Goldilocks and the Three Bears

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"Goldilocks and The Three Bears"
Short story by Robert Southey
Illustration by Arthur Rackham, 1918, in English Fairy Tales by Flora Annie Steel
Original title	"The Story of the Three Bears"
Country	England
Genre(s)	Fairy tale
Publication
Published in	The Doctor
Publication type	Essay and story collection
Publisher	Longman, Rees, etc.
Media type	Print
Publication date	1837

"Goldilocks and the Three Bears" is a 19th-century English fairy tale of which three versions exist. The original version of the tale tells of an impudent old woman who enters the forest home of three anthropomorphic bachelor bears while they are away. She eats some of their porridge, sits down on one of their chairs, breaks it, and sleeps in one of their beds. When the bears return and discover her, she wakes up, jumps out of the window, and is never seen again. The second version replaces the old woman with a young, naive, blonde-haired girl named Goldilocks, and the third and by far best-known version replaces the bachelor trio with a family of three: a father bear, a mother bear, and a baby bear. The story has elicited various interpretations and has been adapted to film, opera, and other media. "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" is one of the most popular fairy tales in the English language.^[1]

In Robert Southey's story, three male bears—a small bear, a medium bear, and a large bear—live together in a house in the woods. Southey describes them as good-natured, trusting, harmless, clean, and hospitable. Each bear has his own bowl of porridge, his own chair, and his own bed. One day, while their hot porridge is cooling, they wander through the woods. An old woman—described throughout the story as insolent, mean, swearing, ugly, dirty, and a vagabond who belongs in a reformatory—discovers the bears' home. She looks through the window and keyhole, opens the latch, and, after ensuring that no one is home, enters. The old woman tries the porridge of the big bear, which is too hot for her; then she tries the porridge of the middle bear, which is too cold; finally, she eats the porridge of the smallest bear. Next, she sits down in the chair of the big bear, which is too hard for her, and then in the chair of the middle bear, which is too soft. When she sits in the chair of the small bear, it breaks as a result. Continuing her exploration of the house, she finds the bears' beds. After trying the big bear's bed and the middle bear's bed and finding them unsuitable, she goes to sleep in the smallest bear's bed. When the bears return home, the story reaches its climax. One after another, they discover that someone has eaten their porridge, sat in their chairs, and lain in their beds. The smallest bear finds the old woman in his bed and exclaims, "Someone has lain down in my little bed—and there she is still!" Startled, the old woman jumps out of the window, runs away, and is never seen again.

The story makes extensive use of the literary rule of three, featuring three chairs, three bowls of porridge, three beds, and the three title characters who live in the house. There are also three sequences of the bears discovering in turn that someone has been eating from their porridge, sitting in their chairs, and finally, lying in their beds, at which point the climax of Goldilocks being discovered occurs. This follows three earlier sequences of Goldilocks trying the bowls of porridge, chairs, and beds successively, each time finding the third "just right". Author Christopher Booker characterises this as the "dialectical three" where "the first is wrong in one way, the second in another or opposite way, and only the third, in the middle, is just right". Booker continues: "This idea that the way forward lies in finding an exact middle path between opposites is of extraordinary importance in storytelling".^[2]

This concept has spread across many other disciplines, particularly developmental psychology, biology, economics, Buddhism, and engineering where it is called the "

In The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales (2002), Harvard professor Maria Tatar notes that Southey's story is often viewed as a cautionary fable, conveying a lesson about the dangers of venturing into unknown territories. Similar to The Three Little Pigs, the story uses repetition to capture a child's attention and reinforce themes of protection and safety. Tatar highlights that while today's interpretations of the story often frame it as a quest for discovering what's "just right," earlier generations viewed it as a tale about an intruder who lacked self-control and respect for others' property.^[6]

In

Maria Tatar critiques Bettelheim's interpretation, suggesting that his analysis may overly instrumentalize fairy tales, turning them into vehicles for messages and behavioral models for children. While the story might not resolve Oedipal issues or sibling rivalry in the way Bettelheim believes Cinderella does, it emphasizes the importance of respecting others' property and the consequences of "trying out" things that don't belong to you.^[6]

In the Handbook of Psychobiography, Alan C. Elms offers a different perspective, rejecting Bettelheim's view of the story as a tale of post-Oedipal ego development. Instead, he interprets it through the

Freudian concept of pre-Oedipal anality.^[8] Elms argues that Bettelheim may have overlooked the themes in the story, which could be beneficial for a child's personality development. He believes that the story is mainly aimed at preschool children, who are learning about cleanliness, maintaining order in their environment, and dealing with disruptions to that order. Based on his own experiences and observations, Elms suggests that children are more likely to identify with the clean, orderly bear protagonists rather than with the rebellious, unruly human antagonist. He traces the theme of anality in The Story of the Three Bears back to Robert Southey's meticulous, cleanliness-obsessed aunt, who raised him and passed on her obsession in a milder form.^[7]

In other media

Film and television

• MGM
  .

