (...) constituting a man’s resource for self and world’s understanding, providing different ways of understanding by bridging different cultures in the collective as in the personal worlds. The Grimm brothers hinted the difference in between the saga (historical) and the fairy tale (poetical): “Das marchen poetischer, die daga hystoricher”. Supernatural highlights in the former, not in the saga where it appears as a confrontation of man with nature. Collaboration of a grateful animal or the talking bird exerting magical power is a universal theme associated to the Paradise myth; inter-communication powers are evident in the animals helping humans, providing a paradisiacal status (Cooper, 1983). In turn, the folklore story hasn’t a happy ending. As for the structural story type, “Into the woods” constitutes a contemporary version of fairy tales that corresponds to children stories conventionally holding a moral at the end of the story, as i.e. Charles Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood” does (Cooper, 1983).

Moral: Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say "wolf," but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.           

As result of the interaction amongst group members that is provided by the group recreational setting for storytelling (see excerpt Correa & Hobbs, 2007), the story reaches a new way of meaning comprehension “You brought us to light” says Little Red Riding Hood to the baker, while in between him and his wife starts recognition about the powers of association: “You’ve changed. You’re thriving. There’s something about the woods. You’re daring. You’re different in the woods. Be sure, more sharing. You are not the man that started. And much more open hearted that I knew you to be.   It takes two of us. It takes patience and fear and despair to change. You’re changed. Not just surviving. You’re blossoming in the woods. At home I’d feared we’d stay the same forever. I’m becoming ... Each accepting a share”. The moral at the end attends such connectedness amongst father and children, as an evolution from the initial witch commandment “Children must listen. This world is dark and wild”, supporting over involvement and enmeshment in the parent’s / child bond (see excerpt Correa, 2006b), attempting to maintain a lost early mother type bond, from which the father is deserted.

 

The witch: “What did I clearly say? Children must listen. What were you not to do. Children must see and learn. Why could you not obey? Children should listen. What I have been to you? What would you have me be? Handsome like a prince? But I am old and I am ugly. I embarrass you. You are ashamed of me. You are ashamed. You don’t understand”.

Rapunzel: “I am not longer a child. I wish to see the world”.

W: “Don’t you know what’s out there in the world? Someone has to shield you from the world. Stay with me. Stay at home. Who out there could love you more than I? What out there that I cannot supply? Stay with me. The world is dark and wild. Stay a child. While you could be a child with me”.

 

While in the woods, the baker’s wife  BF becomes involved with the prince in a confusing episode: “What I am doing here? I’m in a wrong story”. [Prince: “Right and wrong don’t matter in the woods. Only feelings”.  BF: “Was it wrong? Am I mad?”].

After she disappears by the ogre woman steps, her husband B decides to desert from his children:  “I depended on my wife for everything. She was the one who helped”. Cinderella: “Would you leave the child?” [B: “”He’ll be happier in the arms of a princess”. But soon afterwards when he finds his own father in the woods, he recalls he also deserted him when he was a child, explaining he did it so because he hated himself and run away from his guilt and his shame, when in turn his own wife died: “Be better than me”, “Do better”, moving the baker to return to fetch his own son: “People make mistakes. Fathers. Mothers. Holding to their own. Thinking they’re alone.// Someone is in your side. Someone else is not. You´re not alone. No one is alone”. Then, after the giant woman gets killed as the very tall tree falls down (any deforestation alarm allusion coming?), the children ask the baker to move together whereas “just calm the child. Tell him stories. Be father and mother. You’ll know what to do”. Hence, the father starts telling his story: “Once upon a time, in a far off kingdom there lay a small village at the edge of the woods. Careful the things you say. Children will listen. Careful the things you do. Children will see and learn. Guide them along the way. Children will listen.  Children will look to you for which way to turn, to learn what to be. Careful before you say: Listen to me. Children will listen. Careful the wish you make, wishes are children. Careful the path they take, wishes come true. Not free. Careful the spell you cast, not just for children. .... Sometimes the spell may last past what you can see and turn against you. Careful the tale you tell, that is the spell children will listen…” 

 

