WHAT IS A LINE - brothers grimm

Disney has long been known for taking fairytales and making them more palatable for young children and general audiences. Even many of the Grimm fairy tales were softened before Disney even got their hands the hands-on them. The Grimm brothers and other contemporaries themselves even softened the Myths from their originals when they wrote their versions. Many of the original fairytales were quite gross and graphic. These are dark fairytales and far from anything that Disney would ever produce.

Rumpelstiltskin:

The story of Rumpelstiltskin starts harmlessly enough. Rumpelstiltskin spins straw to gold for a young lady who has to turn the straw into gold or face death. To do this trick the girl had made a deal with him that she would give him her first born child. Years pass and when the time to pay up, the girl doesn't want to do it. Rumpelstiltskin then make her a deal. If she can say his name, he will let her out of the deal. What he does not know is that she has often heard him singing his name, when she spied on him. She answers easily and wins this contest.

A simple enough fairytale at this point and not too gross. But it goes on from there... Rumpelstiltskin is a little bit upset. He slammed his foot into the ground so hard that it got stuck. He then pulled so hard trying to get himself unstuck that he literally rips himself in two pieces and dies.

Pied Piper:

A town is infested with malignant disease bearing rats. A Piper comes into town offers of villagers to get rid of all the rats for an outrageous sum of money. The villagers agree. After the piper has gotten rid of the rats, walking them off the cliff, he returned to town for his money. The poor villagers then refused to pay. At the end of the original story the piper gets his revenge on the townsfolk by drawing the children out of town with his magical piping and leading them to the river where, they all drown.

Cinderella:

The origins of the story go way back to the Greek historian called Strabo. The story is close to being the same except for a couple minor flourishes. The heroines name is not Cinderella, but that part is not gross.

In the original version the greedy stepsisters actually cut off parts of their feet to get them to fit inside the glass slippers, when the Prince finds out they attempted to deceive him, he is rightfully indignant. He then sends pigeons to pluck out their eyes.

Hansel and Gretel:

The famous German version of this fairytale is fairly sanitary. In the original French tale called, "the lost children" the story gets a little bit wickeder. It is not an old lady who is going to cook the children that find them in the forest; it is the Devil. Just like the children trick to witch, they also trick the devil. This is the gross part though. The devil is going to put them on the sawhorse to, "bleed" them. 

Sleeping Beauty:

The story Sleeping Beauty in the original fairytale form is almost shocking. The original version, which was written well before the Brothers Grimm created their "softer and kinder" version, has some shocking differences.

One of the first things is that the Princess goes into the curse by having her fingerprints by magical spindle, the tip of which is stuck her finger. When the Prince shows up it goes very, "pear shaped." Rather than showing up and kissing her awake with, "loves true kiss" the Prince shows up and gives her, "loves true rape".

Somehow she manages to survive the rape and sleeps on , alone and abandoned for nine more months. She then goes through the pain of childbirth, still without waking. She gives birth to twins. One of the children, being hungry, sucks her finger where the magic spindle had pricked her. When the child does this he unknowingly sucks out the accursed spindle tip, this frees Sleeping Beauty from her magical slumber.

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From this, it is evident to see how much the fairytales of today's world have been changed. The original story line is in tact, but all of the violence, and so on, has been removed - almost censored. I wasn't quite sure how much was appropriate to put on here, some of it I felt I couldn't even copy onto my blog. I certainly don't want to focus on any of these negative issues, as the brothers themselves did a whole load of editing in order to make the stories a lot softer, a lot more adapted. As the stories were for children, it is obvious why this has been done. However, in modern society, the older generation is exposed to a lot worse, and they are used to gruesome tales. 
Their stories have become a collection of the world's best known and most popular fairytales. 

 I do not want to promote the 'grossness' of the originals, I just want to look at the idea of modernising them and giving them a new identity.