What is the signifigance of the number 3 in fairy tales?
Does anyone know of any good websites to find out why the number 3 is a reoccuring theme in fairy tales?
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Tags: Tales, number, signifigance, fairy tales, fairyRelated posts:
No, but I’ll tell you this: 3 is just a number. The numbers 1 and 2 appear just as often as the number 3.
go to ask.com and type that question in and see what it brings up
The best things come in 3’s
a connection to religion maybe? father son holy ghost? or the process of life? the trinity in celtic lore represents the father son and holy ghost or the child, woman, and old maid. also 3’s are easy to tie up,,.. start middle end. good bad in between.
the thing you need to realize is todays fairy tales and LOOSELY based on the original grimms fairy tales which border on creepy and gorey.
Intriguing question!
Found an extract from Wikepedia, and I’m giving my own thoughts after:
Wikipedia:
Morphology
Vladimir Propp specifically studied a collection of Russian fairy tales, but his analysis has been found useful for the tales of other countries.
Having criticized Aarne-Thompson type analysis for ignoring what motifs did in stories, he analyzed the tales for the function each character and action fulfilled and concluded that a tale was composed of thirty-one elements and eight character types. While the elements were not all required for all tales, when they appeared, they did so in an invariant order — except that each individual element might be negated twice, so that it would appear three times, as when, in Brother and Sister, the brother resists drinking from enchanted streams twice, so that it is the third that enchants him.
One such element is the donor who gives the hero magical assistance, often after testing him, and this function can be independent of any appearance of the donor. In The Golden Bird, the talking fox tests the hero by warning him against entering an inn and, after he succeeds, helps him find the object of his quest; in Cinderella, the fairy godmother gives Cinderella the dresses she needs to attend the ball; in The Red Ettin, the role is split into the mother, who offers the hero the whole of a journey cake with her curse, or half with her blessing, and when he takes the half, a fairy who gives him advice; in The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body, three separate animals pledge the hero their aid in return for his aid. Other fairy tales, such as The Story of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear, do not feature the donor.
Analogies have been drawn between this and the analysis of myths into the Hero’s journey.
This analysis has been criticized for ignoring tone, mood, characters, and, indeed, anything at all that differentiates one fairy tale from another..
Then here’s my own thoughts:
Most prose hinges on the basic theme of 3s. Example: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. It is the essential breakdown of any conflict, and conflict is the ubiquitous constant in fiction. You become aware of a situation, you confront and struggle with the situation, and you either overcome or are defeated by the conflict.
With fairy tales, I think it goes a bit further. You’re right. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but the 3 little pigs, the 3 bears, you have to stop and wonder.
I can only suggest that perhaps the general moralistic nature of fairy tales is mapped (intentionally or not) to Freud’s division of our minds. (I admit I was tempted to go with the holy trinity, but I can’t really defend that stance).
The 3 parts of the mind are the id (uncontrollable animal instinct, survival, the child), the superego (parental control and morals, what is taught to us by society and parents), and the ego(connection to reality, our instinctual understanding of control-a balance).
You can equate these 3 components to the 3s in the fairy tales where they are represented by characters. However, when the 3s are in the story line, I think it goes back to the ordinary prose structure.
Hope this helps.
I do not know of any web sites off hand. Fairy tales are a way to pass lessons on to children in a way they can understand. One reason that three is a recurring theme is that some of the tales predate modern Christianity to pagan times, and most of those religions saw the number 3 as a sacred number. The Celts saw the holy trinity as Maiden, Mother, Crone. The ancient druids followed the triads which were philosophies based on the idea everything is from above, below, or here. Later the Christians viewed the number three as the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Three is a sacred number; mother, father,and child; birth, life, and death; morning, noon, and night. It is all around us.
I believe it harks back to the Holy Trinity. What do you think?
Below is a link to an archive page that discusses your question.
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/boardarchives/2001/sep2001/significanceof3.html
and here is a rather encyclopedic account of uses of the number 3
http://www.greatdreams.com/three/three.htm
The followers of Greek Philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras believed that 3 was the first masculine number.
There is no easy explanation as to why 3 appears so often in fairy tales and literature. As the Sur la lune site argues, the concept goes back so far as to be in the collective imagination of most of the world.
Because 3 is the smallest, odd prime number which makes it used frequenty to emphisize a start, a middle, and an end. It also is the whole number of pi. Mmmm, pie.
significance of number 3 in traditional belief is older than christianity, though this religion used many things from other - older beliefs.
you can see number 3 used not only in fairy tales, but also in many religions, magical practices, etc.
numbers 9, 12,…are important as well. you can say, that these numbers are magical in general.
this phenomenon is something called cultural universality - that means that you can find it in many cultures all around the world, which didn’t have to influence each other.
SO: NO, IT IS NOT BECAUSE OF THE HOLY TRINITY!!!
Not only does 3 work well for a beginning/middle/end, it was a particularly confusing number for people who aren’t good at math (and who were generally uneducated). It’s near impossible to divide something into thirds without some mathematical help, and that may have led to the number 3 being thought mysterious and magical. The same is true of 5 and 7, which do appear in numerous fairy tales also, but 3 is the smallest such “mysterious” number and thus the easiest to work into a story.
I have no “source” just a guess but if you consider it takes 3 steps to bring an idea, object, plan whatever into reality. First you have the thought which is the seed. Second you act to cause the thought to grow and develop. Third you have the result or creation. This may or may not be the basis of the number 3.