To my mind, this advice by Sandhya Raghavan on ‘6 famous fairy tales you should never let your child read‘ seems like parody; these readings, if serious, are reductive, mechanistic, and unimaginative. Yet the alleged harmful effects of fairy tales have been discussed, by both conservatives and progressives, going back at least to the eighteenth-century.
In fact, fiction itself has always come under suspicion, but that which partakes of the irrational and anti-realist particularly, as does that intended for children (perhaps understandably). But the explicit lawlessness, violence, and sexuality of the unexpurgated fairy tale attracts more attention than most other genres (which is why fairy tales become expurgated–or rewritten–in the first place).
Today, they are more likely to offend liberal mores, or, as with Disney’s sweetened versions, come under attack precisely because of that expurgation. It’s an interesting topic, one which raises ideas about autonomy and the interpretive freedom of the reader; I leave it here for discussion.
