Some fairy stories emphasize the long and difficult development which alone permits gaining control over what seems animalistic in us, while conversely other tales center on the shock of recognition when that which seemed animal suddenly reveals itself as the source of human happiness. The Brothers Grimm's story "The Frog King" belongs to that latter category.
While it is not as ancient as some stories about animal grooms, a version of "The Frog King" is mentioned as early as the thirteenth century. In the Complaynt of Scotland in 1540 a similar tale is called "The Well of the World's End." A version of "The Frog King" printed by the Brothers Grimm in 1815 begins with three sisters. The two older ones are haughty and insensitive; only the youngest is ready to listen to the frog's entreaties. In the Grimm version presently best known, the heroine is also the youngest of sisters, but it is not specified of how many.
"The Frog King" begins with the youngest princess playing with her golden ball close by a well. The ball falls into it, and the girl is heartbroken. A frog appears, asking ther princess what troubles her. It offers to restore the golden ball to her if she will accept it as the companion who will sit beside her, drink from her glass, eat from her plate, and sleep with her in her bed. She promises this, thinking to herself that no frog could ever be a person's companion. The frog then brings her the golden ball. When it asks to be taken home with her, she rushes away and soon forgets all about the frog.
But the next day when the royal court is eating dinner, the frog appears and asks to be let in. The princess closes the door on it. The king, who observes her distress, asks about its cause. She tells him, and he insists that her promises must be kept. So she opens the door to the frog, but still hesitates to lift it up to the table. Again the king tels her to keep her promise. The princess tries once more to renege when the frog asks to join her in bed, but the king now angrily tells her that those whgo have helped her when she was in need must not be despised. Once the frog joins the princess in her bed, she gets so disgusted that she hurls it against the wall, and then it turns into a prince. In most versions this happens after the frog has spent three nights with her. An original version is even more explicit: the princess must kiss the frog while it lies at her side in bed, and then it takes three weeks of sleeping together until the frog turns into a prince.
In this story the pricess of maturing is enormously speeded up. At the beginning the princess is a beautiful little girl carelessly playing with a ball. (We are told that not even the sun had seen anything as beautiful as this girl.) Everything happens because of the ball. It is doubly a symbol of perfection: as a sphere, and because it is made out of gold, the most precious material. The ball stands for an as yet undeveloped narcisstic psyche: it contains all potentials, none yet realized. When the ball falls into the deep, dark, well, naivete is lost and Pandora's box is opened. The princess mourns the loss of her childish innocence as desperately as that of the ball. Only the ugly frog can restore perfection--the ball--to her out of the darkness into which the symbol of her psyche has fallen. Life has become ugly and complicated as it begins to reveal its darker sides.
Still beholden to the pleasure principle, the girl makes promises in order to gain what she wants, with no thought of the consequences. But reality asserts itself. She tries to evade it by slamming the door on the frog. But now the superego in the form of the king comes into to play: the more the princess tries to go against the frog's demands, the more forcefully the king insists that she must keep her promises to the full. What started playfully becomes most serious: the princess must grow up as she is forced to accept the commitments she has made.
The steps toward intimacy with the other are clearly sketched: first the girl is all alone as she plays with her ball. The frog begins conversing with her when it asks what troubles her; it plays with her as it returns the ball. Then it comes to visit, sits by her, joins her in her room and finally in her bed. The closer the frog comes to the girl physically, the more disgusted and anzious she gets, particularly about being touched by it. The awakening to sex is not free of disgust or anxiety, even anger. Anxiety turns into anger and hatred as the princess hurls the frog against the wall. By thus asserting herself and taking risks in doing so--as opposed to her previous trying to weasel out and then simply obeying her father's commands--the princess transcend her anxiety, and hatred changes into love.
In a way this story tells that to be able to love, a person first has to become able to feel; even if the feelings are negative, that is better than not feeling. In the beginning the princess is entirely self-centered; all her interest is in her ball. She has no feelings when she plans to go back on her promise to the frog, gives no thought as to what this may mean for it. The closer the frog comes to her physically and personally, the stronger her feelings become, but with this she becomes more a person. For a long stretch of development she obeys her father, but feels ever more strongly; then at the end she asserts her independence in going against his orders. As she thus becomes herself, so does the frog; it turns into a prince.
On another level the story tells that we cannot expect our first erotic contacts to be pleasant, for they are much too difficult and fraught with anxiety. But if we continue, despite temporary repugnance, to permit the other to become ever more intimate, then at some moment we will experience a happy shock of recognition when complete closeness reveals sexuality's true beauty. In one version of "The Frog King," "after a night in bed, when awakening she saw by her side the handsomest gentlenan." Thus in this story the night spent together (and we may surmise what happened during this night) makes for the radically changed view of what has become the marital partner. The various other tales in which the timing of events varies from the first night to three weeks all counsel patience: it takes time for closeness to turn into love.
