It feels like a glimpse of the dreadful side of the nature of things.” That is true of very many of the Grimms’ tales, even those with happy endings. Byatt has written that this is the real terror of the story: “It doesn’t feel like a warning to naughty infants. Whatever happened there, we all deserve it. (The Grimms used ein Kind, the neuter word for “child.” Zipes decided that the child was a boy.) And so the tale, without details to attach it to anything in particular, becomes universal. We don’t even know if it is a boy or a girl. Really? When, before, he had seemed to beg for life? But the worst thing in the story is that, beyond disobedience, it gives us not a single piece of information about the child. And what about the mother? Didn’t it trouble her to whip that arm? Then we are told that the youngster, after this beating, rested in peace. Was the child buried alive? The unconsenting arm looks more like a symbol. This story, with its unvarnished prose, should be clear, but it isn’t.
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