The Importance of True Love in Ever After

“The fairy tale is future-oriented and guides the child –in terms he can understand in both his conscious and unconscious mind –to relinquish his infantile dependency wishes and achieve a more satisfying independent existence (Bettelheim).” According to the definition of what constitutes a fairy tale, as defined by Tolkein and Bettelheim, all tales must be composed of fantasy, recovery, escape, and consolation. The most emphasized of these elements is the consolation. It’s the “Happily Ever After” ending. True Love is the key to an Ever After. It’s also the key element we desire most in life.

I always believed that somewhere in the world, waiting for me, was my one true love. I always believed that there would be something magical that drew us together. And I always believed that I would know without a doubt, upon catching her gaze, that she was the one. Fairy tales always reinforced this hope and belief.

Ricky of the Tuft completely adheres to the Tolkein/Bettelheim definition of a fairy tale. There are definite examples of fantasy, recovery, escape, and consolation. The tale begins with “a queen who bore a son so ugly and misshapen that for some time it was doubtful if he would have human form at all. (Perrault. Tuft)” Immediately we start off with a great loss. The recovery is found in a fairy that happens to be present at the child’s birth. She promises that he will be extremely intelligent with an ability to bestow the same wit upon his true love. This is a perfect example of fantasy.

Just short of eight years after the Tuft’s birth, twin girls are born to a queen in a neighboring kingdom, one is beautiful and the other one is ugly. As they’re born the same fairy is there. She declares that the beautiful daughter shall be stupid while the ugly daughter will be a genius. The stupid beautiful princess is promised to be able to bestow beauty upon her true love. The ugly sister is only promised to be intelligent.

One day Ricky of the Tuft meets the beautiful princess and he makes her intelligent in exchange for her hand in marriage. Later in the story, though hesitant, the princess marries the ugly prince, and he becomes valiant and full of masculine beauty. The paradox here is that although beauty and intellect are temporary solutions for recovery, the true escape is found in true love, and in that ideal is the consolation.

Characteristics don’t bring true happiness. Beauty seems worthless without intellect while intellect seems like it might be torture without beauty. But even with beauty and intellect, no one is truly happy in this story and there’s no justice until true love is found, the opposites attract, and then there’s an ever after of pleasure and happiness. True love is magical.

But what happens when the story skips ahead, for better or for worse, when the treasures of royalty fade away? In The Ludicrous Wishes the detritus of what was pleasure can be interpreted as the antithesis of Ever After. What if we pretended that Ricky of the Tuft made some bad regional ally choices and through a cycle of loss and recovery he found himself a poor old woodcutter? Time has passed and the beauty of the former prince and princess would have faded. The man has found himself at a point in life where he has become dissatisfied with his life. He wants more. If only he could do it over again. And “in his unhappiness, he declared that in all of his days heaven had not granted even one of his wishes. (Perrault. Wishes)”

In this tale of wishes, the poor old man is granted three chances to make his life better, however instead of being wise, he gets drunk and uses his first two wishes recklessly. The third wish he used to restore back to normal the things he made wrong. There is fantasy in having three wishes, there is a definite loss and recovery cycle, but the escape seems for like a final recovery back to the way things were and the only consolation is that everything is how it was when the story started. Change is found in the attitude of the poor woodcutter. It seems that he has realized how blessed he is to have such a treasure as his wife. What sets this fairy tale apart from many others by Perrault is that the consolation isn’t pronounced it has to be assumed. The ending isn’t consolation. It’s a moral.

Growing up comes with confrontation. We have to confront the realities of mortality, loss, and abandonment. Early on in development these issues can prove to birth incredible anxiety, the most common being separation anxiety, and the fear of abandonment. Any child and most adults can quickly relate to this stressor. Throughout life stages the fear of isolation and the threat of abandonment become our key motivators to bring change in our own lives.

One thing we can be certain of is that we’re all going to die. It’s reality. A fantasy would be immortality. But immortality can’t be achieved, however, true love can be attained. That’s the hope we carry on for. Because love is supposed to never fail and anything that fails obviously wasn’t true love. Fairy tales give us this hope. True love is the greatest wish a man could have and it’s more precious than anything else.