Fairy Tales
What is the signifigance of the number 3 in fairy tales?
Does anyone know of any good websites to find out why the number 3 is a reoccuring theme in fairy tales?
Intriguing question!
Found an extract from Wikepedia, and I'm giving my own thoughts after:
Wikipedia:
Morphology
Vladimir Propp specifically studied a collection of Russian fairy tales, but his analysis has been found useful for the tales of other countries.
Having criticized Aarne-Thompson type analysis for ignoring what motifs did in stories, he analyzed the tales for the function each character and action fulfilled and concluded that a tale was composed of thirty-one elements and eight character types. While the elements were not all required for all tales, when they appeared, they did so in an invariant order — except that each individual element might be negated twice, so that it would appear three times, as when, in Brother and Sister, the brother resists drinking from enchanted streams twice, so that it is the third that enchants him.
One such element is the donor who gives the hero magical assistance, often after testing him, and this function can be independent of any appearance of the donor. In The Golden Bird, the talking fox tests the hero by warning him against entering an inn and, after he succeeds, helps him find the object of his quest; in Cinderella, the fairy godmother gives Cinderella the dresses she needs to attend the ball; in The Red Ettin, the role is split into the mother, who offers the hero the whole of a journey cake with her curse, or half with her blessing, and when he takes the half, a fairy who gives him advice; in The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body, three separate animals pledge the hero their aid in return for his aid. Other fairy tales, such as The Story of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear, do not feature the donor.
Analogies have been drawn between this and the analysis of myths into the Hero's journey.
This analysis has been criticized for ignoring tone, mood, characters, and, indeed, anything at all that differentiates one fairy tale from another..
Then here's my own thoughts:
Most prose hinges on the basic theme of 3s. Example: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. It is the essential breakdown of any conflict, and conflict is the ubiquitous constant in fiction. You become aware of a situation, you confront and struggle with the situation, and you either overcome or are defeated by the conflict.
With fairy tales, I think it goes a bit further. You're right. I hadn't really thought about it before, but the 3 little pigs, the 3 bears, you have to stop and wonder.
I can only suggest that perhaps the general moralistic nature of fairy tales is mapped (intentionally or not) to Freud's division of our minds. (I admit I was tempted to go with the holy trinity, but I can't really defend that stance).
The 3 parts of the mind are the id (uncontrollable animal instinct, survival, the child), the superego (parental control and morals, what is taught to us by society and parents), and the ego(connection to reality, our instinctual understanding of control-a balance).
You can equate these 3 components to the 3s in the fairy tales where they are represented by characters. However, when the 3s are in the story line, I think it goes back to the ordinary prose structure.
Hope this helps.
Fairy Tales - Cinderella
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