What is a Fairy Tale, anyway?

What is a Fairy tale? What defines a Fairy tale? The short, concise answer is: No one can decide. 

As human beings, we feel the need to catalog and categorize everything, to sit in a room and label things. The truth is, things exist the way they do, and they don’t fit into the groups we have picked for them as nicely as we would like, so we are stuck with deciding which group they fit into better, as though that affects the object itself. People marvel at the fact that a platypus is a mammal that lays eggs, but a platypus has always been a platypus, doing what a platypus is created to do. We, as humans, felt the need to create definitions and groups. The platypus happens to be an animal that fits multiple definitions of what humans created.

The Fairy Tale is the same way. No one seems to be able to come up with a concrete definition, and if they do, there is someone else who has come up with a concrete definition that completely counteracts the first definition.  The Fairy Tale overlaps with oral storytelling and folk stories, so where does one begin and the other end? The result is that almost every story not grounded completely in reality can be considered a Fairy Tale in one school of thought or another. There are the iconic Fairy Tales, such as Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and Tom Thumb. Others that some consider to be Fairy Tales are The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, the works of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, Star Wars, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  I do not agree with what some consider to be Fairy Tales, but I also have a hard time coming up with a simple, clear definition.

Below is a tiny smattering of a few peoples’ thoughts on the definition of a Fairy Tale. Please do not hesitate to post or comment if you have any additional research on the topic or wish to share your personal definition.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a “Fairy Tale” as:

1:             a: a story (as for children) involving fantastic forces and beings (as fairies, wizards,  

                    and goblins) —called also fairy story

    b: a story in which improbable events lead to a happy ending

            2:                a made-up story usually designed to mislead

There are multiple things wrong with this definition. First of all, Fairy Tales were originally for adults as well as children. Some fairy tales do not involve the fantastic or the supernatural, such as The Emperor’s New Suit, by Hans Christian Anderson.  Some Fairy Tales do not have happy endings.  (See the original The Little Mermaid.) Also, I do not believe the word “mislead” is appropriate, as Fairy Tales are often cautionary tales to warn others of the dangers of the world around them, and stress the importance of the choices that they make. The end result is to lead others to the safe and right path. However, as the story itself treats the unreal as real, it fits the word “mislead” at the end of the day.

One of the people to sit down and define fairy tales in the recent past is Jens Tismar of Germany. In 1977, he wrote a piece which outlined four requirements for a story to be considered a fairy tale. In brief summary: The story must be written down by an “identifiable author” (this includes Oral Folk Stories previously not documented), they must be more complex than Folk Tales, which are simpler (according to Tismar), written Fairy Tales and Folk Tales are separate but equal, and (last but not least) Literary Fairy Tales and Oral Tales must be studied in the context of their relationship.

Many do not have a firm outline of what is and is not a Fairy Tale. Heidi Anne Heiner, researcher and former librarian, who holds a Masters in Information Science, describes what makes a Fairy Tale on her website, www.surlalunefairytales.com: “…fairy tales do not have to be stories about fairies…fairy tales are part of folklore, but folk tales are not necessarily fairy tales. The simplest way to explain this is to think of fairy tales as a subgenre of folklore along with myths and legends. If that is enough to answer your questions, stop here. It is as simple as this exercise is going to get.”

I’ve always thought of a Fairy Tale as having a certain feel, where one intuitively “knows” that they are reading/hearing/seeing a Fairy Tale. J.R.R. Tolkien describes Fairy Tales in a similar manner. “The definition of a fairy-story…does not, then, depend on any definition or historical account of elf or fairy, but upon the nature of Faërie…Faërie  cannot be caught in a net of words; for it is one of its qualities to be indescribable, though not imperceptible…For the moment I will say only this: a "fairy-story" is one which touches on or uses Faërie...Faërie itself may perhaps most nearly be translated by Magic - but it is magic of a peculiar mood and power, at the furthest pole from the vulgar devices of the laborious, scientific, magician…if there is any satire present in the tale, one thing must not be made fun of, the magic itself. That must in that story be taken seriously, neither laughed at nor explained away." (From the book On Fairy Stories.)

That seems like a good note to end on. Once again, I realize that this is an incredibly brief and shallow piece of writing on an expansive and bottomless topic. Please let me know if you have anything to add by posting a comment.

Next, let's dive into our first tale, The Robber Bridegroom!