Trigger warning: Disturbing imagery (because real fairy tales just ARE) Remember Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid”, how her every step after becoming human felt like she was stepping on knives.
For every girl who loses her mother and is persecuted by her stepmother, there will be a king who boils that stepmother in a vat of oil filled with snakes, toads and lizards. For every boy who is about to become dinner for a cannibalistic witch, there will be a girl who shoves the witch into the oven.
— Maria Tatar, from her Preface to The Annotated Brothers Grimm
