Then she shook Gretel and cried, "Get up, lazybones! Fetch water. Go into the kitchen and cook something to eat. Your brother is locked in that stall there. I want to fatten him up, and when he is fat I am going to eat him. For now, you have to feed him. Fetch water and cook something good for your brother. He is locked outside in the stall and is to be fattened up. When he is fat I am going to eat him. Gretel began to cry, but it was all for nothing.
She had to do what the witch demanded. Now Hansel was given the best things to eat every day, so he would get fat, but Gretel received nothing but crayfish shells. Now Hansel was given the best things to eat every day, but Gretel received nothing but crayfish shells. Every day the old woman came and said, "Hansel, stick out your finger, so I can feel if you are fat enough yet. But Hansel stuck out a little bone, and the old woman, who had bad eyes and could not see the bone, thought it was Hansel's finger, and she wondered why he didn't get fat.
After four weeks, one evening she said to Gretel, "Hurry up and fetch some water. Whether your brother is fat enough now or not, tomorrow I am going to slaughter him and boil him. In the meantime I want to start the dough that we will bake to go with him. Whether Hansel is fat or thin, tomorrow I am going to slaughter him and boil him. Oh, how the poor little sister sobbed as she was forced to carry the water, and how the tears streamed down her cheeks!
The next morning Gretel had to get up early, hang up the kettle with water, and make a fire. And when Gretel came, she said, "Look inside and see if the bread is nicely brown and done, for my eyes are weak, and I can't see that far. If you can't see that far either, then sit on the board, and I'll push you inside, then you can walk around inside and take a look.
That is what the wicked witch was thinking, and that is why she called Gretel. And when Gretel was inside, she intended to close the oven, and bake her, and eat her as well. However, God let Gretel know this, so she said, "I don't know how to do that. First show me. You sit on the board, and I will push you inside. How can I get inside? See, I myself could get in. Then Gretel gave her a shove, causing her to fall in.
Then she closed the iron door and secured it with a bar. The old woman in the hot oven began to cry and to wail, but Gretel ran away, and the old woman burned up miserably. The old woman began to howl frightfully. But Gretel ran away, and the godless witch burned up miserably. Gretel ran to Hansel and unlocked his door. Gretel ran straight to Hansel, unlocked his stall, and cried, "Hansel, we are saved.
The old witch is dead. Then Hansel jumped out, like a bird from its cage when someone opens its door. How happy they were! They threw their arms around each other's necks, jumped with joy, and kissed one another.
The whole house was filled with precious stones and pearls. Because they now had nothing to fear, they went into the witch's house. In every corner were chests of pearls and precious stones. They filled their pockets, then ran away and found their way back home. Gretel said, "I will take some home with me as well," and she filled her apron full.
If I ask it, it will help us across. Then she called out: Duckling, duckling, Here stand Gretel and Hansel. Neither a walkway nor a bridge, Take us onto your white back. The duckling came up to them, and Hansel climbed onto it, then asked his little sister to sit down next to him.
It should take us across one at a time. That is what the good animal did, and when they were safely on the other side, and had walked on a little while, the woods grew more and more familiar to them, and finally they saw the father's house in the distance. They began to run, rushed inside, and threw their arms around the father's neck. The father rejoiced when he saw them once more, for he had not had a happy day since they had been gone, and now he was a rich man.
However, the mother had died. The man had not had even one happy hour since he had left the children in the woods. However, the woman had died. Gretel shook out her apron, scattering pearls and precious stones around the room, and Hansel added to them by throwing one handful after the other from his pockets. Now all their cares were at an end, and they lived happily together. And whoever catches it can make for himself from it a large, large fur cap.
The Grimms' specific source is unclear. Wilhelm Grimm married Dortchen Wild in The episode of burning the witch in her own oven is classified as type Summary of the differences between the Grimms' versions of and Wilhelm Grimm was the principal editor of the Children's and Household Tales following their inititial publication. The most significant changes were made already in the second edition , although Wilhelm continued to revise the stories until their final edition When the stepmother tries the same plan again , Hansel tries the same trick with breadcrumbs — but it doesn't work because birds exist.
