Disney never ceases to fascinate me. The stories, the characters, everything about Disney is just magical. But have you ever thought about the original stories behind each Disney fairytale? Do they all originally have happy endings? Has it always been so sweet and romantic? Well, definitely not. Here are 7 Disney fairytales’ original stories: 

1- Cinderella

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Originally written by the Brothers Grimm, the story of Cinderella is not as sweet and delicate as Disney makes it seem. Although the real story is truly about a girl who’s forced to be a servant by her evil stepmom and stepsisters, Disney’s removed a lot of violent additions which the Brothers Grimm had included. In reality, the two stepsisters actually literally cut off a part of their feet in order to make them fit in the glass shoe. Of course, the blood gave them away. Also, during Cinderella’s wedding, birds come down from the sky to peck the two sisters’ eyes! I wonder why Disney removed such details…

2- Snow White
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This one’s also a Brothers Grimm, so you can imagine that a lot of the original gory details were removed from the Disney fairytale. The story’s the same, but towards the end, instead of the queen just miraculously melting down like all evil witches seem to do in Disney films, she was forced by Snow White to dance in hot iron shoes. Yep, hot iron shoes. Then, she tripped, fell off a cliff and died.

3- Pocahontaspoc

This one’s probably the worst, since it’s based on a true native American story. After John Smith left, Pocahontas was kidnapped, and was forcefully converted to Christianity. She got married to John Rolfe. When she visited London, they caged her and made her exhibit herself as a “civilised” native American. Horrendous. She never returned home after that and died of unknown causes.

4- The Little Mermaidmerm

This one’s quite horrible too. Originally written by Hans Christian Andersen, Disney entirely altered the ending of the original story. Ariel did bargain with Ursula to give her feet, and in return she had to make the prince fall in love with her by sunset. But in reality, her human transformation was actually really painful and on top of that, she was forced to dance a lot for Prince Eric to make him like her. But that’s nothing. At the end of it all, he DOESN’T marry her. He ends up falling in love and marrying another girl, and Ariel just dies…

5- Mulan

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In the original ballad, Mulan’s ending is completely different. She doesn’t find her father peacefully waiting for her, but her family had fallen apart. She was then forced to become a concubine (a sex slave!). She just saved China, but she’s then forced to become a sex slave. She decides to commit suicide and take her life instead, and that’s basically the end of it.

6- Red Riding Hoodred_riding_hood

 

The Disney version simply makes the wolf eat the grandma, and then miraculously saves her from the wolf”s stomach as she comes back alive. But in reality, it’s not as utopic as that. Most of us have heard that in reality the wolf ends up eating the little girl as well!  But it gets worse. In one of the original stories (as there were many retellings of the Little Red Riding Hood), the little girl is forced into eating her own grandma by the wolf and ends up drinking her blood too. Eery.

7- Pinocchio 

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The original story was written by Carlo Collodi, in which Gepetto (Pinocchio’s owner) is accused and arrested of child abuse! The old man actually murders Jiminy Cricket! Unlike the Disney story, in which there’s a bonding father-son relationship between Gepetto and Pinocchio, in reality Pinocchio made him miserable.

Well, that’s definitely sad. But it doesn’t mean any of the Disney stories were false, they’re just other possible scenarios!