1800s Children’s Stories Were Violent and Gory
Stories like Mulan, The Daisy, and the oral legends were good for a scare, entertainment, or to teach a moral lesson so children understood the difference between good, evil, or just bad behavior. Most of what we know as fairy tales today started as ancient oral traditions, some with roots in actual historic events, and passed down from generation to generation. But the terror brought on by certain storytellers of the 1800s left an impression on popular culture. The Brothers Grimm commit their terrifying tales to print in the 1800s, setting the tone for children’s literature for more than a century. Some, like Hans Christian Andersen, and Heinrich Hoffman, created original stories that incorporated blood and gore to tell a relevant story, or to guide children to behave in a proper way. Even today, their stories live on, several of them reworked for modern audiences.