SOURCE: "Tale Spinners: Submerged Voices in Grimms' Fairy Tales," in New German Critique, No. 27, Fall, 1982, pp. 141-50.

In the following essay, Bottigheimer, one of the tales' leading modern scholars, examines the role of spinning women in several of the stories, identifying two distinct viewpoints in the tales. According to the critic, one view, expressed by Wilhelm Grimm, extols the virtues of spinning, while the second viewpoint, representative of the original folk material, reveals the harsh and mean realities of the occupation.

Each generation approaches old texts with new questions. One text which has shown itself to be a rich site for shifting readership concerns is The Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen [hereafter KHM.]) collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The evocative power of the collection has been reflected in the changing nature of the assumptions implicit in the criticism and interpretation of these tales over the last...