Fairy Tales

In the Fairy Tales written in the Middle Ages and the time of Inquisition, elder women are always the witches, and the young beauty is the heroine.  The elderly woman is pictured as wrinkled, stooped over and ugly.  She is full of evil.  it is the time of "witch' burning.  It is a time when the wisdom of the elder woman is being devalued by male power and control.  Wisdom is in the institution and tradition, whereas the wise elder woman questions a lot of accepted practices.  She has the wisdom of years to pass on, but this threatens power structures not of their making.  The wisdom of years helps these women to see through those rules and customs that are more about control than growth.  In the fairy tale the elder woman is full of faults such as greed and jealousy.  She is destructive of goodness.  The young beauty is full of goodness though naive.  The solution for the young girl is often the handsome prince, the young male power who comes to save her.  The Wizard of Oz is a bit more modern with the good and bad witch, though the good witch is prettier than the bad witch.  The bad witch did get the Oscar though!  Age is not all about dying and losing.  It can be about gaining wisdom, but a wisdom that can be threatening to some.