SOURCE: Blackwell, Jeannine. “Laying the Rod to Rest: Narrative Strategies in Gisela and Bettina von Arnim's Fairy-Tale Novel Gritta.” Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies 11, nos. 1-2 (1997): 24-47.

In the following essay, Blackwell discusses Gritta, written by Arnim and her daughter, as a story that reverses traditional fairy-tale conventions by representing females as active agents rather than passive victims.

A notable lacuna in the literary history of German fairy tales is research on women's authorship and collecting activity. While many of the Grimms' female associates whose tales were transcribed have been identified, particularly Dorothea Viehmann, the Wilds, and the Haxthausens,¹ the meanings and significance of their collaboration have only begun to be to be investigated.² It is not yet standard knowledge among researchers that women comprised the majority of significant contributors to the Grimms' Kinder- und Hausmärchen; they provided a majority of the tale variants used...