The Meaning of "Mother Goose" vs. The Struggle for Meaning

Although the essays “Peasants Tell Tales” and “The Struggle for Meaning” contend with the same subject matter, fairy tales – something I will account for later in the blog - their arguments lie in different realms, the former based in anthropology and the latter founded in psychoanalysis. However, referring to the title of my blog post, I want to focus on the “versus” aspect of their essays and how the author of “Peasants Tell Tales” attempts to indirectly debunk “The Struggle for Meaning.”

Robert Darnton, the author of “Peasants Tell Tales,” is invested in an anthropological way of extracting historical and cultural information, based on the oral tradition of peasants’ recounting of folk tales. Interestingly, he begins his essay by acknowledging the psychoanalytic rhetoric of authors such as Erich Fromm and Bruno Bettelheim. However, he (quite acerbically) narrates their findings by refuting them due to fairy tales’ transformations from culture to culture: “In fact … folktales are historical documents. They have evolved over many centuries and have taken different turns in different cultural traditions” (Darnton 283). In turn, I would say that Darnton probably finds psychoanalysis too unreliable for tales that are so marked by different meanings as a result of the history and “the context[s] in which [they] take place” (285). This is curious because Bettelheim’s “The Struggle for Meaning” uses psychoanalysis dependent on how fairy tales – and “our cultural heritage” (Bettelheim 269)” – can help a disturbed child find meaning through morality.

Are Darnton and Bettelheim simply arguing two sides of the same coin, then? Bettelheim’s rhetoric synonymizes fairy tales with history and culture just as much as Darnton’s argument does. Nevertheless, Darnton seems to be unjustly critiquing only one of Bettelheim’s psychoanalytic interpretations, instead of studying how Bettelheim’s general approach to fairy tales might be remarkably similar to his own. Certainly, Bettelheim’s particular interest in fairy tales might be different (as he is trying to cure disturbed children’s mental ailments and lack of self-importance), just as Darnton is interested in what the oral tradition tells us about peasants and their milieux.

Is Darnton correct in using Bettelheim’s interpretation of “Little Red Riding Hood” as one piece of evidence in order to discredit him? I think his judgment is too hasty, especially if he returns to Bettelheim’s “The Struggle for Meaning” and sees how his respective work simply tackles fairy tales from another angle.

Thoughts?