Evil has always been with us-in life as in literature. However the stories collected by the Grimm brothers seem to have made a lasting impression. One of the reasons is that the Grimm stories have been constantly changed and updated. This has been a palette, if you like, for other writers to use.
The majority of people in the stories don’t turn evil, they seem to be evil forever. They have ways to see what’s going on, such as Magic Mirrors. And they always turn up at the wrong moment. They have no feelings to the person we consider the hero or heroine.
Their threats and curses seem rather useless; for instance in Briar Rose (which we know as Sleeping Beauty) the evil Wise Woman curses the child to death and this is soon changed to sleeping for a hundred years. (Not that the psychological challenges of this is entered into-for instance maybe the characters had friends living outside the castle who didn’t fall asleep.)
Their minions seem useless, ready to disobey them because of the heroine’s smile or a hero’s pleading.
Evil needs to exist so that good can rail against it. Their weapons aren’t usually swords, they are generally reliant on a magical stranger, or in the German version of Cinderella, a magical cow. When the evil gets their comeuppance, blood is usually spilt or similar. In Snow White the evil Queen is given viking t shirt made out of hot iron. Anyone who wears them can’t stop dancing.
What seems to have changed is that the evil one is a woman. This wasn’t compulsory at the time-Shakespeare’s villains (apart from Lady Macbeth) are male, and Arabian tales had the evil genies; also male. It seems that the stories in Germany were obsessed with the evil second mother, a fear that may be grown out of.
When we look at the super villain, the James Bond villain, what we are in reality looking at is a fairy tale villain. We don’t see the villain’s private life or see them having doubts about their motives. They are beyond such human frailties.
What can we learn from fairy tale villains? How not to be with other people? How not to give in to our rage? Perhaps. But in the same way that in this world no one lives happily ever after, also people are dressed as up villains when it isn’t the whole truth.
write by Phelim