Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination

by Vigen Guroian

Provoked by a trend in the publishing industry to produce bowdlerized versions of the fairy tales and new tellings bent to the latest ideology or social movement, Charles Dickens in 1853 issued an impassioned defense of fairy tales, titled “Frauds on the Fairies.” He urged that in “a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.” Indeed, he could not imagine the survival of English culture itself were these stories to be altered according to the latest fashion, for then the original stories would soon be forgotten and disappear. “Forbearance, courtesy, consideration for the poor and aged, kind treatment of animals, love of nature, abhorrence of tyranny and brute force”—all of these things, and more, are nourished in “a child’s heart by this powerful aid” of the fairy tale, he argued.