Starving to death in the forest, they come across a house made entirely out of delicious cakes and sweets. The siblings get to eating, but it's a trap set by a child-eating witch. She captures them and forces Gretel to help her fatten Hansel up for the slaughter. But it's Gretel's turn to think quick, and she manages to shove the witch in the oven before the witch shoves them in it.
The witch burns to death and the children steal all of her money. They make their way home, with the help of the biggest duck in Germany, where their stepmother has died and their father welcomes them home to live happily ever after. According to the brothers, the story comes from Hesse, the region in Germany in which they lived. A marginal note found in the brothers' copy of the first edition of the first volume indicates that Wilhelm's wife, Henriette Dorothea Wild, contributed to their adaptation of "Hansel and Gretel.
The version I just related to you is the final version, published in In the original version, there is no rescue by duck — and their wicked stepmother is, in fact, their mother. Rereading the story with that in mind, the mother seems heartless, abandoning her children in the face of hunger and turning angrily on her husband when he dares to protest.
But a similar tale from , Charles Perrault's " Little Thumb ," also features a couple who abandon their children in the face of hunger, albeit with much heavier hearts. The famines in these stories aren't fairytale embellishments; they're important pieces of place-setting. We will take them deeper into the woods, so they will not find their way out. Otherwise there will be no help for us.
The man was very disheartened, and he thought, "It would be better to share the last bit with the children. But the woman would not listen to him, scolded him, and criticized him. He who says A must also say B, and because he had given in the first time, he had to do so the second time as well. The children were still awake and had overheard the conversation.
When the adults were asleep, Hansel got up again and wanted to gather pebbles as he had done before, but the woman had locked the door, and Hansel could not get out. But he comforted his little sister and said, "Don't cry, Gretel.
God will help us. Early the next morning the woman came and got the children from their beds. They received their little pieces of bread, even less than the last time. On the way to the woods, Hansel crumbled his piece in his pocket, then often stood still, and threw crumbs onto the ground. But little by little Hansel dropped all the crumbs onto the path.
The woman took them deeper into the woods than they had ever been in their whole lifetime. Once again a large fire was made, and the mother said, "Sit here, children. If you get tired you can sleep a little.
We are going into the woods to cut wood. We will come and get you in the evening when we are finished. When it was midday Gretel shared her bread with Hansel, who had scattered his piece along the path. Then they fell asleep, and evening passed, but no one came to get the poor children. It was dark at night when they awoke, and Hansel comforted Gretel and said, "Wait, when the moon comes up I will be able to see the crumbs of bread that I scattered, and they will show us the way back home.
When the moon appeared they got up, but they could not find any crumbs, for the many thousands of birds that fly about in the woods and in the fields had pecked them up. They walked through the entire night and the next day from morning until evening, but they did not find their way out of the woods. They were terribly hungry, for they had eaten only a few small berries that were growing on the ground. And because they were so tired that their legs would no longer carry them, they lay down under a tree and fell asleep.
It was already the third morning since they had left the father's house. They started walking again, but managed only to go deeper and deeper into the woods. If help did not come soon, they would perish. At midday they saw a little snow-white bird sitting on a branch. It sang so beautifully that they stopped to listen.
When it was finished it stretched its wings and flew in front of them. They followed it until they came to a little house. The bird sat on the roof, and when they came closer, they saw that the little house was built entirely from bread with a roof made of cake, and the windows were made of clear sugar. That will be sweet. Hansel reached up and broke off a little of the roof to see how it tasted, while Gretel stood next to the windowpanes and was nibbling at them.
Then a gentle voice called out from inside: Nibble, nibble, little mouse, Who is nibbling at my house? The children answered: The wind, the wind, The heavenly child. They continued to eat, without being distracted.
Hansel, who very much like the taste of the roof, tore down another large piece, and Gretel poked out an entire round windowpane. Suddenly the door opened, and a woman, as old as the hills and leaning on a crutch, came creeping out. In this extraordinary novel by Louise Murphy, a fairy tale is reimagined and a war story retold. It is the story of individuals striving to survive and a village trying to outlast a war. Magda the witch lives on the edge of Piaski, in a region of Eastern Poland that has been overrun first by Russians and now by Germans.
