In this Brothers Grimm’s story, like many other fairy tales which feature the adventures of two siblings, the protagonists represent the disparate natures of id, ego, and superego; and the main message is that these must be integrated for human happiness. This type of fairy tale presents the necessity of integrating the personality in a different way than “The Queen Bee”—here the nefarious doings of an “evil spirit” turn one sibling into an animal, while the other remains human. It is hard to conceive of a more vivid, succinct, and immediately convincing image of our contradictory propensities. Even the earliest philosophers viewed man as having both an animal and a human nature.
During much of our life, when we have not succeeded in achieving or maintaining inner integration, these two aspects of our psyche war against each other. When we are young, whatever we feel at the moment fills our entire existence. Becoming aware that he feels two ways about something at the same time—for example, when the child wants to grab the cookie, but also wants to obey Mother’s order not to—confuses the child. Understanding this duality requires a cognizance of inner processes which is greatly facilitated by fairy tales illustrating our dual nature.
Such fairy tales begin with an original lack of differentiation between the two siblings: they live together and feel alike; in short, they are inseparable. But then, at a certain moment in growing up, one of them begins an animal existence, and the other does not. At the end of the tale the animal is changed back into his human form; the two are reunited, never to be separated again. This is the fairy tale’s symbolic way of rendering the essentials of human personality development: the child’s personality is at first undifferentiated; then id, ego, and superego develop out of the undifferentiated stage. In a process of maturation these must be integrated, despite opposite pulls.
In the Brothers Grimm’s story “Brother and Sister,” “Little brother took his little sister by the hand and said … ‘Come, we will go forth together out into the wide world’ ” to escape from a home which had become a depriving one. “They walked the whole day over meadows, fields and rocky expanses; and when it rained, little sister said: ‘Heaven and our hearts are weeping together.’ ”
Here, as in many fairy tales, being pushed out of the home stands for having to become oneself. Self-realization requires leaving the orbit of the home, an excruciatingly painful experience fraught with many psychological dangers. This developmental process is inescapable; the pain of it is symbolized by the children’s unhappiness about being forced to leave home. The psychological risks in the process, as always in fairy stories, are represented by the dangers the hero encounters on his travels. In this story the brother represents the endangered aspect of an essentially inseparable unity, and the sister, as symbol of motherly care once one has become alienated from home, is the rescuer.
The fairy tale leaves no doubt in the child’s mind that the pain must be endured and the risky chances taken, since one must achieve one’s personal identity; and, despite all anxieties, there is no question about the happy ending. While not every child can or will inherit a kingdom, the child who understands and makes his own the message of the fairy tale will find the true home of his inner self; he will become master over its vast realm by knowing his mind, so it will serve him well.
To continue with the story of “Brother and Sister”: The next day on their wanderings brother and sister come to a spring from which brother wants to drink; but sister, who is not carried away by her id (instinctual pressures), understands that the water is murmuring: “Who drinks of me becomes a tiger.” Because of her entreaties, her brother abstains from drinking despite the promptings of his thirst.
The sister, representing the higher mental functions (the ego and superego), warns her brother, who—id-dominated—is ready to permit himself to be carried away by his wish for immediate gratification (of his thirst), no matter what the cost of doing so. But should the brother give in to the pressure of the id, he would become asocial, as violent as a tiger.
They come to another spring, which warns that it has the power to change the drinker into a wolf. Again the sister, representing ego and superego, recognizes the danger of seeking immediate satisfaction, and persuades the brother to resist his thirst. Finally they come to a third spring, which murmurs that its punishment for giving in to id desires is a change into a deer, a much tamer animal. So much does delay—a partial obedience to the restraining aspects of our mental apparatus—achieve. But as the pressure of the id (brother’s thirst) increases, it overpowers the restraints of ego and superego: the sister’s admonitions lose the power to control, and as brother drinks from the spring, he turns into a fawn.28 *
Sister promises that she will never leave her fawn-brother. She symbolizes ego control, since, despite her thirst, she was able to abstain from drinking. She unties her golden garter and fastens it around the fawn’s neck, and plucks some rushes and weaves these into a soft leash which she fastens to the little animal. Only a very positive personal tie—the golden garter—can make us forgo giving in to our asocial desires and lead us on to a higher humanity.
Then sister and fawn move on. As they proceed through the forest, they come to a deserted little house in the woods—which appears in so many fairy tales—and find shelter there. They make it their abode. Out of leaves and moss the sister makes a bed for the fawn; each morning she gathers roots and berries for herself, and for the fawn, tender grass: the ego provides what the person needs. All goes well, as long as the id does what the ego bids it do. “If brother just would have had his human form, it would have been a marvelous life.”
But until we have achieved full personality integration, our id (our instinctual pressures, our animal nature) lives in uneasy peace with our ego (our rationality). The fairy tale tells how when the animal instincts are strongly aroused, rational controls lose the power to restrain. After the sister and fawn-brother have lived happily for some time in the wilderness, the king of the country arranges for a big hunt. When the fawn hears the blowing of horns, the barking of the hounds, and the merry shouting of the hunters, he says to his sister, “Let me out to join the hunt; I can’t stand it any longer,” and begs so long that at last she consents.
