Week 12 Essay: Crime, Justice, and Revenge in England

This week I chose to read the English Fairy Tales unit. Within these stories, I found many story elements that had to do with crime and justice.This unit in particular seemed much more gruesome and much more obsessed with death than the previous units I have read. Revenge is also a common motif in these stories.

In The Rose Tree, the little girl tried three times to buy her step-mother a pound of candles and failed each time. This could seem like a crime, but to me, the step-mother cutting of the little girl's head off seems like a much more significant crime. Once the little girl turns into a bird, she drops a millstone on her step-mother's head. This is certainly an act of justice and also one of revenge.

In Binnorie, the themes of crime and justice continue. The story starts with two sisters who are in love with the same man. First he was with the older sister, but then he left her for the younger sister. The older sister was so jealous that she pushed the younger sister into the river. That was definitely the crime. Once she drowned, a creepy man made a harp from her bones and hair.

 

(Image information: "Binnorie" by John D. Batten, 1890.) 

He took the harp to her parent's castle, and the harp sang about how the older sister killed her. This act of justice was very similar to the one in Rose Tree because in both stories the criminal is called out at a banquet.

In The Story of the Three Little Pigs, the wolf eats up the first two little pigs. This is clearly a criminal thing to do. Then when the wolf tries to eat up the third little pig, the pig completely outsmarts him. For revenge, he boiled him up and ate him for supper.