The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
Found on a Reddit post about The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear. - G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles (1909)
The more nonsensical our political conflicts become, the more I wonder about who we are. Society has been evolving for ten's of thousands of years (I could have used 'millennia', but for some reason 'tens of thousands of years' sounds better). Most of what underpins our rules of behavior has been taken for granted for so long that we know longer know why we do what we do. Well, I don't anyway. I never thought fairy tales were harmful, but I never knew why felt that way, and I suspect most people don't either.
P.S. Could it be that the copyright on Peter Rabbit has expired? I think it must have.
P.P.S. St. George has appeared in these pages before.
3 comments:
The Tale of Peter Rabbit was never copyrighted in the US, due to lack of diligence by its publisher.
Run Peter run!
Missed a letter in "but I never knew why felt that way, "
Is it tens, or ten's?
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