Though fictional, the focus on stepmothers does reflect some truths about 19th Century society. “When these fairy tales were created, lifespans were extraordinarily low,” says Lawrence Ganong, an emeritus professor of human development at the University of Missouri, US, who has studied stepfamilies for decades. Women often died in childbirth, leaving children in the care of fathers only. The evil stepmothers who appeared in the pages of fairy tales offered cautionary family advice: fathers should protect and support their children, and stepmothers should do the right thing by stepchildren – or bad things will happen.
