Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Not to be confused with Goldilocks Bakeshop.

"Goldilocks" and "The Three Bears" redirect here. For other uses, see Goldilocks (disambiguation) and The Three Bears (disambiguation).

"Goldilocks and The Three Bears"
Short story by Robert Southey
Illustration by Arthur Rackham, 1918, in English Fairy Tales by Flora Annie Steel
Original title	"The Story of the Three Bears"
Country	England
Genre(s)	Fairy tale
Publication
Published in	The Doctor
Publication type	Essay and story collection
Publisher	Longman, Rees, etc.
Media type	Print
Publication date	1837

"Goldilocks and the Three Bears" is a 19th-century English fairy tale of which three versions exist. The original version of the tale tells of an impudent old woman who enters the forest home of three anthropomorphic bachelor bears while they are away. She eats some of their porridge, sits down on one of their chairs, breaks it, and sleeps in one of their beds. When the bears return and discover her, she wakes up, jumps out of the window, and is never seen again. The second version replaces the old woman with a young, naive, blonde-haired girl named Goldilocks, and the third and by far best-known version replaces the bachelor trio with a family of three. The story has elicited various interpretations and has been adapted to film, opera, and other media. "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" is one of the most popular fairy tales in the English language.

Plot summary

Illustration in "The Story of the Three Bears" second edition, 1839, published by W. N. Wright of 60 Pall Mall, London

In Robert Southey's story, three male bears—a small bear, a medium bear, and a large bear—live together in a house in the woods. Southey describes them as good-natured, trusting, harmless, clean, and hospitable. Each bear has his own bowl of porridge, his own chair, and his own bed. One day, while their hot porridge is cooling, they wander through the woods. An old woman—described throughout the story as insolent, mean, swearing, ugly, dirty, and a vagabond who belongs in a reformatory—discovers the bears' home. She looks through the window and keyhole, opens the latch, and, after ensuring that no one is home, enters. The old woman tries the porridge of the big bear, which is too hot for her; then she tries the porridge of the middle bear, which is too cold; finally, she eats the porridge of the smallest bear. Next, she sits down in the chair of the big bear, which is too hard for her, and then in the chair of the middle bear, which is too soft. When she sits in the chair of the small bear, it breaks as a result. Continuing her exploration of the house, she finds the bears' beds. After trying the big bear's bed and the middle bear's bed and finding them unsuitable, she goes to sleep in the smallest bear's bed. When the bears return home, the story reaches its climax. One after another, they discover that someone has eaten their porridge, sat in their chairs, and lain in their beds. The smallest bear finds the old woman in his bed and exclaims, "Someone has lain down in my little bed—and there she is still!" Startled, the old woman jumps out of the window, runs away, and is never seen again.

Literary elements

The story makes extensive use of the literary rule of three, featuring three chairs, three bowls of porridge, three beds, and the three title characters who live in the house. There are also three sequences of the bears discovering in turn that someone has been eating from their porridge, sitting in their chairs, and finally, lying in their beds, at which point the climax of Goldilocks being discovered occurs. This follows three earlier sequences of Goldilocks trying the bowls of porridge, chairs, and beds successively, each time finding the third "just right". Author Christopher Booker characterises this as the "dialectical three" where "the first is wrong in one way, the second in another or opposite way, and only the third, in the middle, is just right". Booker continues: "This idea that the way forward lies in finding an exact middle path between opposites is of extraordinary importance in storytelling".

This concept has spread across many other disciplines, particularly developmental psychology, biology, economics, Buddhism, and engineering where it is called the "Goldilocks principle". In planetary astronomy, a planet orbiting its sun at just the right distance for liquid water to exist on its surface, neither too hot nor too cold, is referred to as being in the "Goldilocks Zone". As Stephen Hawking put it, "Like Goldilocks, the development of intelligent life requires that planetary temperatures be 'just right'".

See also

• Little Red Riding Hood

References

General sources

• The Seven Basic Plots. Booker, Christopher (2005). "The Rule of Three". The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0-8264-5209-4.
• Briggs, Katherine Mary (2002) [1977]. British Folk Tales and Legends. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-28602-6.
• "Coronet: Goldilocks and the Three Bears". Internet Archive. Retrieved 21 February 2009.
• Curry, Charles Madison (1921). Children's Literature. Rand McNally & Company. p. 179. ISBN 9781344646789. three bears.
• "Disney: Goldilocks and the Three Bears". The Encyclopedia of Disney Animated Shorts. Archived from the original on 22 February 2013. Retrieved 21 February 2009.
• Dorson, Richard Mercer (2001) [1968]. The British Folklorists. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0-415-20426-7.
• Elms, Alan C. (July–September 1977). ""The Three Bears": Four Interpretations". The Journal of American Folklore. 90 (357): 257–273. doi:10.2307/539519. JSTOR 539519.
• "MGM: Goldilocks and the Three Bears". Archived from the original on 17 January 2013. Retrieved 12 November 2010.
• Ober, Warren U. (1981). The Story of the Three Bears. Scholars Facsimiles & Reprints. ISBN 0-8201-1362-X.
• Opie, Iona; Opie, Peter (1992) [1974]. The Classic Fairy Tales. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-211559-6.
• "Roald Dahl's Goldilocks (1997)". Retrieved 3 January 2009.
• Schultz, William Todd (2005). Handbook of Psychobiography. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-516827-5.
• Seal, Graham (2001). Encyclopedia of Folk Heroes. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 1-57607-216-9.
• Tatar, Maria (2002). The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-05163-3.

External links

• "The Story of the Three Bears", manuscript by Eleanor Mure, 1831 - first recorded version
• "The Story of the Three Bears" by Robert Southey, 1837 – first published version
• "The Story of the Three Bears", versified by George Nicol, 2nd edition, 1839 (text)
• "The Three Bears" by Robert Southey – later version with "Silver-hair", a "little girl"
• "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", by Katharine Pyle, 1918 – later version with father, mother and baby bear