Since fairy tales deal imaginatively with the most important developmental issues in all our lives, it is not surprising that so many of them center in some way on oedipal difficulties. But so far the fairy tales discussed have focused on the problems of the child and not those of the parent. In actuality, as the relation of a child to his parent is full of problems, so is that of a parent to his child, so many fairy tales touch also on the parents’ oedipal problems. While the child is encouraged to believe that he is quite able to find his way out of his oedipal difficulties, the parent is warned against the disastrous consequences for him if he permits himself to get caught up in them.*
In “Jack and the Beanstalk” a mother’s unreadiness to permit her son to become independent was hinted at. “Snow White” tells how a parent—the queen—gets destroyed by jealousy of her child who, in growing up, surpasses her. In the Greek tragedy of Oedipus, who is of course undone by oedipal entanglements, not only is his mother, Jocasta, also ruined, but first of all to fall is Oedipus’ father, Laius, whose fear that his son will replace him eventually leads to the tragedy that undoes them all. The queen’s fear that Snow White will excel her is the theme of the fairy tale which carries the wronged child’s name, as does the story of Oedipus. It may be useful, therefore, to consider briefly this famous myth which, through psychoanalytic writings, has become the metaphor by which we refer to a particular emotional constellation within the family—one that can cause the most severe impediments to growing up into a mature, well-integrated person, while being, on the other hand, the potential source of the richest personality development.
In general, the less a person has been able to resolve his oedipal feelings constructively, the greater the danger that he may be beset by them again when he becomes a parent. The male parent who has failed to integrate in the process of maturation his childish wish to possess his mother and his irrational fear of his father is likely to be anxious about his son as a competitor, and may even act destructively out of this fear, as we are told King Laius did. Nor does the child’s unconscious fail to respond to such feelings in a parent, if they are part of his relation to his child. The fairy story permits the child to comprehend that not only is he jealous of his parent, but that the parent may have parallel feelings—an insight that can not only help to bridge the gap between parent and child, but may also permit dealing constructively with difficulties in relating which otherwise would not be accessible to resolution. Even more important, the fairy tale reassures the child that he need not be afraid of parental jealousy where it may exist, because he will survive successfully, whatever complications these feelings may create temporarily.
Fairy tales do not tell why a parent may be unable to enjoy his child’s growing up and surpassing him, but becomes jealous of the child. We do not know why the queen in “Snow White” cannot age gracefully and gain satisfaction from vicariously enjoying her daughter’s blooming into a lovely girl, but something must have happened in her past to make her vulnerable so that she hates the child she should love. How the sequence of the generations can account for a parent’s fear of his child is illustrated in the cycle of myths of which the story of Oedipus is the central part.61
This mythic cycle, which ends with The Seven Against Thebes, begins with Tantalus, who as a friend of the gods tried to test their ability to know everything by having his son Pelops slain and served to the gods as dinner. (The queen in “Snow White” orders that her daughter be killed, and eats what she believes to be part of Snow White’s body.) The myth tells that it was Tantalus’ vanity which motivated his evil deed, as it is vanity which spurs the queen to commit her villainy. The queen, who wanted to remain fairest forever, is punished by having to dance to her death, in red-hot shoes. Tantalus, who tried to fool the gods with his son’s body as food, suffers eternally in Hades, by being tempted to satisfy his unending thirst and hunger with water and fruits which seem within his grasp but recede as soon as he tries to seize them. Thus, punishment does fit the crime in myth and fairy tale.
In both stories also, death does not necessarily signify the end of life, as Pelops is restored by the gods, and Snow White regains her consciousness. Death is rather a symbol that this person is wished away—just as the oedipal child does not really wish to see his parent-competitor die, but simply wants him removed from the child’s way of winning his other parent’s complete attention. The child’s expectation is that, much as he has wished a parent out of the way at one moment, the parent should be very much alive and at the child’s service in the next. Accordingly, in the fairy tale a person is dead or turned into stone at one moment, and comes to life in the next.
Tantalus was a father ready to risk his son’s well-being to feed his vanity, and this was destructive to him, and also to his son. Pelops, having been used thus by his father, later does not hesitate to kill a father to gain his goals. King Oenomaus of Elis selfishly wished to keep his beautiful daughter, Hippodamia, all to himself, and he devised a scheme by which he disguised this desire while making sure that his daughter would never leave him. Any suitor for Hippodamia had to compete with King Oenomaus in a chariot race; if the suitor won, he could marry Hippodamia; if he lost, the king gained the right to kill him, which he always did. Pelops surreptitiously replaced the brass bolts in the king’s chariot with wax ones, and in this deceitful way he won the race, in which the king was killed.
So far the myth indicates that the consequences are equally tragic if a father misuses his son for his own purposes, or if a father should, out of an oedipal attachment to his daughter, try to deprive her of a life of her own, and her suitors of their very lives. Next the myth tells of the terrible consequences of “oedipal” sibling rivalry. Pelops had two legitimate sons, Atreus and Thyestes. Out of jealousy, Thyestes, the younger of the two, stole Atreus’ ram, which had a fleece of gold. As retribution, Atreus slaughtered Thyestes’ two sons, and fed them to Thyestes in a big banquet.
