阅读理解
As long as people have been telling stories, crones(丑陋的老太婆)have been scaring the wits out of
children. "Nags(怨妇),witches, evil stepmothers, cannibals(食人妇). It's quite dreadful," says
Maria Tatar, who teaches a course on folklore and mythology at Harvard.
"But old women are also powerful—they're often the ones who can work
magic." In the Disney film Snow
White, there's a scene in which the beautiful, charming, wicked queen turns
into an old hag and poisons Snow White so she'll sleep forever. The old lady in
Hansel and Gretel wants to roast
children in her oven and the witch in The
Little Mermaid cuts out Ariel's tongue.
Tatar says old women villains (恶人)are especially scary because，historically, the most powerful person
in a child's life was the mother. "Children do have a way of splitting the
mother figure into...the evil mother—who's always making rules and regulations,
policing your behavior, getting angry at you—and then the kind mother—the one
who is giving and protects you, makes sure that you survive."
Veronique Tadjo, a writer who grew up in the Ivory Coast,
thinks there's a fear of female power in general. She says a common figure in
African folk tales is the old witch who destroys people's souls. Still, they're
not all bitter and evil hags. Elderly women in folk tales often use their
knowledge and experience of the world to guide the troubled protagonist(主人公). Tadjo points to the Kenyan story Marwe In The Underworld about a girl who
commits suicide by drowning herself and enters the Land of the Dead where she
meets an old woman. "That old woman teaches her quite a lot of things,"
Tadjo says. "And also, when Marwe starts longing for the world of the
living, she helps her go back to the surface with a lot of riches. And we
understand that Marwe has been rewarded for her goodness." In other words:
Do your chores and you'll be rewarded. The point of these ancient tales, no
matter what continent they come from, may have been to scare children into
behaving.
Perhaps the scariest old woman character—the ugly Baba
Yaga—comes from Russia. She's bony with a hooked nose and long, iron teeth. Her
hut(小屋)stands on chicken legs and she kidnaps
children and eats them. Safe to say Baba Yaga has been making Eastern European
children sleepless for centuries. In one interpretation, a mean stepmother
sends the young girl Vasilisa to Baba Yaga's hut in the woods to get a candle.
The girl is sure she's being sent to her death. Baba Yaga forces her to cook
and clean, and Vasilisa does everything she's told. In the end, the old crone
gives her what she needs and sends her home. "You see this kind of double
face of the hag,"Maria Tatar says. "On the one hand: aggressive,
threatening. And on the other hand: sometimes to make sure that there is a
happily ever after."
There's that power again. In Japanese folklore, the Yama
Uba(山姥)is an equally ambiguous old woman. She's
a mountain witch who, like Baba Yaga, lures people into her hut and eats them.
But she'll also help a lost traveler. Noriko Reider is a professor at Miami
University of Ohio who's done extensive research on Yama Uba stories. "She
brings fortune and happiness," Reider says. "She can also bring death
and destruction for those who are not very good."
According to Cuban-American writer Alma Flor Ada, in
Hispanic(拉美地区的)culture
old women are multi-talented. Ada is co-author of Tales Our Grandmas Told, which includes a story about Caliph's son
who becomes seriously ill. After "all of the best physicians in the land"
fail to cure him, Caliph sends his messengers searching for help. Then one
morning, an old woman arrives with this advice: To get well, the prince must
wear the overcoat of a man who is truly happy. And of course it works.