At last two missing commandments arise in the father/ children family story as a moral at the end of this film story, enlightening transcendent two tasks taking the woods as metaphor for both: 1) Do not abandon/ neglect the children; 2) Do not abandon/ neglect nature, the environment. The first commandment attempts to repair contemporary children bonds with their missing parents by securing the father to fulfil both father/ mother roles instead to leave them forsaken and completely alone, wether the second commandment seems more a punishment coming from loss of mothers (from all characters), together with the castration of mother nature (the chop of the tall "giant" tree as logging); no fairies nor elves will now preserve nature or environment from witches threat of earth condemnation to the denial of helplesness:

"Careful the spell you cast, not just for children. .... Sometimes the spell may last past what you can see and turn against you”.

________________________________________________________________________________

Excerpts

 

Correa, 2006a “A narrativa poética: a recriação e interação pela concordância", Revista ACB: Biblioteconomia (Florianópolis, Brasil), v11, n. 2: 333-343 [http://www.acbsc.org.br/revista/ojs],

Poetic narrative: a multicultural vision. Poetic language may simulate a dance with ability to merge together linguistic and body expressive means and resources, a permanent language motion through rhythm and sound searching to re-discover meanings enclosed in their messages. In order to explore such a statement it is shown the concordance interplay: 1) between the Portuguese and Italian versions from a poem written by Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi: “The infinite”, 2) in the poetic dialogue made by the movement narrative depicted by dancers when devoting to create a choreography based on a story about a journey through South America, and the storyteller message built up during the dance rehearsal of the choreography work. The role of poetic narrative is discussed concerning esthetic education leading to the social construction of reality along to its expression in democracy.

 

Correa & Hobbs, 2007 “Storytelling to the group and group recreation of the story/ Narration du contes au groupe et recréation du conte pour le groupe”, Interfaces Brasil/ Canadá, 7: 109-135.

This paper describes the process of story-telling and group story recreation, that developed in a workshop which applied storytelling to group bereavement issues within a small multicultural group context. The original trigger story that was told to the group, was selected for working the mourning subject and was studied in comparison to the elicited recreated group stories and to a renown novel which was selected because of its relevance to the matter [“L’Étranger”, A.Camus]. Structural analysis showed self-centered characters in the authors’ narrative, whereas the group recreation of the story transformed the original plot based on a lonely protagonist’s fate into a new one where characters need to share their losses with others. This was simultaneous to the forging of a significant “fraternal” kind of communicative style between participants, focused on sharing their experiences of loss. At the final stage, participants retold personal stories on the grounds of overt expression of feelings, emotions and thoughts as well as critical comments that are not usual to observe in recent acquaintances. Such a group dynamics is discussed in the framework of narrative spaces: storytelling roles for every group member seems crucial for dealing with mourning themes as well as to practise the “right of speech”, that families and social groups currently endow with different priorities to the groups’ members, languages and cultures.

 

Correa, 2006b “Communication through stories to promote differentiation of enmeshed family groups”, Human Systems: The Journal of Systemic Consultation & Management [U.K.], Volume 17, 67-80.

This paper addresses an original approach to family therapy employing metaphoric language of storytelling and story creation in parent/ child communication, as a means of encouraging children’s learning of autonomous behavior in families with insulin dependent diabetic children that failed in the learning of diabetes self care. Family groups attending medical diabetes care meetings were invited to participate in two different narrative treatment schemes: 1) a four family interview therapy schedule [Ft] using storytelling and 2) a multiple family bibliotherapeutic program based on storytelling workshops. Only two families attending these meetings fulfilled the FT schedule, one of them attending a workshop of the latter program. Three years later mothers reported sustained changes in children’s learning of diabetic control. these issues are discussed in the framework of a possible role of narrative therapy in shaping family communication by establishing narrative spaces for every family member, together to help them in the sharing of grief by selecting mourning themes in the stories. storytelling used in Family therapy seems legitimised as a relevant method for designing new relational structures in enmeshed families, enhancing learning skills in the family process of adaptation to serious illness.

