The phrase ‘Once upon a time’ has the ubiquitous meaning as the opening to a fairy tale. A critical chunk of a child’s emotional and social growth, fairy tales and their respective conflicts are ones young readers can empathize with. By inviting the youth into the lives of fairy tale characters, these tales are a means through which children learn their morals, fears, and respective solutions through the conflicts, ones readers often dread facing themselves, and eventual victories of the protagonists. Subsequently, fairy tales educate young readers about their place on the societal ladder by elucidating the relationships between authority and child-heroes. With consideration of Freud’s psychoanalytic ideas of wish fulfillment and Bettelheim’s ideas on child psychology, and recognizing the evil mother role in “Little Snow White”and “Hansel and Gretel” by the Brothers Grimm through the Oedipal complex, repression and other Freudian concepts, these fairy tales articulate the wishes of the young characters and attempt to teach children on how to overcome the psychological problems of growing up.

In Grimm’s “Little Snow White”, the evil mother role is materialized into a stepparent. Acquainting the reader with an evil step parent allows the reader to deal with their fears and disappointments with their real parents in a less guilty fashion. The plot of this story flows due to Snow White’s stepmother’s jealousy of her stepdaughter’s beauty, where her adamance in trying to murder Snow White leads to her own death (Brothers Grimm). Noting that all of Snow White’s issues with her stepmother arise when her father remarries when she is seven, or in Freudian terms, in the phallic, and oedipal, stage of the five stages of psychosexuality, this jealousy is laced with oedipal complications (Freud 2228). Instead of being joyful that her daughter is growing into a beautiful woman, she sees Snow White as an opponent for her husband’s love and devotion (Bettelheim 195). However, it is the jealousy that readers can empathize with. Oftentime children jealous of the freedom their parent’s exemplify, or even jealous of the affection one parent receives from another. According to Bettleheim, the child copes with this jealousy by turning them into what they wish for where “the feeling of inferiority is defensively turned into a feeling of superiority” (Bettelheim 204). Children turn their jealousy of the parent into their wish of the parent being jealous of them. This competition between child and parent in reality is represented by the adversary of the evil stepmother in “Little Snow White”. With parents being the strongest authority in a child’s life, it is expected that children fear their total dependance on their parents if something were to happen to them.  It is the case where Snow White is forced to leave her home into the wilderness, but overcomes her hardships and even marries a handsome prince at the end, that this fairy tale teaches children to fear not, for it was the protagonist’s tenacity that aided them in surfacing triumphant at the end, and the source of evil was punished. By portraying how young protagonists are able to prove they are capable of not only living, but also winning, without their parents, readers are able to understand how to solve their fear of what would happen if they needed to stand on their own feet.
By analyzing the role of the evil mother in fairy tales, it is essential to expand the psychoanalysis into a feminist analysis of the conflicts between the individual and society in “Little Snow-White” . Where did this need for beauty arise? For a queen, someone as competent as the evil stepmother, it is strange that the only way she feels validation is through her beauty. Why is it that the weak Snow White is the one destined to marry a handsome prince, where the Queen is the one with the zeal to be the most desirable to men? It is the dual nature of the characters, the strong and the weak, the dominant and the submissive, at play. This duality is something that feminist authors Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar  explain as the “angel and the monster” (Gilbert and Gubar). Gilbert and Gubar explain how the angel is the one that contains the feminine traits of submission, where they exist for men’s pleasure. Where they do for others without questioning their own gain, living as a subordinate. The monster is the antithesis of the angel, who expresses her masculine traits of belligerence, selfishness and acting on desire (Gilbert and Gubar). This pressure to be beautiful is not only self made by the Queen- it is the pressure set in place by the society she lives in. Using this feminist approach, it is clear why Snow White is seen as more desirable than the Queen and attains the better of their two destinies. The patriarchy in this fairy tale serves to instruct readers on how genders played out in society. It serves as a means to educate the readers on how societal hierarchy behaves, and how the man versus society conflict plays out in the journey of the evil stepmother. The competition between parent and child mentioned above can be elaborated more by saying that it is the patriarchy in Snow White’s setting that exterminates the possibility of an affectionate relationship between the evil stepmother and Snow-White.

