"She was suprised as the prince came into her" BAHA: themes in Fairytails

- Use of the number "3": Repetition three times.
- Beauty, especially within young women
- Evil Matriarch
- Conditions/Oaths
- Desire for children/ loss of children.
- Climbing the social and financial ladder
- Weak paternal figure
- Forests
- Magic
- Night/sleep
- Names serving only as roles
- Stealing
- Sexual undertones
- Clear perception of good and evil
- Gruesome, yet overlooked deaths
- Virtue
- Greed
- Marriage
- Instant love
- Talking animals

Evil Matriarch
Freud holds that tensions between a mother and daughter stem from the fact all daughters are in love with their fathers, thus jealousy on the mothers part drives a wedge between them and their child. These tensions between women and daughters are highlighted within most fairy tales: In "Hansel and Gretel" the step-mother wants to leave the children to starve, in Snow White, and Cinderella there are evil mothers and step-mothers both of whom hate their daughters and are jealous of their beauty. Plenty of fairy-tales do include a female villain.

The desire for children, and the fear of losing them.
Before the development of pensions, safe childbirth and treatments such as IVF, many children died in childbirth, aswell as their mothers. It was even more important to produce a healthy child as a women's primary role was to provide children. Children also were the sole carer for their parents when they became too old to care for themselves. All of these reasons made adults even more desperate to conceive and deliver, and there was a genuine fear of the loss of a child. Fairy tales often address this fear. Rapunzel's parents were desperate for a child, the woodcutter in Rumpelstiltskin was immensely proud of his child. Also, Fairy tales often include the taking of a child, usually through a previous deal, again addressing the fear of losing a child in previous years.

Beauty and virtue of women
A women's virginity and virtue were sometimes the only credit they possessed, and virginity was sacred to women and young girls; often a compulsory asset for marriage. Freud's "Madonna/Whore complex" underlines the importance of virtue and beauty, as once a women loses her virginity, she is an evil whore. Fairy tales often accentuate the beauty, good nature and virtue of the young women; Beauty's beauty and kindness is emphasised in "Beauty and the Beast", explicitly through her name.

The number "3"
There is a common use of the number three in many classic fairy tales; three main characters, three incidents or three tasks. in "The three little pigs", there are three main characters. In "Cinderella", there are three daughters, Cinderella and her two stepsisters. In "Snow White", the Queen tries three times to kill Snow White. In practice, the number "three" symbolizes perfection and completeness. For instance, the Holy Trinity is made up of three members: God, Christ and the Holy Spirit. In Geometry, a figure cannot be formed without three distinct points. Also, "three" is considered as the basic unit of a family- father, mother and child. The number gives security to the narrator, and the reader,because it is a "perfect and complete figure"

Forests
Forests are, in stories, a place of magic and the supernatural. Most contemporarily seen in "Harry Potter", where the students are scared to enter the "Forbidden Forest" in fear of the magical creatures who live there. Vast forests are an ideal setting to place magic, as you are isolated, away from civilisation, and allows verisimilitude to occur, especially as most fairy tales include magical elements such as witches and talking animals. "Hansel and Gretel", "Goldilocks", and "Beauty and the Beast" all are set in forests, perhaps for this purpose.