There are some fairy tale images that just stick with you.
A glass slipper alone on a staircase. An isolated tower with braided hair hanging out the window. A castle surrounded by thorny vines. A rose with falling petals. A magic mirror and a poisoned apple.
A giant beanstalk stretching through the clouds.
Jack and the Beanstalk, like most fairy tales of the time, was passed down orally for years before it was written down. The earliest-published version came out in 1807 as Benjamin Tabart’s “The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk”. However, I’m going to walk you through a later, but more popular version: a chapter of 1890’s English Fairy Tales by Australian writer Joseph Jacobs.
Magic Beans
Jack is a boy (or a young man, it’s never actually specified exactly how old he is) who lives with his widowed mother. The pair are poor, living day-to-day off what their cow, Milky-White, can produce. When they wake up one morning to find poor Milky-White has no more milk to give, the distressed pair discusses what to do. Jack offers to go out and find a job, something his mother immediately shuts down, as he’s tried in the past and no one would hire him (so glad she has so much confidence in her son).
Instead, Jack’s mother instructs him to take Milky-White and sell her, hoping that what they make will be enough for them to start a shop. Jack and his cow set out for the market, but before they get to far, they run into a strange man who inexplicably greets Jack by name. The man offers Jack a trade for Milky-White: a handful (though it’s implied there are five) of beans. It’s important to note that, while the man says they are special beans that will grow overnight, he never actually calls them magic beans, though Jack does when trying to explain himself to his distraught mother.
After an argument with his mother that results in her throwing the beans out the window, Jack wakes the next morning to find a giant beanstalk has grown from the garden where they landed (and while most retellings I’ve seen equate one bean to one giant beanstalk, I do wonder if it was the beans landing in a clump that created the giant beanstalk – perhaps the beans planted individually would have simply made normal-sized, yet quickly-growing bean plants?). Without a moment’s hesitation, Jack sets off to climb the ladder-like beanstalk.
Giants in the Sky
Jack finds a road in the sky and follows it to a “great big tall” house with a “great big tall” woman. He greets her and asks for breakfast, which she happily agrees to give him. Though it’s accompanied by a warning: Her husband is an ogre, and he quite literally eats boys like Jack for breakfast. Soon enough, the ogre arrives, his wife (who is never stated to be an ogre herself, interestingly enough) hiding Jack in the oven (which doesn’t seem much safer, in my opinion). The ogre claims to smell a human, but his wife assures him it’s merely last night’s leftovers. After his breakfast, the ogre settles in at his desk to count his bags of gold before drifting off to sleep.
Once the coast is clear, Jack creeps out, grabs a bag of gold for himself, and heads back down the beanstalk. His mother is delighted by his treasure, and the pair live off the stolen gold for a time (though they don’t start a shop, like she said she wanted to with the gold from Milky-White’s sale). When the gold runs out, Jack once again heads up the beanstalk. The ogre’s wife recognizes Jack and asks if he happens to know what happened to the bag of gold that went missing the same day he visited. Jack assures her he hasn’t the slightest idea and changes the subject by asking for breakfast. She reluctantly agrees.
Yet again, the ogre (actually, this is the one and only point in Jacobs’ version which refers to him as a giant) returns. This time, after his breakfast, he demands his special hen be brought to him. When he tells the hen “Lay,” the hen lays a golden egg. Such a creature is obviously too much for Jack to resist, and once the ogre is snoring away, Jack snatches the bird and hits the road.
Unlike last time, he doesn’t quite make a clean getaway. As he leaves, the hen begins to cluck, which wakes the ogre. Jack is far enough away to be unseen, but he can hear the ogre asking his wife where the hen has gone.
