WHISPERS OF WITCHES - Why Fairy Tales are Immortal

The Secret Life of Fairy Tales.

Fairy tales speak of primal things and taboos, hiding the unspeakable within their stories. In doing so, they always preserve their secret—which is what makes them immortal. 
Michael Maar delves into the depths of these stories: how, in the Brothers Grimm’s Children’s and Household Tales, not only common sense but also the simplest laws of mathematics are often suspended from the very start; why their blatant cruelty can only be understood against the backdrop of the Thirty Years’ War; that Little Red Riding Hood tells of female sexual maturity and Hansel and Gretel also describes a crucial rite of passage; why Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid doesn't negotiate an age-old human taboo like the folk tales, but a deeply private one; and where Scheherazade’s tales from One Thousand and One Nights still resonate in the work of Marcel Proust.
We learn all this in Maar’s essay, which illuminates these seemingly familiar narratives in an entirely new light.