Fairy Tales

J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan is stranger and more melancholy than Disney — a boy who forgets, courts death, and ‘thins out’ the Lost Boys.

The familiar tale is an abridgment. Villeneuve’s 1740 original is a sprawling story of fairies, backstories, and arranged marriage.

The golden-haired girl is a latecomer. The intruder in ‘The Three Bears’ began as an ugly old woman — and before that, a fox.

A stepmother beheads a boy, cooks him into a stew, and serves him to his father. ‘The Juniper Tree’ may be the darkest Grimm story of all.

Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio is a cruel puppet who murders the Talking Cricket — and the story was first meant to end with his hanging.

The Grimms’ princess doesn’t kiss the frog — she hurls him against the wall in disgust. That’s when he becomes a prince.

Bluebeard needs no ‘darker original’ — Perrault’s 1697 tale is openly about a wife-murderer and a forbidden room full of bodies.

The Grimms’ Rapunzel is a more adult story than the film — a secret affair, twins born in the wilderness, and a prince blinded by thorns.

The Grimms’ tale of children abandoned to starve and a witch who eats them is genuinely grim — and some think it echoes real famine.

The Grimms’ Rumpelstiltskin ends with the little man ripping his own body in half in a rage. The original ending, and what it means.