Fairy tales generally took place in a far-off time and place. They are typically began, “Once upon a time.” In the land of fairy tales, magical happenings are everyday occurrences.
Bad kings or queens, beautiful but ill-treated girls, and handsome princes are frequent characters in fairy tales. So are poor young men ready for adventure.
A fairy tale often tells the story of an individual. It takes into account the entire life of the hero or heroine, but focuses on a single event such as marriage. Fairy tales generally end happily. Goodness is rewarded, and evil is punished. The traditional closing line of a fairy tale is, “and they lived happily ever after.”
Certain basic plots occur again and again in fairy tales, with some variations. Both “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Frog Prince,” for example, tell the story of an animal that, through love, turns into a handsome prince. Many fairy tales are about unhappy people who eventually gain happiness, such as Snow White and Rapunzel.
Other popular stories, like “The Little Mermaid” and “Pinocchio,” deal with magical transformations of shape. “The Magic Carpet” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” relate unusual adventures. Magical objects play key roles in “Jack and the Beanstalk” and “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp.”
Where do Fairy Tales come from?
Fairy tales have been popular with people all over the world from earliest times. Many of them were made up thousands of years ago. People then passed them down through word of mouth. The tales changed over time. As the stories were retold, the tellers added some details and left others out.
Although we think of fairy tales as children's stories, the earliest fairy tales were stories for adults.
The stories were meant mainly for entertainment, although some fairy tales also contain a moral. The message of “The Ugly Duckling,” for example, suggests that people who are considered unattractive or unpopular as children may have their true worth and beauty discovered in adulthood.
Not all fairy tales date from early times. “The Ugly Duckling” was written in the 1800s by Hans Christian Andersen of Denmark.
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