Third Time’s the Harm
Jack’s mother is delighted by the hen, but Jackie-boy only wants more. Before long, he gives in to the urge, making his way back up the beanstalk. Realizing he won’t be able to talk his way out of the ogre’s wife’s suspicions, he hides in a bush near the door rather than knocking. When the ogre’s wife steps out for water, he slips in, finding a new hiding place in a pot. When the ogre returns, he again smells that man-scent. His wife, no longer a fan of the thieving Jack, helpfully points out that she always hid him in the oven, so that’s where he’ll be. But when they check inside, they only find the boy she broiled for the ogre’s breakfast. The wife simply assumes that’s what the ogre smelled, and while the ogre is unconvinced, he can’t find anyone else lurking around in the cupboards, so he settles in to eat.
After his breakfast, the ogre has his golden harp brought to him. When he commands it to, it sings the most beautiful music, lulling him to sleep once more. Jack takes the harp and makes a run for it, but the harps calls out for its master.
Jack heads back to the beanstalk, the ogre hot on his heels. The two climb down the beanstalk as quickly as they can. When he’s nearly to the ground, Jack calls out for his mother to bring him an axe. She does so, and as soon as Jack has two feet on the ground, he starts chopping at the beanstalk, two ogre legs now visible under the clouds.
Interestingly enough, Jacobs describes the ogre’s downfall like this: “Then the ogre fell down and broke his crown, and the beanstalk came toppling after.” (Jack and Jill, anyone?)
The story ends with a final sentence, which rather rushes through the fallout (if you’ll pardon the pun) of the beanstalk. Jack and his mother, now in possession of two magical wonders, become incredibly rich by selling golden eggs and tickets to view the items. Jack goes on to marry a princess (a “great” princess, the text even says), and all live happily ever after.
Fun Fact #1
Jack is a common name in fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Some think it’s simply an everyman sort of archetype. Others theorize that the “Jack” tales are all about the same man – who would have been kept very busy jumping over candlesticks, falling down hills, and slaying giants!
Fun Fact #2
The giant’s well-known line is actually a quote itself. In Shakespeare’s King Lear (first produced in the early 1600s), we hear the following line:
“—Fie, foh, and fum,
I smell the blood of a British man.”
William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act III, Scene IV
Which came first, the Shakespeare or the fairy tale? It’s anybody’s guess.
Fun Fact #3
Though the earliest published version of Jack and the Beanstalk is Tabart’s 1807 story, that’s often not the preferred version, as Tabart made some changes to ensure Jack was the hero. Namely, he created a fairy, who Jack encounters before the giant. The fairy informs Jack that the giant killed Jack’s father and stole items from him (those very same items that Jack himself steals, as it happens).
Andrew Lang, another well-known fairy tale writer, also presented a more sympathetic Jack, who again avenged his father to reclaim his rightful inheritance, freed people from the giant’s oppression, and was commended for his curious and noble spirit (the fairy who tells him the truth of his heritage later reveals that the beanstalk was a test, which he passed).
More than most other fairy tale protagonists, Jack straddles the line between hero and villain. On the one hand, he is providing for his poor mother. On the other, he steals (unprovoked, in many versions) from a stranger with no regard to the stranger’s well-being, which results in said stranger’s death.
Do you consider Jack a hero, a villain, or something in between?
If You Like This . . .
I haven’t actually encountered many Jack and the Beanstalk retellings (so if you know of any, please let me know!), so I’m going to go back to an old favorite and talk about Into the Woods again.
Into the Woods remains one of my favorite fairy tale retellings, not in the least because it weaves together four separate tales and takes the time to explore what “happily ever after” really means – or doesn’t mean. There’s the Disney movie which came out in 2014, but my preference has always been for the stage version, which was first performed in 1987. If you can find it, there’s a 1989 recording featuring the original cast (including Bernadette Peters, Chip Zien, and Joanna Gleason) that is truly delightful. It does get a little dark (drawing heavily from the Grimm versions of Cinderella and Rapunzel, among others), just as a heads up.
But the show features Jack heavily, portraying him as a curious boy who longs for adventures and wishes to explore the wide world. His song, “Giants in the Sky”, is one of my favorites and recaps Jack’s story.
Are there any Jack and the Beanstalk retellings you would recommend? Leave them in the comments below!
Until next time, word nerds!
Kate G. Jameson 