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A Jungian Interpretation of Hansel and Gretel
Hansel and Gretel, we are told, ran off into the woods to escape their parents. A common enough story; two children, abused by their parents, run off together into even greater danger: drug addiction, prostitution and homelessness. But fairy tales are different; they're designed to tell us something about the archetypal nature of humankind. On one level, of course, children are simply being told 'don't speak to strangers', that is, the figure of the witch in the tale of Hansel and Gretel1 is, at the level
On the other hand, from the point of view of a literary analyst influenced by the archetypal psychology of Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961),2 the children's 'Terrible Mother'3 (and Father) is a symbol of the necessity for growth and development; in other words, and we have probably all experienced this at some time, the parental imago, in its 'evil' phase for the child, is pushing the burgeoning adolescent out into the 'real world' where it will begin to struggle and, hopefully, overcome those barriers and obs