Jack and The Beanstalk - Controversy

Controversy

The story portrays a "hero" unscrupulously hiding in a man's house, playing on his wife's sympathies in order to rob and finally murder the owner of the house. In Tabart's moralized version, a fairy woman explains to Jack that the giant had robbed and killed his father, thus transforming the acts into justified retribution. (Andrew Lang follows this version in the Red Fairy Book of 1890.)

Jacobs dropped the justification on the grounds that it had not been in the version he had heard as a child, and because children knew that robbery and murder were wrong without being told so by a fairy tale.

Many modern interpretations have followed Tabart and painted the giant as a villain, terrorizing smaller folk and often stealing items of value, so that Jack becomes a legitimate protagonist. For example, the 1952 film starring Abbott and Costello blames the giant for Jack's ill fortunes and impoverishment, as he has been stealing food and wealth from the smaller folk of the lands below his home, including the hen that lays golden eggs, which in this version originally belonged to Jack's family. In other versions it is implied that the giant had stolen the hen and the harp from Jack's father. However, Brian Henson's 2001 TV miniseries Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story is an alternative version of the tale which abandons Tabart's additions and significantly vilifies Jack, due to Henson's disgust with Jack's morally questionable actions in the original story.