The author cleverly flips the table regarding qualities typically expected of little girls and bears by contrasting the characters’ behaviors. The storyteller presents a genteel Bear Family who suffered loss at the hands of a little girl with golden hair. The Bears are not aggressors trespassing, stealing, and destroying Goldilocks is. The author goes to great lengths to contrast the good, polite Bears who harmed nobody with Goldilocks, an impudent, rude little girl who destroyed the Bears’ property. The description of the characters contradicts commonly accepted beliefs about the characteristics of bears and little girls. … She went to the porridge of the little bear … that was neither too hat not too cold, but just right, … she at it up” ( ). If she had been a well-brought-up little girl she would have waited till the Bears came home, … But she was an impudent, rude little girl, and so she set about helping herself. … went in … saw the porridge on the table. The storyteller describes Goldilocks as “ … a little girl called Goldilocks, who lived at the other side of the wood … sent on an errand by her mother … (had been catching butterflies instead of running on her errand), passed by the house, … looked in at the window … peeped in at the keyhole, for she was not at all a well-brought-up little girl … lifted the latch. … They prepared breakfast, took a walk together while breakfast cooled, were polite, well-brought-up … good Bears, who did nobody any harm, and never suspected that anybody would harm them … good Bears- a little rough or so, as the manner of Bears is, but for all that very good-natured and hospitable” ( ). The storyteller describes the bears, “There were three Bears who lived together in their own house in a wood … a Little Wee Bear, … a Middle-sized Bear, … a Great Big Bear. The following excerpts from the story demonstrate this. Through the author’s style of contrasting the characters, this fable presents a picture of good or constructive behavior and bad or destructive behavior, as well as a reason for the behavior. While her actions momentarily satisfied her, taking up residence in the bears’ house was disastrous for both her and the Bear family. This old story identifies Goldilocks’s behavior as problematic. My recent brush-up on Goldilocks opened my eyes to the real story. I imagined her terrified when confronted by their bears, and I could not imagine how she could escape unharmed. When I was a child, I imagined Goldilocks as little girl with golden blonde curls who haphazardly gets lost in the woods and stumbles upon an unlocked house enters therein, ears their food, makes herself at home, destroys their furniture, and finally sleeps in the little bear’s bed until she was aroused from her slumber by three threatening bears. The version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears used for this Review was published in 1922, as part of the collection of English Fairytales retold by Flora Annie Steel. Most of us are familiar with the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, a very old folk tale.
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