"Miss," says one of my bright sparks, "all stories have happy endings don't they, and the goodies always win over the baddies..."
I think about it. The stories they know all have happy endings. To all intents and purposes, stories to them are defined by happy endings, even when arrived at quite violently. The 3 little pigs defeat the wolf, he runs away with his [burnt] tail between his legs; Hansel and Gretel destroy the witch, and never go hungry again; Cinderella marries the prince; even Goldilocks, that thieving, house-breaking little trollop, escapes the house of the bears; in the juniors, St George kills the dragon and marries the princess.
They are thrown for a loop by the story of Boudica though. They can't get enough of this story (the edited version which doesn't mention that she and the children were raped). The tragedy, that she's a heroine, and brave and strong, and protecting her children, and a queen, and that she fights well, but she still loses. And kills herself in the end. We go round and round in circles. 'But why did she die? Why did she lose? What happened to her children?' Most of all 'Why did she drink poison and die?'
'Why do you think?'
One of my shy unconfident ones pipes up
'She didn't want the Romans to kill her first.'
Fairy stories are full of violence, they are warning tales and contain lessons about etiquette - don't trust strangers in the woods, don't treat your poor relations like dirt, they might end up as royalty - and they're fun, but it's the real life stories that hook them, a gateway into adult complexity and ambiguity. Sometimes the goodies don't win over the baddies. Sometimes it's hard to tell which is which. Or the story doesn't even have an end.
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MISS PRISM. Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days.
CECILY. Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did not end happily? I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.
MISS PRISM. The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
The blessed Saint Oscar says it best.
Funny, I have been reading about Boudicca too. Isn't she buried under the A1 in Holloway Road, according to one version?
Terry Pratchett's children's books are excellent for this kind of stuff - happy enough endings and the villains get their comeuppance, but with caveats about compromise being needed to make everyone happy, and about happiness being a difficult and elusive thing that you have to keep working at. And he isn't shy about subjecting the goodies to Very Bad Things in the course of their journey.
I don't know how old your wee uns are, but if they're of a novel-reading age I reckon they'd appreciate The Amazing Maurice & His Educated Rodents.
I hope that's true about Boudicca. Royalty in 'olloway? Wew I nevah!
Sit them down to watch Seven. Now that's what I call an ending.
I guess that fairytales are much like Shakespeare and other such classics, in that they tend to end with the resolution of the status quo. Stability. Order. Know your place, subjects.
And a "happy ending" is often a matter of perspective. I, for one, am always on the side of the wolf/bears/evil stepmother, etc...
Ah, it may have been Kings Cross (interesting twist on the platform 8 3/4 thing in Harry Potter) or Parliament Hill.
I love Oscar Wilde, Billy. I think they'd really get into his stories.
B, I think it is a myth about her being buried in King's Cross. But a good one. There's a statue of her in her chariot at Westminster Bridge - I had to edit it before I showed them, because of the boobs. Censorship!
Emordino, they're 7 and 8 - some of them could cope with Terry Pratchett, I'm sure. Good tip - the books in their book corner are mostly pretty ancient & boring.
Del, you old iconoclast you...
We had our attention diverted from the norm at school. Our physics teacher played us a Hawkwind in concert vhs instead of doing the lesson and that was our happy ending of the time. He was probably trying to divert our attention from our uncertain futures at the time (Thatcher's Britain).
From what I've read she might well have been starkers while going into war, save a bit of woad. Worse than boobs!
Don't imagine she had a full-body truss like Keira Knightley in that film though.
I can just imagine Boudica's dad. "You're not going to war dressed like THAT!"
I like the idea of being an iconoclast! Smash the system!
You can imagine how much they loved that little historical fact, B. Keira Knightley as Boudica? Noooooo!
Um, I've never known how Struwwelpeter worked, because I didn't know about it till I was ancient. Do kids love it or hate it? But I think they might like one or two of Belloc's Cautionary Tales. And the Gashlycrumb Tinies.
Boudica may not have drunk poison at all! She may have had a heroic death in battle.
Sorry, but I'm not convinced by Tacitus.
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