...the door, there not very much to eat, the child should know it, but not oppressively. Rather, he should be encouraged to savor every possible bite with one eye on its agreeable nourishment and the other on its fleeting but valuable esthetic meaning.

--M. F. K. Fisher (165)

Food is the most personally powerful object of barter. Atalanta lost the race for a few gold apples. Paris gave the coveted apple to Venus, unleashing a chain of events that would wreak havoc on Troy. Food is also the currency of childhood, our first initiation into the string-pulling power of parenthood. Judeo-Christian myth has it that innocence was bartered for an apple and paid in full. Apparently because of Adam's and Eve's sinful bites, parents have to keep that "bun in the oven," "earn the daily bread," and "bring home the bacon." Baby is just supposed to learn how to chew and swallow. Myth reflects that the most vital, and thus powerful, means of manipulating human bodies is through food. And we start pulling strings from day one.

As Claude Levi-Strauss writes in From Honey to Ashes, "the world of mythology is round, and therefore does not refer back to any necessary starting point" (foreword, n. pag.). I intend to navigate a playful genealogy of food lures (especially gingerbread) in light of this nonlinearity, however, with much skipping about in order to demonstrate range of relevance. (1) I hope to show that gingerbread represents just one of many food lures that are symbolically pervasive in folktales, fairy tales, and cautionary tales, one for which a material history is known, and one that can serve as analogous to all symbols of temptation in industrializing and consumerist cultures, which create a cultural climate that is protectionist, pacifying/passifying, and infantilizing toward children.

Food lures convey cultural expectations and challenges, providing fictive opportunities for self-expression or disempowerment. Their power to manipulate becomes subtler in industrial and postmodern tales where child characters are even less accountable for controlling their consumption. Whereas premodern stories indicate that blame, thus agency, resides with the kids lured (as clarified by their responsibility to resist temptation), consumerist revisions of such mythologies involve relocating agency in the lure itself what matters is not that the tempted subject succumbs to temptation, but that the object of his or her desires can be blamed. Consumers are increasingly depicted as willing victims of a manipulation wherein deeper structure is concealed, agency being reimagined as externally located (impossibly) in ephemeral confections.

Revisitations of "Hansel and Gretel" from this angle concretely rehistoricize our understanding and help trace a pattern to this tendency. It is not a consumerist cautionary tale about curbing one's sweet tooth but originally a premodern story about controlling basic hunger. The mother (a "step" in later versions) who plans to abandon her children is actually proposing what historians tell us was not unreasonable prioritizing in times of famine: to preserve food for working adults by unburdening themselves of helpless dependents. This is a lesson to be learned from another Grimms tale, "The Children Living in a Time of Famine," in which a mother "fell into such deep poverty with her two daughters that they didn't even have a crust of bread left to put in their mouths. Finally they were so famished that the mother was beside herself with despair and said to the older child: 'I will have to kill you so that I'll have something to eat'" (Tatar 379). This tale seems to beg sympathy from children for their helpless parents, and to ask for selfless sacrifice in thankful return. The children's solution to the (mother's) dilemma and starvation is to "'lie down and go to sleep, and we won't rise again until the Day of Judgment'" (379). This resolution sets up an ironic inversion of what Rebekka Habermas has called "disinterested parenting," (2) according to which parents put the needs of the child first.

"The Children Living in a Time of Famine" draws attention to the perceived needs of parents and illustrates a cultural climate in which putting them first might be justified. Unlike the children who somehow disappear into eternal sleep, Hansel and Gretel escape. Their error (and a cause of plot conflict as crucial as their abandonment) is to use bread crumbs for a trail on the second outing rather than pebbles--a waste of food. That Hansel wastes bread crumbs and they find a bread house is no coincidence--it presents a test not of greed but of how one can strategize to allay hunger. As Piero Camporesi explains throughout his Bread of Dreams: Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Europe, "Bread--a polyvalent object on which life, death, and dreams depend--becomes a cultural object in impoverished societies" (17). (3) Camporesi's entire analysis centers on a material history that can illuminate the Hansel and Gretel tale. According to Camporesi, for the poor experiencing famine in early modern Europe, sleep, and even illness, was desired over intense hunger (37). In an effort to induce sleep, "witches" specialized in treating bread with herbs, including poppy as a narcotic (124-25). Gingerbread is one such early common medicinal food--ginger to calm the stomach, and heavy seasoning to revitalize otherwise stale bread (Rudnay and Beliczay). Honey, the central sweetener in honey cakes (including gingerbread) was considered a "celestial medicine" (Camporesi 31). These historical insights provide a more practical basis for understanding the tale than psychological or moralizing traditions might always allow. (4)

When Hansel and Gretel find the witch's bread house, they continue to eat even after the owner inquires from within. Bruno Bettelheim interprets this as a cautionary tale on oral greed. Both Garry Kilworth and Vivian Vande Velde revise the tale for contemporary adult audiences, amplifying this possibility for interpretation: the children are the evil ones, plotting murderers rather than self-defending killers. The adults are victims and innocents. Amusing, but simultaneously disturbing to contemporary sentimentality (and perhaps, thus, the popularity of the theme), (5) the similarity suggests a shared assumption of an audience who easily accepts blaming the children--the kids shouldn't have taken dessert, because they hadn't eaten their green beans, so to speak, or in less bourgeois versions, hadn't earned them yet. (6)

The children are burdens who have to learn the economy of food, to control their desires and earn the means of satiating them. And adults can use their economic power to manipulate child hunger into desirable behaviors. For Jack Zipes, this exploitation constitutes abuse: "'Hansel and Gretel' has always minimized and will continue to minimize that degree [of abuse] in all societies ... [It] rationalizes the manner in which men use the bonds of love to reinforce their control over children" (58). This kind of barter is far more complex than simple hunger and earned satiation. Implicitly it is not just hunger for food that makes children obey: it is also hunger for acceptance, even love. Which is why Hansel and Gretel's (step) mother must be eliminated for a happy ending--once the hunger...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



More articles from Marvels & Tales
A wave of the magic wand: fairy godmothers in contemporary American me..., October 01, 2007
Disenchanting the fairy tale: retellings of "Snow White" between magic..., October 01, 2007
Red as blood, white as snow, black as crow: chromatic symbolism of wom..., October 01, 2007
Ancient and indigenous stories: their ethics and power reflected in La..., October 01, 2007
The Toad Woman.(TEXTS & TRANSLATIONS)(Short story), October 01, 2007

Looking for additional articles?
Search our database of over 3 million articles.

Looking for more in-depth information on this industry?
Search our complete database of Industry & Market reports by text, subject, publication name or publication date.

About Goliath
Whether you're looking for sales prospects, competitive information, company analysis or best practices in managing your organization, Goliath can help you meet your business needs.

Our extensive business information databases empower business professionals with both the breadth and depth of credible, authoritative information they need to support their business goals. Whether it be strategic planning, sales prospecting, company research or defining management best practices - Goliath is your leading source for accurate information.