Her family is an assortment of outsiders: her brother Piotr, a fallen priest, her great-niece Nelka, a beauty in love with an enigmatic woodsman, her dead grandmother, a Gypsy and an abortionist. The villagers are terrorized by a small but vicious Nazi presence and weary at the end of a war that has brought them many conquerors and few saviors.
Murphy unflinchingly presents the war as a landscape of horrors, the village humiliated under the yoke of ruthless SS officers and by the necessities of survival under unbearable circumstances. This unique novel gives voice to figures that have before now been underrepresented in the writing of World War II: the voices of Jews who hid in the forests, of men and women who participated in resistance movements, and of Polish civilians. These characters struggle with their relationship with God, with their disgust for a humanity in crisis, and with the desire to define a new and more just world.
Yet Murphy manages to maintain the fairy-tale foundation of her story, returning again and again to the elements of an old story to infuse meaning into a newer one.
The Bialowieza Forest, the oldest in Europe, is a place of mysterious and untouched beauty, and its lessons for the children and for humanity permeate the book. Murphy juxtaposes horror with lyricism, reality with magic. The primal nature of war is met by the primal power of story—and the belief that love can rescue humans from their worst capabilities. Hansel and Gretel are on a quest to reclaim their identities, and the witch and the forest—the world of the fairy tale—show them the way.
This is the tale of two brave children who never give up, of women who refuse to be defined by convention, and of the bitter cost of survival. Over the course of the winter, Hansel and Gretel will come of age. Their mother dead, their father and stepmother in hiding, by necessity forced to alter their own identities, they become survivors.
She is a regular contributor to numerous literary and poetry journals. The True Story of Hansel and Gretel is in part the retelling of a classic fairy tale. How long have you had an interest in fairy tales and in the story of Hansel and Gretel in particular? As a child, I did not like most fairy tales, particularly this one. The deep unconscious meanings in those stories triggered my nightmares. In college I took a folklore course that fascinated me as we traced and studied the folk motifs that are found in every culture.
The original fairy tale is actually quite frightening; is that one reason why you chose it as a frame for this harrowing tale? This is the fairy tale that scared me the most when I was a child. It mirrors my worst adult fears about what the abandon-ment and blind violence of war does to children all over the world. You seem to try to redeem certain characters, particularly women, from the traditional stereotyping they receive in fairy tales and elsewhere.
The stepmother and the witch, two types often vilified, are portrayed very positively. Were you conscious of this as a feminist project? And are these stereotypes the kinds of lies that you have Magda refer to at the start? Stereotypes are always lies. Our culture denigrates older women, yet they are often the ones who protect and nurture everyone in the family. This story takes place in a particular region of Eastern Poland.
How did you learn about the history of the area, and what kind of research did you do for the book? How did you balance research and storytelling? I have no personal memories of World War II. It is all history for me, so I was lucky to have the Holocaust Library in San Francisco and the University of California library nearby with its huge collection of books.
I read for three years and took hundreds of pages of notes to understand the area and the people, the timetable of the war and the daily details of life in a Polish village during World War II.
Ultimately, it is the characters that matter to me. They take over the novel and drive the plot, but research gives the novelist ideas, and the setting of any story becomes part of its power. The Bialowieza Forest is one of the last patches of primeval growth in Europe. It seems like the perfect setting for a fairy tale, a place where stories might both emerge and endure, almost outside of time.
How did you find out about this forest, and have you ever actually been there? I have never visited the forest. I learned of it while watching television! It was a program on the Bialowieza Forest, and it was like watching a film about a country in your dreams. I saw the program several years before I began the book, and vaguely thought it would be a wonderful place to set the Magda story, if I ever wrote it.
Many people identify the Holocaust with Germany and have less information about the events that took place in Poland. Is this a reason why you chose to set the story in Poland rather than in Germany?
The German master plan was to kill all the Jews, Gypsies, dissidents and leaders in Poland, then starve off the old and the very young, leaving a work force to build cities for the new German world order. At the end of the building, all the remaining Polish workers would be killed in the camps. Setting a novel in this place allowed me to show the horrors of war against children and civilians and put my characters in situations where they had to make hard decisions daily. With other characters, including some of the Polish citizens and Major Frankel in particular, you step away from such absolute characteristics and tread more in the realm of psychological ambiguity.
Guilty though these characters are, you make them human beings.
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