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Hansel and Gretel and that oven
Jun. 24th, 2008 09:52 am I've been thinking this morning about the oven in Hansel and Gretel.
It didn't start out being about the oven. I was reading some poetry by a famous poet I don't much care for and thinking about the background we bring to symbols, and the different experiences of childhood.
I remembered that my great grandmother was a premature baby, and that her grandmother would wrap her up and put her on the open door of the oven to keep her warm.
And suddenly I thought of Hansel and Gretel in a whole new light. Because there's something about that oven, isn't there? I mean, I'd understood that ditching one child (or more) because you couldn't afford to feed them was a not uncommon moment - I got that much out of Darnton's really excellent "The Great Cat Massacre" (which I can't recommend too highly - it is full of weird and tasty).
But I'd never thought about the symbol of the oven. There is something about that oven that always felt more tragic to me than it should. Whether it was historical in any way, today my mind kept thinking of premature babies kept warm in front of the oven, and urban-legend type anecdotes about cats accidentally shut in ovens etc. And I thought - maybe premature babies got kept warm on oven doors a lot of the time? And sometimes, well, horrible household accidents might occur.
In which case the fear of having your kid get baked in the oven might be as immediate as the fear of having to ditch one or more of your kids to be able to feed the rest.
Which is pretty horrible, but is making me think of Hansel and Gretel in a whole different light, with both the witch and the parents in the same story, the story of the big mistakes you make with kids when you don't know how to rear them, with the witch as a kind of caretaking grandmother who shuts the baby in the oven by accident and the parents hungry and starving and going out to work and maybe letting the kids wander off or maybe ditching them on purpose, but ... suddenly the whole story seemed much more immediate and horrible to me.
It didn't start out being about the oven. I was reading some poetry by a famous poet I don't much care for and thinking about the background we bring to symbols, and the different experiences of childhood.
I remembered that my great grandmother was a premature baby, and that her grandmother would wrap her up and put her on the open door of the oven to keep her warm.
And suddenly I thought of Hansel and Gretel in a whole new light. Because there's something about that oven, isn't there? I mean, I'd understood that ditching one child (or more) because you couldn't afford to feed them was a not uncommon moment - I got that much out of Darnton's really excellent "The Great Cat Massacre" (which I can't recommend too highly - it is full of weird and tasty).
But I'd never thought about the symbol of the oven. There is something about that oven that always felt more tragic to me than it should. Whether it was historical in any way, today my mind kept thinking of premature babies kept warm in front of the oven, and urban-legend type anecdotes about cats accidentally shut in ovens etc. And I thought - maybe premature babies got kept warm on oven doors a lot of the time? And sometimes, well, horrible household accidents might occur.
In which case the fear of having your kid get baked in the oven might be as immediate as the fear of having to ditch one or more of your kids to be able to feed the rest.
Which is pretty horrible, but is making me think of Hansel and Gretel in a whole different light, with both the witch and the parents in the same story, the story of the big mistakes you make with kids when you don't know how to rear them, with the witch as a kind of caretaking grandmother who shuts the baby in the oven by accident and the parents hungry and starving and going out to work and maybe letting the kids wander off or maybe ditching them on purpose, but ... suddenly the whole story seemed much more immediate and horrible to me.
