Age range
Grandfather and grandmother are the most popular characters of Russian folklore. It was they who cooked the kolobok, pulled the turnips, were the owners of the chicken Ryaba, raised Masha before she went to the Bear, and also took care of Alyonushka and her brother Ivanushka. Many modern children have a reasonable question: where are their parents? People who grew up in a time when realism dominated art wonder why there are no fairy tales that begin with “the husband and wife lived”, even though a family was supposed to be built around them. The answer to this question is well understood by ethnographers and folklore experts – folk art is devoted to images and symbols, and not to specific individuals with names and dates of birth.
“In Russian fairy tales, the old man and the old woman, the grandfather and the woman are not “grandmother and grandfather” in the sense in which we are used to perceiving them. From the point of view of a fairy tale, these are not figures whose task is to raise grandchildren, but symbols, markers of age and life experience,” said expert in children’s literature, head of the laboratory of sociocultural educational practices of the Moscow City Pedagogical University (MSPU), Associate Professor Ekaterina Asonova to socialbites.ca He told .
In addition, grandparents in fairy tales are almost always alone, nothing is known about their adult children. Therefore, they are in a difficult and abnormal situation for the Russian peasantry. At the time when the main tales were formed, families of two were rare, and therefore the elderly often had to find helpers from the younger generation.
In some tales, the elderly have relatives, but they have young children, which makes the situation even worse.
“The family in a fairy tale is an archetype, a symbol, not an exact reflection of reality. Whatever happens – the children are dead or never existed – therein lies the paradox of the tale. This is the starting point from which the development of the plot begins,” Asonova explained.
Since a fairy tale does not get out of the daily routine, any plot must have a conflict and an initial problem. But in a family with many healthy adult workers, there seems to be no problem.
How did you view the elderly?
It should be noted that grandfather and grandmother in Russian fairy tales are not modern relatives over 70 years old who watch TV and sometimes feed sweets to their grandchildren. In the past, in villages, people over the age of 40 were considered old and a 50-year-old woman was definitely perceived as a “grandmother”. Due to the lack of effective drugs and significantly shortened life expectancy, old age came much faster.
It is also clear from the plot of the fairy tales that the grandfather and grandmother do not have much wisdom and do not behave like the “elders” of large patriarchal families. Old age was a sign of hardship and hardship rather than mentor status.
“[Слова курочки Рябы] “Do not cry, grandfather, do not cry, woman… is a reflection of the realities of that time, when old age was often associated not with wisdom, but with poverty and inferiority,” says Ekaterina Asonova.
In many fairy tales, an old man or woman acts downright foolish and gets into trouble through his own fault. For example, in “The Proving Wife,” the grandfather accidentally finds a treasure and the family becomes rich. However, the grandmother argues with her husband and reports the gold to the master, who tries to take the wealth away from her. In “The Greedy Old Woman”, which has much in common with Pushkin’s “The Tale of the Goldfish”, the behavior of the elderly is also not distinguished by wisdom. Grandfather and grandmother find a magic tree that can grant wishes. At first they demand his wealth, but under pressure from the old woman, the grandfather asks to make himself master, colonel and king (respectively). When the old man tried to become God himself, the tree did not comply and turned the old men into bears.
The modern image of grandparents emerged only in the 20th century. According to Asonova, their role in raising grandchildren increased especially in the 1990s, and this is also reflected in modern children’s literature.
So how about Baba Yaga?
Young fairy-tale heroes often interact with extraordinary old people like Baba Yaga. Sometimes they are enemies, sometimes they help the heroes, sharing wisdom and guiding them. Baba Yaga is in no way like other unfortunate old people in the world of Russian folklore.
“She is not a grandmother in the classical sense of the word; she acts as a protector on the border of two worlds,” says Asonova.
Baba Yaga has many roles and personalities, but in the most typical scenes she “guards” the passage to the other world, the Kingdom Far Far Away. The hut on chicken legs is always located in a dark dense forest, symbolizing the border of “ordinary” reality. Baba Yaga’s bone leg also indicates a connection with the dead.
The same goes for other frankly unrealistic ancient characters, such as the old forest man, who reflects Slavic ideas about the goblin, the owner of the forest.