Extra Credit Reading Notes: English Fairy Tales, Part B

 Week 12

I really enjoyed reading the  "English Fairy Tales" by Joseph Jacobs in 1890 for the first reading. I decided to keep reading on to the second part just to see how crazy these tales get! There weren't any that I was already familiar with in this section, but I really wanted to see if they had twists like the first part. 

(Source: Fairy Ointment)

The first story I read was obviously the "Henny-Penny" one.  It really reminded me of the reading "The Old Woman With The Pig." It felt like a series of events that just kept building on themselves. It gives on somewhat of a child like rhyme. I think the language makes people want to read on. I also thought the names were kind of silly, but spoke to the characters personality because they sounded easily silly. It definitely went along with the idea that the fox is meant to trick people. Which is exactly what happened. In the end, the message didn't even get to the king but it still went down this long series of events. 

In addition to this fox theme, I then thought "Mr. Fox" was an interesting read. It goes back to the idea of this character being deceiving. Which is also true since the lady asked about it and he kept denying it. It's funny to me because the lady could've ended up like that, and if Mr. Fox had married that many women, how did no one know who he was. They didn't even really question how the father knew him. The lady got really lucky her brothers were around or she would've ended up the same. I also think Mr. Fox may have been trying to find a nice ring for her, but at what cost? 

In the story "Fairy Ointment" I thought it was really strange. I liked Dame Goody because she was always just trying to help those that asked her to. I do find it interesting that only a select few were able to see the actual beauty of the pixies. They were presented as really ugly at first and I think that had something to do with the ending. It was kind of sad because she liked helping them and she didn't want to speak of it, but she also felt obligated to say something to him. This ultimately lead to her losing her right eye. He ended up being really ugly to her in the end just like she saw him in the beginning.