 Digging In: Fairy Tale Witches- Part Two by Jarad Johnson Witchcraft and witches are a motif across many literary and cultural themes, so it’s only fitting that they appear in fairy tales as reflections of the culture they come from. Although the fantasy genre has many different variations on the witch, when they pop up in fairy tales, they’re usually up to no good. Baking and eating small children and handing out poison apples. But witches have changed a little over time. Let’s look at some of these stories from long ago and their modern counterparts to see what it tells us about culture and women’s roles and exactly how witches got to be so wicked - at least in the eyes of those who told these stories. (Remember, this is a look into how western culture came to portray witches as evil! It does not reflect the feelings of any of us at sacred chickens about the long history of herb women, witches, or anyone who currently professes paganism or practices holistic medicine.)
Last time we explored how Fairy Tale Witches got to be wicked. The evil witch in the fairy tale reflected how the surrounding culture felt about women, especially women with power or childless women. These conflicted feelings created the monstrous image of the anti-mother, a twisted reflection of the only role women could be conceived of having. The witch motif, like fairy tales themselves, has changed with onset of fairy tale retellings. In understanding the entire perspective of the witch motif, retellings provide a new facet in that area. The retellings this paper will cover are, “When the Clock Strikes,” and, “Snow, Glass Apples.” Each of these stories contain a witch, but unlike the traditional tale, the witch has depth of character and is an overall more rounded out character than she would usually be.
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 How Witches Got To Be Wicked by Jarad Johnson Witchcraft and witches are a motif across many literary and cultural themes, so it’s only fitting that they appear in fairy tales as reflections of the culture they come from. Although the fantasy genre has many different variations on the witch, when they pop up in fairy tales, they’re usually up to no good. Baking and eating small children and handing out poison apples. But witches have changed a little over time. Let’s look at some of these stories from long ago and their modern counterparts to see what it tells us about culture and women’s roles and exactly how witches got to be so wicked - at least in the eyes of those who told these stories. (Remember, this is a look into how western culture came to portray witches as evil! It does not reflect the feelings of any of us at sacred chickens about the long history of herb women, witches, or anyone who currently professes paganism or practices holistic medicine.)
 Digging In Happily Ever After by Jarad Johnson The Disney versions of the classic fairy tales are the ones that my generation, and a few before me, grew up with. They’re the ones that we are familiar with, and unless we actually take the time to read the original (a term used loosely here) then we are never aware that older fairy tales can be quite dark. Often there is no “happily ever after” as Disney would have us believe. If you read the Grimm’s versions of fairy tales (and these were collections of earlier and often even darker tales), they are usually quite…grim. It’s kind of in the name. These folk stories were not always about happy endings, or even about love.
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