Witches and Fairy Tales

Witches are well-known in fairy tales. "Rapunzel," "Hanzel and Gretel," and "Vasilissa the Fair" are all examples of fairy tales that include witches as characters. In all of these stories the witches' are evil and the good characters always defeat the witches evil intentions and live happily ever after. The witches are also portrayed as old ugly woman with warts on their chins.

In "Rapunzel," the witch kidnaps the baby Rapuzel and locks her up in a tower for years until the Prince finds her and they fall in love. When the witch finds out about their love, she banishes Rapunzel into the forest and puts a curse on the prince. The prince becomes blind. After many years, Rapunzel and her prince find each other, the prince gets his sight back, and they live happily ever after.

In both "Hanzel and Gretel" and "Vasilissa the Fair," the witches eat people. The idea of witches eating people, especially children, did not help the reputation of witches. Fairy tales are fables written for children to teach them lessons. Parents used these fairy tales to teach children that if they disobeyed, a mean and ugly witch would eat them.