Specific therapeutic interventions with stories were designed to shape the structure of the family: 1) settling boundaries by promoting new conversational settings between members, in which learned or self created stories could be further listened by parents in the family session or observed under the therapist’s guidance at the one way mirror room; 2) displacing the family members’ relations to the stories’ metaphoric structure -as i.e.: to children’s created or recreated stories or to comments and interactions on storytelling performances-, or else permitting parents and children to argue or to be confronted by the therapist on the storytelling roles instead of directly on their parental disfunction-. We had previously claimed that in telling stories to the family, “children build up their own imaginary space that has to be respected by parents and children”; and this relates to develop their autonomy and development of symbolic thought in order to learn new behaviors (Correa, González & Weber, 1991). By telling, creating and recreating stories, children may find a way to decentralize from an enmeshed relation with a parent, replacing it with an imaginary one that becomes a “companion” in the learning process. This scope supports narrative tasks to be given to children in order to build up a separated environment for the child’s creativity with the story. Furthermore by opening up new narrative channels among members (Bowen, 1991),

differentiation is promoted also in parents helping them to enlighten their orientation and guidance

roles (Correa, Gonzalez and Weber, 1991). In order to achieve differentiation for both members

of the dyad with high emotional fusion, it is necessary to consider that if over-involved children

are to detach, parents also need a gain for achieving a successful disengagement. B. Bettelheim

(1988) quoted T.S. Elliot’s advice to parents to use children’s nightmares as an opportunity to

explore their own, which would benefit both. Accomplishing a common positive emotional

experience has, therefore, a two-fold effect, and Bettelheim claims the same for story reading

by parents: through it, the latter could get better understanding of their own childhood, while

children might find a way of communicating with parents as well as sharing with them (Shrank,

1979). In this paper the aim of creating an enriched setting for emotional interaction would meet

those mother’s needs of sharing with their children actual emotional experiences that they didn’t

have an opportunity to practice with their own mothers. Bowen (1989) states that ‘developing

person-to-person relations is a first step in differentiating from the parental family’. He proposed

to tell the “secret family stories” to the involved relatives and to ask recollections of past events

with the families of origin as opportunities for starting it. We claim these same features make storytelling suitable for helping families under bereavement. Storytelling indeed is a cultural habit of recalling past events or ancient social and family myths, that survive under different group storytelling settings following a “family narrative model” that nurtures from a close and differentiated relationship between individuals -which could be properly characterized as inter-personal- and maintains an intimate environment for sharing conversations with deep emotional content amongst the family members at the same time that promote individuation/ differentiation in each of them. When families and other social groups undergo bereavement experiences are challenged to recreate their stories about loss (Correa, 1993a; Correa & Hobbs, 2007), that otherwise will remain the same. Inability to cope with loss and disease as well as belated mourning processes indeed are family patterns “transmitted” from parents to children (Paul & Grosser, 1965). M. Selvini Palazzoli et al (1982) described a clinic case where a child displayed psychotic symptoms in order to replace his grandfather’s interaction with his daughter after his death. Bowen (1980) mentions among several examples the very intense emotional relationship between the mother and her schizophrenic child, whose birth happened a short time after the mother’s mother death. The child’s symptoms may then play a substitute for a lost family member, helping parents to avoid accomplishing difficult separation tasks from their families of origin. In the present study the two diabetic girls showed how to replace an intense and lost bond of the over-involved mothers with their own parents. Therefore vulnerability to separation stemmed from the same difficulty the latter had with their own parents, being detoured through intensive control of the child’s illness and treatment. Children responded with a similar behavioural pattern to parents’ vulnerability, fearing their own parents’ loss. If this is so, replacing an absent family member with another one, would aim not only to cope with loss (Paul & Grosser, 1965, Simon, Stierlin & Wynne, 1988), but to continue to be linked to the family of origin. In this experience we selected specific stories for parting experiences to be used with families dealing with unresolved longstanding grief. Also we built a bibliotherapeutic multiple family format with substitute grannies that may be seen a replicate of a natural family pathway to help children in their process of differentiating from parents, supporting a deep person to person relation with the former. Moreover mothers attending such workshops find on storyteller grandparents substitutes to play a function with their children their parents couldn’t play (Correa, u.p.). Maintaining and recreating in memory specially made stories with a therapeutic objective –as literature specially selected or made for coping with separation and loss in the therapeutic aid of mourning (Bernstein, 1988; Gersie, 1991; Correa, 1992), as well as folk stories (Hagglund, 1976)-, may help those under bereavement to cope with desertion, creating an intimate sense of protection or everlasting closeness (Correa, Lema, de Artiagoitia et al., 1979; Correa & Vazquez, 1982).We had proposed a psychotherapeutic model for treating both the terminal patient in the dying process and his/ her family group, supporting the use of storytelling and body contact techniques as based on the natural learning of detachment in the early mother-child bond (Correa, 2006), hence providing relief from fears of unfavorable outcome and death (Correa, 1993b). Helping children to speak with their own family through literary imagination -whose narrative structure mirrors the storyteller (Correa, 1982) or the story writer (Correa, u.p.)-, at the same time that encouraging parents to understand children through their own storytelling and play languages, may prove a path for children and parents to respectively develop and respect such

