Jack and the Beanstalk

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"Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman."Illustration by Arthur Rackham from a 1918 English Fairy Tales, by Flora Annie Steel
"Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman."
Illustration by Arthur Rackham from a 1918 English Fairy Tales, by Flora Annie Steel

Jack and the Beanstalk is an English fairy tale, closely associated with the tale of Jack the Giant Killer. It is known under a number of versions. Benjamin Tabart recorded the oldest known one in 1807, but Joseph Jacobs popularized it in English Fairy Tales (1890).[1] Jacobs's version is most commonly reprinted today and is believed to more closely adhere to the oral versions than Tabart's, because it lacks the moralizing of that version.[2] The story was made into a play by Charles Ludlam.

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[edit] Plot summary

The story tells of a boy named Jack who was sent to the market one day instructed by his mother to sell their cow. As Jack proceeded to the market he met a stranger who offered to trade five "magic beans" for the cow. Jack accepted the trade and returned back home with the beans in his pocket. Jack's mother was displeased that he had not obeyed her instructions to sell the cow and threw the beans out of the window. As Jack slept, the beans germinated into the soil and a gigantic beanstalk grew in their place by morning. When Jack saw the huge beanstalk, he immediately decided to climb up it. He arrived in a land high up in the clouds that happened to be the home of a giant. When he broke into the giant's castle, the giant quickly sensed a human was near:

Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum!??
I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Be he 'live, or be he dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my bread.

However, Jack was saved by the giant's wife and as he escaped from the palace, he took a bag of gold coins with him. Jack desired to seek out more treasures from the castle in the clouds and climbed once more up the beanstalk. This time he stole a hen which laid golden eggs. Again he was saved from harm by the giant's wife.

Jack disregarded being nearly discovered by the giant twice and decided to go up the beanstalk a third time. This time, he stole a magical harp that played by itself. The instrument did not appreciate being stolen and called out to the giant for help. The giant chased Jack down the beanstalk, but Jack managed to get to the ground before the giant did. Jack, seeing an axe on the floor beside him, immediately chopped the beanstalk down with an axe. The giant fell to earth, hitting the ground so hard that it split, pulling the beanstalk down with him.

[edit] Origin

In Walter Crane's woodcut the harp reaches out to cling to the vine
In Walter Crane's woodcut the harp reaches out to cling to the vine

The origin of Jack and the Beanstalk is unknown, although the author was almost certainly British or German.[citation needed] The earliest printed edition which has survived is the 1807 book The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk, printed by Benjamin Tabart, although the story was already in existence sometime before this, as a burlesque of the story entitled The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean was included in the 1734 second edition of Round About Our Coal-Fire.

In the usual version of the tale, the giant is unnamed, but many plays based on the story name him as Blunderbore; a giant of that name also appears in Jack the Giant-Killer.

The beanstalk is reminiscent of the ancient Saxon belief in a World tree connecting earth to heaven.

The giant's "Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum!" was included in William Shakespeare's King Lear.[3]

[edit] Variants

Other tales of this type include the Italian Thirteenth and the French How the Dragon was Tricked.

The Brothers Grimm drew analogies between this tale and the German The Devil With the Three Golden Hairs, where the devil's mother or grandmother acted much like the wife in this tale: a female figure protecting the child from the evil male figure.[4]

The tale is unusual in that the hero, although grown, does not marry at the end of it but returns to his mother; this is found in few other tales, although some, such as some variants of Vasilissa the Beautiful, do feature it.[5]

One of the many retellings of the tale appears in A Book of Giants and A Choice of Magic by Ruth Manning-Sanders.

[edit] Controversies

The story portrays a hero unscrupulously hiding in a man's house, playing on his wife's sympathies in order to rob and finally murder the owner of the house. In Tabart's version, a fairy woman explains to Jack that the giant had robbed and killed his father, thus transforming the acts into justice.[6]

Jacobs dropped the justification on the grounds that it had not been in the version he had heard as a child, and because children knew that robbery and murder were wrong without being told so by a fairy tale.[7]

