I encourage everyone to read the original versions of the fairy tales, as told in the Grimms, Perrault, etc.
These stories sometimes read like something from another world. Like they are set in a world with hidden rules and assumptions, that we do not understand and seem alien to us.
Reading Thumbelina to my four-year-old, and realizing that she was basically... trafficked? Kidnapped from a loving home by a mother toad to marry her ugly son; she escapes but then is homeless, eventually taken in by a kindly field mouse. But then the field mouse eventually decides to force her to marry a mole who wants her to live underground, before finally escaping that and finding people of her own kind who respect her decisions. Makes you wonder for how many children that was more an allegory than a fairly tale, and how many didn't manage all their escapes.
I read the first edition of Grimm's fairy tales in translation not too long ago after having wanted to for awhile, since the translation was released.
The thing I was most surprised by was how bizarre some of the stories were. Not how disturbing or dark they were, but how bizarre and dreamlike they were. Things coming out of nowhere in ways that seemed like nonsequiturs, I still can't tell if there's something about past culture that is lost on me, lost to time, or if the original storytelling was in fact poor, or what.
I completely agree with the general sentiment of the linked article, and I think some of the commenters are exactly right to point out that these tales have been edited and reedited in various forms over time for all sorts of reasons, sometimes to make them less dark than they originally were.
But some of the revisions I knew from animated films and mid to late twentieth century children's books weren't just happier, they made more sense, and were easier to follow for whatever reason.
I loved reading the first edition and agree that it's great to go back to them. I also don't mean to suggest the originals were bad — I think some of the twists and plotlines were better in the originals. But I get the sense that some edits might have been made not to "lighten" the tales, but rather to just make them simpler. In some cases lightening might have been a secondary result of simplifying, and in other cases the latter type of edit encouraged the former.
As the title suggests, it is a collection of stories mostly written in 10th-century China, translated into English. It includes copious introductory material, on every story individually, to help you understand what's going on.
Even then, there's plenty of material in the stories themselves where it's easy to tell that the author expected you to be familiar with something, but you have no idea what it might be.
> Like they are set in a world with hidden rules and assumptions, that we do not understand and seem alien to us.
Is that so difficult to believe? That world existed (and still exists), and each new generation of young people acts flabbergasted when the rules and assumptions smack them in their faces. I was young once, and only now am starting to recognize the world(s) that is far older than myself, whose rules and assumptions I can only vaguely begin to comprehend. You find this in fairy tales too, but not only there.
These stories sometimes read like something from another world. Like they are set in a world with hidden rules and assumptions, that we do not understand and seem alien to us.