The eighteenth century (1700s)

The eighteenth century (1700s) is presented as a turning point in the social history of fairy tales: during this period, stories once told among adults became children’s literature, increasingly shaped by expectations about how people should behave.

A Changing Audience

In the principal’s office, Cal explains that fairy tales had not always been intended for children. She describes their earlier setting as adults gathered around a fire after a day’s work, telling stories to one another. In her account, the change came in the eighteenth century, when a new merchant class began appearing in parts of Europe.

Fairy Tales and Social Instruction

Cal links the merchants’ growing wealth and desire to live better than the lower classes with new rules for adult and child behavior. Fairy tales changed along with those rules: they became stories for children and acquired morals meant to teach them the expected conduct. Her distinction is not simply between old and new audiences; she argues that a tale reduced to a simple moral loses something, while a great fairy tale tells the truth. The period therefore marks both the remaking of fairy tales as instruction and Cal’s insistence that their deeper purpose exceeds instruction.