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By Vanessa Joosen |
Jan 1, 2008
“Jack and the Beanstalk” is a British fairy tale, and the most popular story from a large group of “Jack tales.” Antti
Aarne and Stith
Thompson classify the tale as “The boy steals the giant's treasure.” There is no definitive text, but the best-known versions were written by Benjamin
Tabart in 1807 and Joseph
Jacobs in 1890. In Jacobs's version, the poor boy Jack trades the family's only cow for magic beans, out of which grows a huge beanstalk all the way up to heaven. When Jack climbs the stalk, he meets a cannibalistic giant who utters his famous verse: “Fee fie fo fum, / I smell the blood of an English man, / be he alive, / or be he dead, / I'll grind his bones to make my bread.” With the help of the giant's wife, Jack tricks the giant and returns home with a bag of gold, a magic hen that lays golden eggs, and a singing harp. When the harp wakes the giant and he follows Jack down the beanstalk, the boy chops down the plant and is saved. In Tabart's version, Jack's stealing is justified by the giant's having robbed and killed his father. According to Bruno
Bettelheim, this tale describes a boy's development into a man, and after Jack has climbed the phallic beanstalk, he is ready for his oedipal fight with the giant. In contemporary fairy tale retellings for children, Jack often turns up as a humorous intertextual reference. Janet and Allan
Ahlberg's The Jolly Postman (1986) contains a postcard that Jack sends to the giant (Mr. Bigg), saying how much he likes the hen with the golden eggs (“it's better than traveller's cheques”). In Roald
Dahl's Revolting Rhymes (1982), Jack sends his nagging mother up the beanstalk and finds out that the best way to trick the giant is to take a bath. See also Fairy Tales and Folk Tales; Jack Tales; and biographies of figures mentioned in this article.
© Oxford University Press 2006
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