CHAPTER 5

THE MANY JACKS

No one is sure when Jack and the Beanstalk was first told. It’s a tale that has been around for hundreds of years. But a version similar to the ones we are familiar with today was first published in the early 1800s. Benjamin Tabart retold the events about Jack and the giant in The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk (1807).

Tabart’s retelling starts off the same way as most versions. Jack and his mother are poor. They are forced to sell their cow. On the way into town, Jack meets a man who offers him some magic beans in exchange for the cow. And of course, Jack accepts the offer.

However, Tabart gives Jack an excuse for doing the things that he does. In The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk, Jack meets a fairy after climbing up the beanstalk. She tells him that his father was “as rich as a prince.” But when Jack was just months old, the giant killed his father and stole all of his father’s valuables.

In his retelling, Tabart implies that it is OK for Jack to steal from the giant. Jack is only retrieving treasures that should have belonged to him anyway. And by killing the giant in the end, Jack is getting revenge for his father’s death.

Joseph Jacobs did not include the fairy in his version of Jack and the Beanstalk in 1860. He did not want to promote theft and murder in a story meant for children. So he turned Jack into a mischievous lad. Jack does the things he does, not out of revenge, but because he’s curious and ill-behaved.

In Tabart’s version Jack appears heroic. In Jacobs’, he’s almost unlikable. One reason for the different takes on Jack is that stories were once told orally. One generation would tell the story to the next generation, and so on. People would remember the story differently over the years, and then retell it how they remembered it. Jacobs claimed that there wasn’t a fairy in the version of Jack and the Beanstalk he heard in his youth.

Another reason for different versions is that people’s beliefs change over time. As society’s views on what’s right and wrong change, storytellers adapt stories to fit their new values. That is why Jack can be a hero in one version, a villain in another, or a lazy youth in yet another.

These variations continue today, from movies and books to comics and cartoons. Sometimes Jack meets the fairy and sometimes not. Sometimes the giant has a goose that lays golden eggs or a magical talking harp. Traditional tales will continue to change and evolve as long as writers can think of creative new ways to retell them. And as long as children hear them, remember them, and retell them in their own way to future generations, the stories will live on.