Your life is like a fairytale.
We’ve all heard this phrase sometime in our lives, whether targeted towards you or not. A phrase that is usually meant to describe a life as whimsical, charming and just a bit magical, invoking images of the natural world and little cottages deep in the woods. A phrase that connotes simple solutions to life’s problems, where you can wish upon a star and all of your worries will be whisked away with the swish of a wand.
Then you look around and realize that your life does not resemble the traditional climb towards a happily-ever-after. Your life does not fit into the structure of a Disney film. You are not that random Instagram influencer who seems like they’re living a fairytale dream. You look around again and see that many people feel the same way – they, too, do not fit into the fairytale aesthetic. You start to wonder if maybe it’s a dying wish; maybe you can’t live a fairytale life, because it no longer has a place in the modern world.
In an ever-increasing urban environment, where the magic of the natural world slips further and further away, that whimsical, fantastical feeling of fairytales feels few and far between. Even an academic environment, which you once idealized as the ultimate dark academia dream, is not what you hyped it up to be. You’re not perfectly put-together and flying through your studies. You’re overworked, exhausted, and wondering if it’s all worth it.
We’ve grown up with Disney, with DreamWorks, with stories showing that if you wish hard enough, you can get your happy ending. Snow White defeats the Evil Queen and gets her prince. Arendelle accepts Elsa’s magic as soon as she learns to accept herself. Shrek gets to live peacefully in his swamp. It should be that simple, right? But things feel especially un-fairytale-esque now. They feel bleak, negative and the complete opposite of magical.
But perhaps fairytales are not what they appear to be.
So many of our favourite childhood tales have incredibly dark origins. Sometimes, it’s not just the villains who suffer, but the heroes as well. Rumpelstiltskin demands the first-born child of the miller’s daughter as payment for his services – which he receives. In Hans Christen Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” the titular character does not get her prince, even after literally sacrificing her tongue to the sea witch. The Grimm’s tale “Little Red Cap” ends with Red Riding Hood getting eaten by the wolf – though she is saved by a hunter. Charles Perrault’s version of the tale ends with our protagonist just getting eaten by the wolf. The end.
Let’s not forget to mention “The Juniper Tree,” one of the darkest of the Grimm’s fairytales. In this story, a man and his wife struggle to have children, and when she finally does, she dies in childbirth. The man remarries, and his new wife can’t stand the sight of her husband’s first child; so, naturally, she decapitates him. Struck with sudden terror, she sets his head back upon his body and tricks her own daughter into thinking she knocked his head off. Obviously, they need to cover it up, so the mother chops the boy up, makes him into little puddings, and serves it to his father. Lovely.
Don’t worry, though, because things work out for the boy. His stepsister gathers up his bones and plants them beneath the juniper-tree and the boy turns into a bird, who continuously sings about how his mother killed him and his father ate him (which almost sounds like a reverse-Oedipus situation, but I digress). The story ends with the bird throwing a millstone on his stepmother’s head, she gets crushed, and huzzah! Smoke, fire, spectacle! The bird turns back into a boy! The boy, his father and his stepsister, not concerned that their stepmother is currently a pancake, go inside and eat. The end.
Yeah, this isn’t really something Disney wants their audience to see.
There is a point to my recounting of this tale. It’s a reminder that not all fairytales are as whimsically wonderful as modern media portrays them to be. In some form or another, the protagonists all face struggles. Even if they don’t overcome their obstacle, you are still left with a lesson that will carry you through to the next one. Just like in reality.
So remember, no matter what you see online… your life is, in some capacity, a fairytale.