The father, as in so many stories of the animal-groom cycle, is the person who brings his daughter and her future husband together in 'The Frog King." It is only because of his insistence that the happy union comes about. Parental guicance which leads to superego formation--one must keep one's promises, ill-advised as these may have been--develops a responsible conscience. Such a conscience is necessary for a happy personal and sexual unbion, which without a mature conscience would be lacking in seriousness and permanence.
But what about the frog? It, too, has to mature before union with the princess can become possible. What happens io it shows that a loving, dependent relationship to a mother figure is the precondition to becoming human. Like every child, the frog desires an entirely sy,biotic existence. What child has not wished to sit on Mother's lap, eat from her dish, drink with her glass, and has not climbed into Mother's bed, trying to sleep there with her? But after a time the child has to be denied the symbiosis with Mother, since it would prevent him from ever becoming an individual. Much as the child wants to remain in bed with Mother, she has to "throw" him out of it--a painful experience but inescapable if he is to gain independence. Only when forced by hius parent to stop living in symbiosis does the child begin to be himself, as the frog, "thrown" out of the bed, becomes freed of bondage to an immature existence.
The child knows that, like the frog, he had to and still has to move from a lower to a higher state of being. This process is perfectly normal, since the child's life situation begins in a lower state, which is why there is no need to explain the hero's lowly animal form at the beginning of the animal-grppm stories. The child knows his own situation is not due to some evil deed or a nefarious power; it is the natural order of the world. The frog emerges out of life in the water, as the child does at birth. Historically, fairy tales anticipate by centuries our knowledge of embryology, which tells how the human fetus indergoes various stages of development before birth, as the frog undergoes a metamorphosis in its development.
But why, of all animals, is the frog (or the toad, as in "The Three Feathers") a symbol for sexual relations? For example, a frog presaged the conception of Sleeping Beauty. Compared to lions or other ferocious beasts, the frog (or the toad) does not arouse fear; it is an animal which is not at all threatening. If it is experienced in a negative way, the feeling is one of disgust, as in "The Frog King." It is difficult to imagine a better way to convey to the child that he need not be afraid of the (to him) repugnant aspects of sex than the way it is done in the story. The story of the frog--how it behaves, what occurs to the princess in relation to it, and what finally happens to both frog and girl--confirms the appropriateness of disgust when one is nor ready for sex, and prepares for its desirability when the time is ripe.
While according to psychoanalysis our sexual drives influence our actions and behavior from the beginning of life, there is a world of difference between the way these drives manifest themselves in the child and in the adult. By using the frog as a symbol for sex, an animal that exists in one from when young--as a tadpole--and in an entirely different form when mature, the story speaks to the unconscious of the child and helps him accept the form of sexuality which is correct for hios age, while also making him receptive to the idea that as he grows up, his sexuality too must, in his own best interest, undergo a metamorphosis.
There are also other, more direct associations between sex and the frog which remain unconscious. Preconsciously the child connects the tacky, clammy sensations which frogs (or toads) evoke in him with similar feelings he attaches to the sex organs. The frog's ability to blow itself out when excited arouses, again unconsciously, associations to the penis' erectability. Repulsive as the frog may be, as vividly described in "The Frog King," the story assures us that even an animal so clammily disgusting turns into something very beautiful, provided it all happens in the right way at the right time.
Children have a natural affinity to animals and often feel closer to them than to adults, wishing to share what seems like an animal's easy life of instinctual freedom and enjoyment. But with this affinity also comes the child's anxiety that he might not be quite as human as he ought to be. These fairy tales counteract this fear, by making the animal existence a chrysalis from which a most attractive person emerges.
Viewing sexual aspects of ourselves as animal-like has extremely pernicious consequences, so much so that some people can never free their own--or others'--sexual experiences of this connotation. Therefore it must be conveyed to children that sex may seem disgustingly animal-like at first, but that once the right way is found to approach it, beauty will emerge from behind this repulsive appearance. Here ther fairy tale, without ever mentioning or alluding to sexual experiences as such, is psychologically sounder than much of our conscious sex education. Modern sex education tries to teach that sex is normal, enjoyable, even beautiful, and certainly necessary for the survival of man. But since it does not start from an understanding that the child may find sex disgusting, and that this viewpoint has an important protective function for the child, modern sex education fails to carry conviction for him. The fairy tale, by agreeing with the child that the frog (or whatever other animal it may be) is disgusting, gains the child's confidence and thus can create in him the firm belief that, as the fairy tale tells. in due time this disgusting frog will reveal itself as life's most charming companion. And this message is delivered without ever directly mentioning anything sexual.