Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales

Author: Valerie Paradiz
Date Finished: 4/11/06

This is one of the few non-fiction books I've had the staying power to finish in my reading career. As I mentioned before, I have just awful taste in non-fiction. I choose books that seem promising but cause me to fall asleep within fifteen words or hokey self-improvement books that change my life for about fifteen seconds. This time, neither was the case and I thought Clever Maids was interesting and well written.

The premise of the book is that Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's travels through the countryside collecting folk tales for their collection is completely made up. Instead, their sources for the tales were their sister's friends and other women of their acquaintance. For the most part, the women were educated (they could read and write at least) but were still captured in the societal expectations of the time...to serve family and throw in their economic lot with a kind husband if they were lucky.

Ms. Paradiz does a nice job of telling a few of the stories the women collected and connecting the tales to the women's role in families and society at the time. Another influence on the Grimm brothers was Napolean's occupation of Germany during the time they were working on the collection. Paradiz shows the subtext (is there a subtext to oral stories? sub-voice? sub-telling? I don't know) of many of the tales related to current political events as well as the traditional roles of men and women and the not-quite-bourgeois German people in the early 19th century.

I liked this book a lot and because of it I will probably put the Grimm collection on my list of to-be-read. And perhaps a toned down version (not so many hands hacked off or eyes gouged out) to read to the kids. Although we modern women have learned that we aren't living in a fairy tale and we can't count on Prince Charming whisking us away, the appeal of "happily ever after" remains strong, even if we have to create the ever after of our dreams on our own.