I'm not familiar with this one, I'll have to go look it up!

It's a Grimms' Fairy Tale. They're all weird.

That's true!

So lovely.......

I thought I recognized her! The "Grimm's Fairy tales" was an excellent anime series, although sometimes it really scared the crap out of me, like the original fables after all.

"The marriage of Mrs Fox" however was slightly altered from the original: in the original story there was no "evil fox spirit" that tricked Mr Fox into testing his wife's fidelity; he is not even blamed for his actions, in fact the story seem to praise his decision of kicking his wife, the rival and the maid out of the house. I guess that's because otherwise the whole story would have seemed kind of pointless to the audience and so they changed it in order to show Mr Fox as a fool that, choosing to believe to an absurd idea, eventually damages himself by losing his wife and happy life.

I have to agree that the first time I read the story I was a bit confused by it but recently I have followed some anthropology lessons and our teacher explained us something that actually make me see the story and it's message more clearly.
First of, contrary to popular belief, fairy tales were not "tales for children" but simply tales that were shared and enjoyed by both children and adults and second ALL fairy tales, beneath their fantasy structure, actually hide the deep traumatic experience that all people had to suffer in the ancient times (losing your mother and being raised by an angry and bitter stepmother, being abandoned, experiencing famine,....) and basically the fairy tales was the result of a mental process in order to either understand these memories or at least to reduce the pain caused by it.
My theory about "the marriage of Mrs. Fox" is this: considering that at the time the fable was written women had no rights at all and were completely subject to the will of their husband (no matter how wrong he may have beeen) the story was a sort of warning for young girls about their relation with their future husbands.

In short, something like this: "Remember my child that, even if you are right, your husband will have the last word!"

I have never read the original tale, so I can't really compare the two versions. The anime version is funny and somewhat remind me of some comedic theater about smart little servant girls and their rich, morbid and stupid masters. Yes, the stories behind fairy tales are those of a very sad past, indeed, reading regional tales, like those gathered by Italo Calvino or Giovanni Arpino you realize that death was behind the door for everyone at the times....

pretty