Essay: Family Can Be Evil Too

When I was reading the English Fairy Tales unit, a common theme that I noticed was that many of the bad things that were done, were done by family members. This is a hard concept for people to understand. Family is supposed to be the ones who love and protect you more than anyone in the world. It is always harder to hear about family members turning on each other and doing things that you would expect strangers to be able to do, but you would not expect it from family.

In Binnorie, a man falls in love with a woman, until he sees her younger sister. He then decides that he wants the younger one and the older sister feels betrayed by her younger sister. She did not think it was fair since she had seen the man first. The older sister then pushes the younger sister into the millstream of Binnorie. The younger sister tries to beg the older one for help but to no avail. The older sister has too much hatred and jealously towards the younger one for her to ever help save her younger sister's life.

Another example of family members being cruel is in The Rose Tree. In this story, it is the step-mother who does the horrible crime. She is oddly jealous of the girl and so she kills her. This is only part of the horrible things that she does. After she kills the girl, she cooks her and feeds her to the rest of the family. This crime is just too horrible to fathom. The girl trusted her step-mother and the step-mother betrayed her trust.

The last example that I am going to use is not as gruesome as the stories that I have mentioned already. In the story, Cap o' Rushes, the father does not think that one of his daughters loves him as much as he thinks that she should, so he sends her away. He is able to disown one of his own children. I do not think that is how family members should treat each other.

This unit had a way of using the most unlikely people as the villains. By using the family members, I think the stories are more memorable than they would have been by just using strangers as the bad guys. It uses the people that you would never suspect to harm their own family members. It shows that family can be just as cruel, if not more than, strangers.

A family tree. Created by: Dženan Zukić. Source: Wikimedia Commons