• Coronet Films released a short live-action film featuring real bears and a child in 1958.

• Hanna-Barbera
  did its take on the original Three Bears tale in basic concept, entitled Help! ... It's the Hair Bear Bunch!, which was produced for CBS' Saturday-morning programme in the 1971-72 season. One episode of the series was based loosely on the Goldilocks variant, featuring the ursine trio replacing three humans in ursine costume for a production thereof from Pinchpenny Studios, with child actor Twinkles Sunshine in the Goldilocks role seeking to rewrite such in a more slapstick sort of vein.

• In 1984, Faerie Tale Theatre aired an episode titled "Goldilocks," starring Tatum O'Neal.

• The Spanish animated series The Three Bears aired from 1999 to 2001.

• In the Halloween episode "Treehouse of Horror XI" of The Simpsons, there is a scene where Goldilocks is humorously mauled by the three bears.

• In the 2022 animated film Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Goldilocks and the Three Bears serve as antagonists.

Theater and comics

In November 1949, Walt Disney published the comic The Goldilocks Gambit, written by Carl Barks.^[9]

In 1997,

narrator and orchestra, or eight narrators and orchestra) premiered at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. The libretto by Donald Sturrock was based on Roald Dahl's poem Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Set in a forest jury court, the opera portrays Baby Bear on trial for allegedly attacking Miss Goldilocks. The story flips the traditional narrative, as the defense attorney highlights the trauma inflicted on the bears by the mischievous "naughty little rogue," Goldilocks.^[10]

See also

• Little Red Riding Hood

References

Citations

1. ^ Elms 1977, p. 257
2. ^ Booker 2005, pp. 229–32
3. PMID 21552010
   .
4. ISBN 9780803916487
   .
5. ^ S Hawking, The Grand Design (London 2011) p. 194
6. ^
   ISBN 978-0-393-05163-6
   .
7. ^
   ISBN 978-0-19-516827-3
   .
8. ISBN 978-0-19-516827-3
   .
9. ^ "The Goldilocks Gambit". inducks.org. Retrieved 25 September 2024.
10. ^ "Schwertsik, Kurt: Roald Dahl's Goldilocks (1997)". www.boosey.com. Retrieved 25 September 2024.

General sources

• ISBN 0-8264-5209-4
  .
• Briggs, Katherine Mary (2002) [1977]. British Folk Tales and Legends.
  ISBN 0-415-28602-6
  .
• "Coronet: Goldilocks and the Three Bears". Internet Archive. Retrieved 21 February 2009.
• Curry, Charles Madison (1921). Children's Literature.
  ISBN 9781344646789
  . three bears.
• "Disney: Goldilocks and the Three Bears". The Encyclopedia of Disney Animated Shorts. Archived from the original on 22 February 2013. Retrieved 21 February 2009.
• Dorson, Richard Mercer (2001) [1968]. The British Folklorists.
  ISBN 0-415-20426-7
  .
• Elms, Alan C. (July–September 1977). ""The Three Bears": Four Interpretations".
  JSTOR 539519
  .
• "MGM: Goldilocks and the Three Bears". Archived from the original on 17 January 2013. Retrieved 12 November 2010.
• Ober, Warren U. (1981). The Story of the Three Bears. Scholars Facsimiles & Reprints.
  ISBN 0-8201-1362-X
  .
• ISBN 0-19-211559-6
  .
• "Roald Dahl's Goldilocks (1997)". Retrieved 3 January 2009.
• Schultz, William Todd (2005). Handbook of Psychobiography. Oxford University Press.
  ISBN 0-19-516827-5
  .
• Seal, Graham (2001). Encyclopedia of Folk Heroes.
  ISBN 1-57607-216-9
  .
• ISBN 0-393-05163-3
  .

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Scrapefoot

Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Three Bears.

• "The Story of the Three Bears", manuscript by Eleanor Mure, 1831 - first recorded version
• "The Story of the Three Bears" by Robert Southey, 1837 – first published version
• "The Story of the Three Bears", versified by George Nicol, 2nd edition, 1839 (text)
• "The Three Bears" by Robert Southey – later version with "Silver-hair", a "little girl"
• "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", by Katharine Pyle, 1918 – later version with father, mother and baby bear