This was not the only instance of sibling rivalry in the house of Pelops. He also had an illegitimate son, Chrysippus. Laius, Oedipus’ father, as a youth found protection and a home at the court of Pelops. Despite Pelops’ kindness to him, Laius wronged Pelops by abducting—or ravishing—Chrysippus. We may assume that Laius did this out of his jealousy of Chrysippus, who was preferred to him by Pelops. In punishment for such acted-out rivalry, the oracle at Delphi told Laius he would be killed by his own son. As Tantalus had destroyed, or tried to destroy, his son, Pelops, and as Pelops had arranged for the death of his father-in-law, Oenomaus, so Oedipus would come to kill his father, Laius. In the normal course of events, a son replaces his father—so we may read all these stories as telling about the son’s wish to do this and the father’s trying to forestall it. But this myth relates that oedipal acting-out on the part of the fathers precedes oedipal acting-out on the part of the children.
To prevent his son from killing him, Laius on Oedipus’ birth had the infant’s ankles pierced and his feet tied together. Laius ordered a shepherd to take the child Oedipus and leave him in the wilderness to die. But the shepherd—like the hunter in “Snow White”—took pity on the child; he pretended to have deserted Oedipus, but gave the boy over to the care of another shepherd. This shepherd took Oedipus to his king, who raised Oedipus as his son.
As a young man, Oedipus consulted the oracle of Delphi and was told that he would slay his father and wed his mother. Thinking that the royal pair who had raised him were his parents, Oedipus did not return home but wandered off, to prevent such horror. At a crossroads he slew Laius, unaware that he was his father. On his wanderings Oedipus came to Thebes, solved the riddle of the Sphinx, and thus delivered the city. As reward, Oedipus married the queen—his widowed mother, Jocasta. Thus the son replaced his father as king and husband; the son fell in love with his mother, and the mother had sexual relations with her son. When the truth of it all was finally discovered, Jocasta committed suicide and Oedipus blinded himself; he destroyed his eyes in punishment for not having seen what he was doing.
But the tragic story does not end there. Oedipus’ twin sons, Eteocles and Polynices, did not support him in his misery, and only his daughter Antigone stayed with and by him. Time passed, and in the war of the Seven Against Thebes, Eteocles and Polynices killed each other in combat. Antigone buried Polynices against King Creon’s orders, and was killed for it. Not only does intense sibling rivalry devastate, as shown by the fate of the two brothers, but over-intense sibling attachment is equally fatal, as we learn from Antigone’s fate.
To sum up the variety of death-bringing relations in these myths: instead of lovingly accepting his son, Tantalus sacrifices him to his own ends; so does Laius in respect to Oedipus; and both fathers end up destroyed. Oenomaus dies because he tries to keep his daughter all to himself, as does Jocasta, who attaches herself too closely to her son: sexual love for the child of the other sex is as destructive as acted-out fear that the child of the same sex will replace and surpass the parent. Doing away with the parent of the same sex is Oedipus’ undoing, as it is that of his sons who desert him in his distress. Sibling rivalry kills Oedipus’ sons. Antigone, who does not forsake her father, Oedipus, but on the contrary shares his misery, dies because of her too great devotion to her brother.
But still this does not conclude the story. Creon, who as king condemns Antigone to die, does so against the entreaties of his son, Haemon, who loves Antigone. In destroying Antigone, Creon also destroys his son; once more, here is a father who cannot give up ruling his son’s life. Haemon, in despair over Antigone’s death, tries to kill his father and, failing to do so, commits suicide; so does his mother, Creon’s wife, in consequence of her son’s death. The only one to survive in the family of Oedipus is Ismene, Antigone’s sister, who has not attached herself too deeply to either of her parents, nor any of her siblings, and with whom no member of the immediate family had become deeply involved. According to the myth, there seems to be no way out: whoever by chance or his own desires remains too deeply entangled in an “oedipal” relation is destroyed.
Nearly all types of incestuous attachment are found in this cycle of myths, and all types are intimated also in fairy tales. But in fairy tales the hero’s story shows how these potentially destructive infantile relations can be, and are, integrated in developmental processes. In the myth, oedipal difficulties are acted out and in consequence all ends in total destruction, whether the relations are positive or negative. The message is clear enough: when a parent cannot accept his child as such and be satisfied that he will have to be replaced by him eventually, deepest tragedy results. Only an acceptance of the child as child—neither as a competitor nor as a sexual love object—permits good relations between parents and children, and between the siblings.
How different are the ways the fairy tale and this classic myth present oedipal relations and their consequences. Despite her stepmother’s jealousy, Snow White not only survives but finds great happiness, as does Rapunzel, whose parents had given her up because satisfying their own cravings had been more important to them than keeping their daughter, and whose foster mother tried to hold on to her for too long. Beauty in “Beauty and the Beast” is loved by her father, and she loves him equally deeply. Neither of them is punished for their mutual attachment: on the contrary, Beauty saves her father and the Beast by transferring her attachment from father to lover. Cinderella, far from being destroyed by her siblings’ jealousy as were Oedipus’ sons, emerges victorious.
It is thus in all fairy tales. The message of these stories is that oedipal entanglements and difficulties may seem to be unsolvable, but by courageously struggling with these emotional familial complexities, one can achieve a much better life than those who are never beset by severe problems. In the myth there is only insurmountable difficulty and defeat; in the fairy tale there is equal peril, but it is successfully overcome. Not death and destruction, but higher integration—as symbolized by victory over the enemy or competitor, and by happiness—is the hero’s reward at the end of the fairy tale. To gain it, he undergoes growth experiences that parallel those necessary for the child’s development toward maturity. This gives the child the courage not to become dismayed by the difficulties he encounters in his struggle to become himself.
*As with wishing, the fairy tale has full understanding that the child cannot help being subjected to the oedipal predicaments, and hence is not punished if he acts in line with them. But the parent who permits himself to act out his oedipal problems on the child suffers severely for it.