Many modern interpretations have followed Tabart and painted the giant as a villain, terrorizing smaller folk and often stealing items of value, so that Jack becomes a legitimate protagonist. For example, the 1952 film starring Abbott and Costello blames the giant for Jack's ill fortunes and impoverishment, as he has been stealing food and wealth from the smaller folk of the lands below his home, including the hen that lays golden eggs, which in this version originally belonged to Jack's family. In other versions it is implied that the giant had stolen the hen and the harp from Jack's father. And since Jack's father neither appears in the story nor is he mentioned, it is often speculated that the giant murdered him. And thus, Jack's killing the giant is not only self-defense, but also an act of divine vengeance[who?]. However, Brian Henson's 2001 TV miniseries Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story is an alternative version of the tale which abandons Tabart's additions and significantly vilifies Jack, due to Henson's disgust with Jack's morally questionable actions in the original story.[8]

[edit] Psychoanalytical interpretation

In The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, Freudian psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim contends that the story of Jack and the beanstalk symbolizes an adolescent male's "giving up relying on oral satisfaction. . . and replacing them with phallic satisfaction," declaring that Jack's climbing of the beanstalk "symbolizes not only the 'magic' power of the phallus to rise, but also a boy's feelings connected to masturbation" because it shows how the boy "fears that his desire to become sexually active amounts to stealing parental powers and prerogatives."

[edit] Film adaptations

Walt Disney made a short of the same name in 1922, and a separate version entitled Mickey and the Beanstalk in 1947 as part of Fun and Fancy Free. This adaptation of the story put Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy in the role of Jack. Mickey, Donald and Goofy live in a place called "Happy Valley" which is plagued by a severe drought, and they have nothing to eat except one loaf of bread. Mickey trades in the cow (which Donald was going to kill for food) for the magic beans. Donald throws the beans out the window in a fit of rage, and the beanstalk sprouts. In the magical kingdom, Mickey, Donald and Goofy help themselves to a sumptuous feast. This rouses the ire of the giant (named "Willy" in this version), who captures Donald and Goofy and locks them in a box with a singing golden harp, and it's up to Mickey to find the keys to unlock the box and rescue them. The story villainizes the giant by blaming Happy Valley's hard times on Willy's theft of the magic harp, whose song kept the land prosperous; unlike the harp of the original tale, this magic harp wants to be rescued from the giant, and the hapless heroes return her to her rightful place and Happy Valley to its former glory. This version of the fairy tale was narrated by Edgar Bergen.

Warner Bros. adapted the story into three Merrie Melodies cartoons. Friz Freleng directed Jack-Wabbit and the Beanstalk (1943), Chuck Jones directed Beanstalk Bunny (1955), and Freleng directed Tweety and the Beanstalk (1957).

Gisaburo Sugii directed a feature-length Japanese anime telling of the story of Jack and the Beanstalk in 1974, titled Jack to Mame no Ki. The film, a musical, was produced by Group TAC and released by Nippon Herald. The writers introduced a few new characters, including Jack's comic-relief dog, Crosby, and Margaret, a beautiful princess engaged to be married to the giant (named "Tulip" in this version) due to a spell being cast over her by the giant's mother (an evil witch). Jack, however, develops a crush on Margaret, and one of his aims in returning to the magic kingdom is to rescue her. The film was dubbed into English, with legendary voice talent Billie Lou Watt voicing Jack, and received a very limited run in U.S. theaters in 1976. It was later released on VHS (now out of print) and aired several times on HBO in the 1980s. However, it is now available on DVD with both English and Japanese dialogue.

Michael Davis directed the 1994 adaptation entitled Beanstalk, starring J.D. Davis as Jack and Stuart Pankin as the Giant. The film was released by Full Moon Entertainment, a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures.

The newest film adaptation was Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story (2001), directed by Brian Henson.

[edit] Other media

In Edward Eager's book Knight's Castle, through the use of magic a modern boy named Jack is able to enter a toy castle with his sister and cousins. When he encounters the inhabitants (his toy knight figurine and the girls' dolls who have come to life), upon learning his name they draw back in terror and ask "Not the Giant Killer?"

The story is the basis of the similarly titled traditional British Pantomime, wherein the Giant is certainly a villain, Jack's mother the Dame and Jack the Principal Boy.

Jack of Jack and the Beanstalk is the protagonist of the comic book Jack of Fables, a spin-off of Fables which also features other elements from the story such as giant beanstalks and giants living in the clouds.

