How do fairy tales instrumentalize violence? Cautionary tales in the Grimms’ collection are bent on civilizing the child, turning what Freud called the “cauldron of seething emotions” that is the child’s mind into something less turbid, bubbly, and messy. Revenge fantasies give us the opposite of the cautionary tale, yet they too stage scenes of punishment. But now the child, who is always in an asymmetrical power relationship with adults, turns the tables on his grown-up adversaries. If cautionary tales are satisfying to adults, tales about getting even are supremely gratifying to children, who don’t seem to mind much when a millstone crushes the evil stepmother in “The Juniper Tree.” Cautionary tales and retaliatory stories work in many ways at cross purposes, with one punishing the disobedient child and the other torturing the oppressive, demanding, and sometimes homicidal adult. Solidarity narratives (Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl” is a prime example), by contrast, recruit readers as witnesses to suffering and enable them to binge on empathy and purge their fears. Do these tales function as a kind of “moral technology,” as Steven Pinker tells us? Or do they simply perpetuate stereotypes and turn us into voyeurs, indulging in the guilty pleasure of witnessing the misery of others?