The witch, of course, had perished in her oven. Which brings us to an interesting plot point: is the wicked witch in the ‘gingerbread’ house actually the children’s stepmother? The story doesn’t normally state as much, and the witch in the forest is described as ‘aged’ rather than middle-aged, which we assume the stepmother to be.īut then it’s a curious coincidence that, in the short time that Hansel and Gretel are away (a month or so little more), the stepmother dies. There’s none of the moral iffiness that surrounds Goldilocks, that young blonde who thinks it’s okay to waltz into someone’s house and just help yourself to whatever you can find: Hansel and Gretel’s nibbling of the old hag’s dwelling is occasioned by severe hunger and having been abandoned by a heartless stepmother and a hen-pecked father who should really have known better (and grown a backbone for that matter).

(Wilhelm was evidently thankful: he later married her!)Īnd as the above summary demonstrates, it’s a gem of a story: it’s not difficult to see, with its plucky and sympathetic child-protagonists, its house made out of food, and its sense of real peril, why it’s become such a favourite with ‘children of all ages’. The Brothers Grimm apparently had Wilhelm’s friend Dortchen Wild to thank for hearing about ‘Hansel and Gretel’, and so the world owes a debt of thanks to her too. He’s overjoyed to find that his children are alive, and that they don’t have to worry about starving any more. When they arrive home, they find their father waiting for them, their stepmother having died while they were away. They take them with them and leave, and – with the aid of a large bird that helps them to cross the river – they manage to find their way back home. She rescues her brother from the stable, and the two of them plunder the old woman’s house, finding boxes full of gems and pearls. Gretel then shoves the witch all the way in the oven and closes the door, leaving the old hag on Gas Mark 6 for two-and-a-half hours. She heats the oven, and asks Gretel to step inside to see if it’s hot enough.īut Gretel guesses what the evil woman plans to do, so she feigns ignorance and gets the witch to demonstrate how she should look in the oven.

But the witch decides to cook and eat him anyway. But Hansel sticks out an animal bone which the half-blind witch mistakes for a bony finger he thus staves off his fate day by day.

Hansel and Gretel by Jenni James