As children, folk fairy tales were often told to us as a way of teaching life lessons or shaping young children’s morals.

But fairy tales have deeper, hidden meanings that relate to reality and can be used in an absurd and entertaining way to teach a child — or a more grown up reader — about the complexities of maturing into adulthood.

In many fairy tales, the more outrageous and fantastical moments are actually reflections on the strangeness of maturing and joining the real adult world. Traditional folk fairy tales, such as “Sleeping Beauty” or “Little Red Riding Hood,” are simple stories set in magical lands that teach surface-level morals about maturation. These fairy tales are hundreds of years old and are highly accessible to large populations of people.

There are, however, other types of fairy tales that emerged later in history and that dealt with much more serious issues. The literary fairy tale is an example of this genre.

Intended for a more mature audience, literary fairy tales often take place in the “real world” but bend reality until the reader is unsure whether they are reading about magic or a madman. They also teach much more adult lessons with much bleaker outcomes.

In E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Sandman,” for example, the supernatural character of the Sandman is used to represent childhood trauma and caution readers against allowing it to follow you into adulthood.

Many other literary fairy tales feature a character that lives within an identifiable society, but somehow removes themselves from it or enters into a world within their mind.

The fact that literary fairy tales are set in the real, adult world allows for them to teach more complex lessons about growing up. With the changing times and with more focus on mental health, it makes sense that these fairy tales would delve deeper into societal issues than folk fairy tales would. And the endings we encounter in these tales are not always happy, as they are addressing much messier aspects of the adult world than those we had encountered in children’s stories.

My initial encounter with literary fairy tales was in my first semester of college. My first year seminar was entitled “Witches, Weirdness, and Wonder” and it was intended as a study of fairy tales and their effects on German culture and media.

While I was genuinely fascinated by every aspect of the class, the weeks we spent studying literary fairy tales were the most eye-opening for me.

It is worth noting that I struggle with anxious and obsessive thoughts. The beginning of college was a huge adjustment for me as it is for everyone, and I had difficulty coping with some of the obsessive thoughts that wormed their way into my brain under such stress. Historically, the more anxious I become, the farther I retreat into my own mind.

Beginning with the coronavirus pandemic, from ages 13 to 15, I created so many imaginary friends that I had to create lists to keep track of them all. I would write their names over and over again on notebook pages, linking them together on the edges of my homework. I also became obsessed with avoiding germs and keeping clean, even more obsessed than I had been as a child. My hands and wrists were so dry from overwashing that they grew scaly like a cat’s tongue. Every second I spent in the real world, I was also living inside my head with an entirely different group of people and strange rules that only I understood.

As a child, I would make deals with God, asking for my mother to make it home from work safely and promising to stop eating chocolate chips in return. As a teen, the fears became less abstract and devolved into an obsession with avoiding illness, and as I became more and more anxious, I took more and more comfort from my horde of imaginary friends. As the restrictions of the pandemic eased, my anxiety became mitigated and I hesitantly stepped back into my life.

Entering college a few short years later knocked me right back into my obsessive head. Weeks before I was supposed to pack up and move to Connecticut, I was lying on my bedroom floor Googling the likelihood of contracting leprosy in the modern world. And when I did finally begin my first semester in a new state, my thoughts became unrecognizably paranoid.

So when I began doing research for my first year seminar, I instantly connected to the idea of literary fairy tales. They were created for people who think like I do; their purpose is to continue to teach morals to adults, to encourage them to overcome the pitfalls of their own minds.

Literary fairy tales don’t need to be set in another world that contains magic and mayhem. Instead, they place the protagonist in real life and use the mind to create the effect of otherworldliness.

The witches, demons and ghouls that haunt these stories are suggested to have been created by the narrator’s own mind.

The heartbreaking aspect of these stories is the glimpses they offer of a happy ending just within the narrator’s reach. If they can overcome their own mind, they often have a loving family or a perfect marriage waiting for them on the other side.

This was exactly how I felt at college, and how I think many people have felt during periods of anxiety or depression. There exist two worlds: one in which you could be happy, where everyone you love lives, and another in which there lurks darkness and fear.

We often straddle these two realities, a foot halfway in the door of each, waiting for something to push us at last into one life or the other. What literary fairy tales encourage us to do is to become our own heroes (our own knights in shining armor) and make our way into the real world without the help of another.

This is one hero’s journey no one can make for you: You are the only one who knows that strange and fantastical world.

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Lucy Thill is a graduate of Saranac Lake High School and is studying literature and creative writing at Connecticut College. She has previously been published in Anarkiss, Wildwords Anthology, and Local ADK Magazine.