Another fairy tale where a cruel mother figure is introduced is Grimm’s “Hansel and Gretel”, where the fear of being abandoned by parents is more obviously exemplified. The story entails a family of four, impoverished to the point where the mother forces the father to leave the two children out in the woods to fend for themselves (Brothers Grimm). The plot of this fairy tale is also set into motion by an evil mother forcing the young to leave home for her own gain. The first time the father led them out into the woods, the children found their way back home. This is an example of the repression the children employ. Since this truth that their parents abandoned them in the woods to starve is too disturbing for Hansel and Gretel to bear, they repress this thought and venture back home and act as if nothing is wrong. Hansel and Gretel also act on their oral fixation multiple times due to the starvation they encountered throughout their early lives. According to Freud, if there is any disturbance in any of the five psychosexual stages, it can cause a perversion in their growth; an abnormality in a child’s oral cravings during their oral stage will lead to an oral fixation down the line (Freud 2231). Hansels leaves bread crumbs on the way from home to form a path for him and his sister to follow back. (Brothers Grimm). This is a blind thought formed by his incomplete oral stage. To any other person, it would be irrational to rely on a path of bread crumbs in the woods where there are birds and animals readily available to eat them. However, Hansel is blinded by his need to satisfy his oral fixation, so the dropping of bread crumbs is the only way he thinks of. This long awaited oral satisfaction blinds them to even more danger, where they gnaw on the witch’s candy house despite hearing the witch calling out for them (Brothers Grimm). The cognizance that there may be danger awaiting them in the house  is not enough to scare Hansel and Gretel from meeting their oral needs, so they continue eating the house, and it is this rapacity that is the beginning of their conflict with the witch.

“Hansel and Gretel” is a fairy tale that informs readers on morals and the reader’s position in society relative to their parents. The social gap between children and adults is huge. The readers know this very clearly, seeing the many freedoms adults receive that they don’t. This societal ladder is something that can oftentime frustrate a child, and the child may displace the frustration with the hierarchy onto the parent. This, along with the fear of total dependance, is what urges readers to yearn for independence, and this desire allows readers to empathize with protagonist conflicts of abandonment. Hansel and Gretel show that nothing is set in stone- those who are in poverty one day can be in riches the next. They show that through diligence, no matter their social class or situation, they can change their destinies, as proven when they defeat the witch and return home with wealth. Whether faced with the abandonment of their parents or a child-eating witch, they won their battles. The fairy tale also educates readers that evil will not prevail, and that the parents that act on their jealousy and resentment of their kids are punished, shown by Snow White’s evil stepmother’s and Hansel and Gretel’s evil mother’s deaths. It is these morals in not only “Hansel and Gretel”, but in many fairy tales that instruct young readers on society’s morals and their places in society.

Using both Freud’s theories on psychoanalysis, Bruno Bettelheim’s theories on child psychology, and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s theories on feminism, identifying the evil mother role in both “Little Snow-White” and “Hansel and Gretel” enlightens young readers on the wishes and conflicts of the protagonists, and in effect teaches the readers about their own  fears, morals, and their place in society. In the instance that a child fear their independence due to only knowing how to live life with dependance on their parents, they find comfort in reading fantasies on children in still worse condition, not only subsisting, but winning their battles. Analyzing the Freudian concepts in both fairy tales further elaborates the meaning behind how characters behave, and what impact such behavior has on the young heroes. Snow White and Hansel and Gretel are thrown into calamity, but come out better than before in the end. Fairy tales, not only used as a way to deal with a childhood fears, also educate the readers on what morals are and what social norms exist. Themes on how evil will be punished, social mobility, and patriarchy are few of many aspects of these fairy tales that introduce readers to their places in society. These tales are more than sweet chantings for bedtime- they each have a level of wisdom and discernity, and understanding the role of the evil mother in the psychological growth of the children is profoundly important to understanding the psychological growth of the readers.