Cat Massacre Book Critique

How many of us can say we’ve never read the “Mother Goose” tales of Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty? What about Bluebeard, Hansel and Gretel, or Tom Thumb? I think you get my point. The point is these are “American” folktales that have been told for generation after generation. Although, what makes these stories American? The answer: they’re not. In reality, these stories have been apart of the world’s history before we probably even know it, no matter the country. The Great Cat Massacre by Robert Darnton is a fascinating and interesting book that takes a step deeper into discovering the origins of different folktales from the early fifteenth century through the eighteenth century in France.
Many of the folktales told in France were written down during the Golden Age of folktale research. The “Peasants Tell Tales” was the first section of this novel that explains the research of “scientific folktales.” The stories were told by peasants who had learned them as children growing up in France a long time before literacy became popular. Darnton’s purpose was to explain that folktales were not only stories, but were actual descriptions of history. Unlike the French Renaissance, the zeitgeist was very negative and inhumane filled with incest, rape, economic problems, etc., throughout this era. Don’t believe me? Think about the story “Little Red Riding Hood.”
Now, according to Darnton, after depiction of this story it was revealed that the story could be analyzed in depth by psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud was the mastermind behind this type of psychology with the ideas of the id, superego, and ego. It was believed that the id was the wolf and since Red gets with her Dad, the id was satisfied. This sounds barbaric and disgusting but through out this time incest was a normal thing. It was stated that families did not have the privacy back then that they did today and children grew up watching their parents participate in sexual relations. This was...