I have been attracted by the realm of fairies and fairy tales all my life. This last week I have been working on the psychological aspect behind the characters of most of the stories, based on the idea that each character within a tale may represent an aspect of personality. It's a rather interesting revelation. Freud suspected that dreams and fairy tales stemed from the same place and that fairy tales might prove to be windows into the unconscious. They are also inextricably linked to the work of Carl Jung. The “collective unconscious” that lies at the core of his work, and which he believed is shared by all human beings, is revealed through archetypes, forms and symbols found in many fairy tales. The morality of fairy tales is often very complicated, with protagonists known to lie, cheat, steal and torture, in fact, most of the tales we know are not as child-like as we may presume and are full of hidden meanings and symbols. Fairy tales are dramatic representations of basic psychological processes and basically, this is what I concluded, to be attracted to or repelled by a fairy tale indicates that the story contains something that resonates with an unconscious process in the reader, as you cannot be attracted or repelled unless you recognize something that is personally meaningful.
Now, seeing that I deal with houses, here is a very funny interpretation of the Three Little Pigs that I found on the net.
Politically Correct Three Little Pigs
Once there were 3 little pigs who lived together in mutual respect and in harmony with their environment. Using materials that were indigenous to the area they each built a beautiful house. One pig built a house of straw, one a house of sticks, and one a house of dung, clay and creeper vines shaped into bricks and baked in a small kiln. When they were finished, the pigs were satisfied with their work and settled back to live in peace and self-determination.
But their idyll was soon shattered. One day, along came a big, bad wolf with expansionist ideas. He saw the pigs and grew very hungry in both a physical and ideological sense.
When the pigs saw the wolf, they ran into the house of straw. The wolf ran up to the house and banged on the door, shouting, "Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!"
The pigs shouted back, "Your gunboat tactics hold no fear for pigs defending their homes and culture."
But the wolf wasn't to be denied what he thought was his manifest destiny. So he huffed and puffed and blew down the house of straw. The frightened pigs ran to the house of sticks, with the wolf in hot pursuit. Where the house had stood, other wolves bought up the land and started a banana plantation.
At the house of sticks, the wolf again banged on the door and shouted, "Little, pigs, little pigs, let me in!"
The pigs shouted back, "Go to hell, you carnivorous, imperialistic oppressor!"
At this the wolf huffed and puffed and blew down the house of sticks. The pigs ran to the house of bricks, with the wolf close at their heels. Where the house of sticks had stood, other wolves built a time-share condo resort complex for vacationing wolves, with each unit a fibreglass reconstruction of the house of sticks, as well as native curio shops, snorkelling and dolphin shows.
At the house of bricks, the wolf again banged on the door and shouted, "Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!"
This time in response, the pigs sang songs of solidarity and wrote letters of protest to the United Nations.
By now the wolf was getting angry at the pigs' refusal to see the situation from the carnivore's point of view. So he huffed and puffed, and huffed and puffed, then grabbed his chest and fell over dead from a massive heart attack brought on from eating too many fatty foods.
The three little pigs rejoiced that justice had triumphed and did a little dance around the corpse of the wolf. Their next step was to liberate their homeland. They gathered together a band of other pigs who had been forced off their lands. This new brigade attacked the resort complex with machine-guns and rocket launchers and slaughtered the cruel wolf oppressors, sending a clear signal to the rest of the hemisphere not to meddle in their internal affairs. Then the pigs set up a model socialist democracy with free education, universal health care and affordable housing for everyone.
The end.
This is a house which surely belongs in a fairy tale... check it out: