Cuisine and Punishment: Eating Transgressions in Contemporary “Hansel and Gretel” Retellings

The fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel” by the brothers Grimm remains recognisable in today’s culture in terms of the characters, the setting, and the way it deals with food and eating. “The Woodsman’s Second Tale,” a story found within John Connolly’s novel The Book of Lost Things, and Leigh Bardugo’s “The Witch of Duva” are both inspired by the narrative of “Hansel and Gretel.” However, they are retellings of it, and as such, they propound different messages – they exhibit different socialisation objectives. Namely, stories can be used to socialise the audience, that is, to instil the desired characteristics, behaviours, and morals into the audience. Being retellings of “Hansel and Gretel”, both stories make fruitful use of the staple food-related scenes found in it – overindulgence and cannibalism. The exploration of these eating transgressions and the punishments that follow them allows for an examination of the civilising aims of the texts. The paper investigates the instances in which food plays a prominent role in these two narratives and the ways in which they cast light on the civilising objectives of children’s literature. This is done through an elaboration of the civilising process, the presence of food in children’s literature, and the role of eating and subsequent punishment in “The Woodsman’s Second Tale” and “The Witch of Duva”