DI Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crimes Division from the book The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde feels a strange impulse to climb the giant beanstalk that was grown in his mother's yard after she threw out the magic beans he had traded for her Stubbs painting of a cow. He is also thought to be a giant killer though out of the four only one was technically a giant, the others were just very tall. All the killings were in self-defense.

The Man Man song, Engrish Bwudd, features the chorus "Fee Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman."

Roald Dahl rewrote the story in a more modern and gruesome way in his book Revolting Rhymes (1982). The story of Jack and the Beanstalk is also featured in Dahl's The BFG, in which the evil giants are all afraid of the "giant-killer" Jack, who is said to kill giants with his fearsome beanstalk.

In the Crash Tag Team Racing game, a track is named " Track and the Beanstalk ".

Peter Combe rewrote the story in an upbeat song ('80s '90s?)

An episode of the BBC television series The Big Knights retold the story with the show's human protagonists as the "giants" to a race of tiny people living in their garden.

Spyro: Year of The Dragon features "Jack and the Beanstalk" on the level "Charmed Ridge". The two magic beans grow two different plants which Spyro and Jack use to get higher up the mountain where Jack wants to find the legendary Golden Goose.

An episode of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, titled "Mario and the Beanstalk", does a retelling with Bowser as the giant (no explanation as to how he becomes a giant).

Garfield and Friends parodied the story with a U.S. Acres segment titled "Jack II: The Rest of the Story". After Orson reads the original story to them, Booker, Sheldon, Roy, and Wade write up a satirical sequel patching up plot holes they noticed and villainizing Jack (who ends up in prision).

In the The Magic School Bus episode "Gets Planted", the class put on a school production of Jack and the Beanstalk, Phoebe starring as the beanstalk after Ms. Frizzle turned her into a bean plant.

An episode of The Goodies, entitled "The Goodies and the Beanstalk" is a retelling of the tale, containing a spoof of the game show It's a Knockout and Tim, Graeme and Bill's own rendition of the song "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?" There are also geese and hens that lay gold eggs and even gold bars, and the giant turns out to be only the same size as the Goodies!

Stephen Sondheim's musical Into the Woods features Jack along with several other fairy-tale characters. In the second half of the musical, the Giant's Wife climbs down the stalk to exact revenge for her husband's death, furious at Jack's betrayal of her hospitality. She is eventually killed as well.

The chorus from the song CRUA CHAN of the Argentinian rock Band Sumo says "Fee fi fo fum,I smell the blood of an Englishman"

In an episode of Rocko's Modern Life, Rocko & Heffer take turns telling an amalgamated fairy tale to a flu-ridden Filbert. At one point in the story, Hansel & "Debbie" (represented by Heffer & Rocko, respectively) scale the beanstalk where they encounter the giant (Filbert) who exclaimes, "Fee, fie, foe, fum... something stinks!

In the game, Harvest Moon (SNES) for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, if your farmer (named Jack in other versions of the game) sells a full-grown, happy cow in fall, a peddler will come and trade her for a bean (this makes the live-stock merchant angry, but he forgives you). Plant the bean in the spring (non-rainy day) at the top of the mountain, and it will sprout. Leave the mountain top, then return. The sprout will have become a beanstalk. Climb the beanstalk, and you'll find a castle in the clouds. In the castle is a golden chicken. Talk to the golden chicken, and she'll give you a golden egg. The next scene has you selling the gold egg to the peddler in the town market for a whopping 60,000 gold!

[edit] References

  1. ^ Joseph Jacobs, "Jack and the Beanstalk", English Fairy Tales
  2. ^ Maria Tatar, p 132, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, ISBN 0-393-05163-3
  3. ^ Maria Tatar, p 136, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, ISBN 0-393-05163-3
  4. ^ Jacob and Wilheim Grimm, Grimm's Fairy Tales, "The Devil With the Three Golden Tooth"
  5. ^ Maria Tatar, Off with Their Heads! p. 199 ISBN 0-691-06943-3
  6. ^ Maria Tatar, Off with Their Heads! p. 198 ISBN 0-691-06943-3
  7. ^ Joseph Jacobs, English Fairy Tales, Notes to "Jack and the Beanstalk"
  8. ^ Joe Nazzaro, Back to the Beanstalk, Starlog Fantasy Worlds (magazine), February 2002, pages 56-59,

[edit] External links