Essays

And They Lived Unhappily Ever After: The Anti-Fairy Tale

James Paxton Priestley

31 May 2025 — 8 min read

Image credit: Prawny from Pixabay. From an image by the English book illustrator, Arthur Rackham RWS.

Introduction

In one of the most well-known high fantasy adventure novels of all time, The Lord of the Rings by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, The Lady Galadriel says about the Ring passing out of knowledge that ‘History (of it) became legend, legend became myth.’ We give legend and myth oral and written form as folk tales and, thanks to the seventeenth-century French writer, Countess d’Aulnoy, the fairy tale, or conte de fées, was first named and used as a literary device. However, as the body of fairy tales grew, a new story form was named, that of the anti-fairy tale, providing tragic rather than happy endings, victorious antagonists, and defeated protagonists. With the anti-fairy tale showing no sign of losing its postmodern appeal, this essay asks whether the anti-fairy tale is superior to the traditional archetype fairy tale, by focusing on the European tale Little Red Riding Hood.

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