The Fairytale Wakes

48 - The Explanation

I couldn't bear to see you starve at home

So I brought you to the forest

Hoping someone would save you

Hoping I could starve alone.

Hoping I could make another choice

But knowing there was none

Knowing there was nothing I could do

If I wanted to save my voice.

So hungry your mouths were always

For me, my time, my life

The months sucked dry of milk

And kindness bled the days.

Now I know they call me names

The witch who leaves and eats her young

Who chose her life over many deaths

And it's love that is to blame

It's love that is to blame

It's love and hate that is to blame.

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(A/N: I've been thinking about Hansel and Gretel a lot recently, and reading some of the older, related tales. It seems that initially, the mother and father both agreed to abandon the children. Then the tales developed and it became either the wicked stepmother or the heartless father who made the decision to put the children out. As a side note, I find it interesting that in these stories, the stepmother often dies before the children come back with their riches (and it's portrayed as well deserved), while the heartless father gets to repent.

But back to the poem - I wanted to explore some of the explanations the parents had in some of those stories, but in the context of the growing honesty movement where women admit they wish they hadn't had children, or that being a mother usually isn't the rosy, content picture that society forces down our throats.

Don't get me wrong - I think (and respect greatly) the many mothers out there who are truly dedicated to their children and it can be a beautiful thing. But I think there have been a lot of women who have been silenced because their stories are less socially acceptable. But they still exist, these women who are resentful or angry or afraid of their children or the expectation that they lay down everything for their children, including their own identity and their lives (and because they have been silenced, it perpetrates a terrible myth in an already over-populated world that everyone should have children, but I digress). And my sympathy lies with them too).