The first day of the hunt all goes well, and at nightfall the deer-brother returns to his sister and the safety of their little hut. The next morning he hears again the tempting noises of the hunt and becomes restless, demanding to be let out. Toward the end of the day he is slightly wounded in the leg and manages to limp home, but this time the deer, with his golden collar, is observed by one of the hunters, who reports it to the king. The king recognizes the meaning of the garter, and he orders that on the next day the deer is to be pursued and caught, but not to be hurt.
At home, sister takes care of brother’s wound. The following day, despite her tears and entreaties, the deer forces her to let him out again. In the evening not only the fawn but the king too comes to the hut. Captivated by the girl’s beauty, the king asks her to marry him; she agrees, provided the fawn will live with them.
For a long time they all live happily together. But, as so often in fairy tales, three repetitions of the same ordeal—the three days the deer was being hunted—are not sufficient for the final resolution. While brother has undergone his ordeal which could become his initiation to a higher form of existence, the sister has not.
All goes well until one day, when the king is out hunting,* the queen gives birth to a boy.
The king’s absence when his wife gives birth indicates that this is another transition—the greatest miracle of life—in which others, even the husband, can be of only limited help. Childbirth represents an inner transformation which changes the girl-child into mother. Like all important transformations, it is fraught with great dangers. Today these are mainly psychological; in times past, woman’s very life was in jeopardy, because so many died during or in consequence of childbirth. These dangers are given body in this story by a witch stepmother, who, after the child has been born, insinuates herself into the queen’s life by assuming the form of her lady-in-waiting. She entices the queen, who is sick from childbirth, to take a bath—where she causes the queen to suffocate. The witch then has her own ugly daughter take the queen’s place in the royal bed.
At midnight the queen reappears in the nursery to take her child into her arms and nurse him; nor does she forget to take care of the roebuck. This is observed by the nursemaid, who doesn’t tell anybody for a while. After some time has passed, the queen begins to talk during her midnight visits with her child, and says,
“How is my child? How is my deer?
Twice shall I come, then nevermore.”
The nursemaid tells this to the king, who sits up the following night to watch the same thing happen, with the difference that the queen says that she will come only once more. The third night, when the queen says that she’ll never come again, the king no longer restrains himself and calls her his beloved wife, at which she comes back to life.
As there were three repetitions of the brother trying to drink from a brook, and of the deer running out to join the hunt, so there were three visits by the dead queen to her child during which she spoke the verses. But the queen’s being restored to life and reunited with her king still leaves her brother in his animal form. Only after justice has been meted out and the witch is burned to ashes does the fawn regain his human form, and “sister and brother lived happily together until their end.”
No final word is said about the queen’s living with the king or her child, because the two are of little importance. The real issue of “Brother and Sister” is that the animalistic tendencies in man, as represented by the deer, and the asocial ones, symbolized by the witch, are done away with; and this permits the human qualities to blossom. The discrepancy in human nature indicated by the sister’s and fawn-brother’s existence is resolved through human integration as brother and sister are reunited in their human form.
In the story’s ending, two strands of thought are combined: integration of the disparate aspects of our personality can be gained only after the asocial, destructive, and unjust have been done away with; and this cannot be achieved until we have reached full maturity, as symbolized by sister’s giving birth to a child and developing mothering attitudes. The story also suggests the two great upheavals in life: leaving the parental home, and creating one’s own family. These are the two periods of life when we are most vulnerable to disintegration, because an old way of life has to be given up and a new one achieved. In the first of these two turning points, brother gets temporarily swept away; in the second, the sister.
While no inner evolution is spelled out, its nature is implied: what redeems us as human beings and restores us to our humanity is solicitude for those whom we love. The queen, on her nocturnal visits, does not try to satisfy any of her own desires, but worries about others who depend on her: her child and her deer. This shows that she has successfully made the transition from wife to mother, and thus she is reborn to a higher stage of existence. The contrast between the brother’s giving in to the proddings of his instinctual desires and the sister’s ego- and superego-motivated concern for her obligations to others clearly indicates what the battle for integration and victory in it consist of.
*A comparison of “Brother and Sister” with “The Fisherman and the Jinny” illustrates that only through hearing and assimilating many fairy stories does the richness of this literature become fully available to the child. The Jinny, carried away by id pressure, intends to destroy his rescuer; the consequence is that the Jinny is returned to permanent incarceration in the jar. “Brother and Sister,” by contrast, tells how beneficial it is to be able to control id pressures. Even when this ability is by no means perfectly developed—which it cannot be in a child—even a limited degree of id control achieves a high measure of humanization, as the reduction of animal ferocity from tiger to wolf to deer symbolizes.
*In terms of the fairy story, hunting is not to be understood as an unnecessary killing of animals—rather it symbolizes a life close to and in accordance with nature; an existence in line with our more primitive being. In many fairy stories hunters are kind-hearted, helpful persons, as in “Little Red Riding Hood.” Nevertheless, the king’s having gone away to hunt suggests his having given in to his more primitive tendencies.