Classic fairy tale published by the Brothers Grimm in 1812 — depicting two children abandoned in a forest by their parents who discover a candy house inhabited by a witch who fattens and eats children — one of the most psychologically intense tales in the Grimm canon.
Creates the archetypal tale of child abandonment and the devouring mother — Hansel and Gretel encodes anxieties about parental abandonment (the stepmother who sends the children away), the seductive danger (the candy house that lures precisely through desire), and ultimately the child's capacity to overcome the consuming adult (Gretel pushing the witch into the oven); it is the foundational narrative of children's survival against adult threat.
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