narrative spaces. This family narrative model helps family groups to differentiate and find their

own responses to difficult human situations as the ones of grief, by establishing and sharing

narrative spaces for dealing with mourning themes and empowering every family constituent

members to find storytelling roles in order to differently express the telling of their own stories.

 

References

Alighieri, Dante. “The Divine Comedy”, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Burlingame, Jon (November 4, 2014). "Rob Marshall Boldly Explores Disney’s Take on Twisted Tale ‘Into the Woods’". Variety (Variety Media, LLC). Retrieved January 7, 2015. [From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

Cooper, J.C.; “Fairy Tales. Allegories of the inner life”, The aquarian press (1983) –Spanish version “Cuentos de hadas. Alegorías de los munos internos”, Barcelona: Editorial Sirio (1986).

Correa, J.E., “A narrativa poética: a recriação e interação pela concordância", Revista ACB: Biblioteconomia (Florianópolis, Brasil), v11, n. 2: 333-343 [http://www.acbsc.org.br/revista/ojs], 2006a.

Correa, J.E., “Communication through stories to promote differentiation of enmeshed family groups”, Human Systems: The Journal of Systemic Consultation & Management [U.K.], Volume 17, 67-80, 2006b.

Correa, J.E. & Hobbs, N., “Storytelling to the group and group recreation of the story/ Narration du contes au groupe et recréation du conte pour le groupe”, Interfaces Brasil/ Canadá, 7: 109-135, 2007.

Kit, Borys; Tatiana Siegel (May 14, 2013). "Chris Pine, Jake Gyllenhaal Circling Musical 'Into the Woods' (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved September 5, 2013 [From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

Kuffer, Paula -Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona-, “Representación, melancolía y resistencia: el materialismo espectral de W.G. Sebald”, *Boletín de Estética Nº 30 *(Verano 2014-2015), Programa de Estudios en Filosofía del Arte del Centro de Investigaciones Filosóficas, Buenos Aires

http://www.boletindeestetica.com.ar/

Perrault, Charles. “Little Red Riding Hood”

Tolkien, J.R.R.:”On Fairy Stories”. [From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

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REFERENCES from excerpt Correa, 2006b “Communication through stories to promote differentiation of enmeshed family groups”, Human Systems: The Journal of Systemic Consultation & Management [U.K.], Volume 17, 67-80.

Bernstein, J.E. (1988), Books to help children cope with separation and Loss, New York:

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Bettelheim, B. (1988), A good enough parent, New York: Vintage Books

Bowen, M. (1980), Esquizofrenia y familia, in D. Jackson, Etiologia de la esquizofrenia, Buenos

Aires: Amorrortu (The Etiology.of Schizophrenia, N.York: Basic Books, 1960).

Bowen, M. (1989), ”Sobre la diferenciación del self”, in M. Bowen, La terapia familiar en la

práctica clínica, Bilbao: Biblioteca de Psicologia Désclée de Brouwer, Vol. 2: 185- 242.

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Into the Woods [From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

Direction	Rob Marshall
Production	Rob Marshall John DeLuca Marc Platt Callum McDougall
Script	James Lapine
Based in	Into the Woods by James Lapine y Stephen Sondheim
Music	Stephen Sondheim
Photography	Dion Beebe
Year	2014