Everything has a dark side right? This sometimes forces me to find some good in certain characters just to give them some... humanity.
Awhile back, I did some reading on Grimm's fairytales and some research on different children's novels. I was planning to write a short story collection based off them, and I had also gotten a book called The Child Thief which freaked me out so much I stopped reading after chapter 2.
Those reasons led me to google and that was when I realized that not all fairytales were happy and cheery like how Disney and Hollywood portrayed them to be. There is darkness in some of these tales and yet I remember reading them as a child... full of innocence.
You must know that Grimm's fairytales itself isn't the best bedtime story. Some of the classics are also not very appropriate... mind you.
Here are some gruesome fairytale examples: Rumpelstiltskin ripped himself in half, the Pied Piper led the children into the river to drown, Little Red Riding hood was never saved, the Queen in Snow White was forced to dance to death in red hot iron shoes, Sleeping Beauty was raped, the bears ate Goldilocks, Cinderella's step sisters cut their feet to fit into her glass shoe, and oh, Peter Pan killed the Lost Boys when they aged.
Sure, there are... less gruesome and more child friendly versions but the original will always be the original. It's like twisting a story to make it sound better, when in fact it is not.
This actually makes us think twice about fairytales. Fiction or not... these stories would probably give nightmares.
One day when I have kids, I would just give the Harry Potter, Narnia and Enid Blyton. For the rest, I'll have to read them first.