If your copy of Grimms' tales is very dusty, it may be filled with those Victorian prettifications...

On the other hand, the Grimms, themselves, compiled and published their Children's and Household Tales with a political motive in mind -- they wanted Germany to move from a system of Fuedal city states to a fraternal republic. They'd started out training in German Law, and that meant having to study ancient German language (At one point, they tried to make the most comprehenisive German dictionary, with every word that existed; if I recall correctly, they got as far as "F" before one of them died). That led to a study of the oral culture, and That led to a study of the folklore. They realized, fairly early on, that the stories were a wonderful way to present their political ideas in a veiled way, illustrating their ideas of social value as "natively German." And over the course of several editions, they edited and refined their stories to clarify those ideals and make them more accessible to their middle-class audience.

So I take it fully within my rights to retell the stories myself, in ways that reflect my values... pretty, meek girls who are good because they are pretty and meek don't appear in my versions of the stories! ;-)

I haven't read Women Who Run With the Wolvess, but I have Estes' Warming the Stone Child on audio cassette. She has some strong and thoughtful theories, but, when talking about one story, she said that the moon's going dark was symbolic of a person's needs to turn inward. ... It struck me that this was a person who spent too much time studying theories in books, and not enough time actually looking up at the sky, if she'd never noticed that, once a month, the moon actually does go dark for three days.

Psychological interpretations of stories (by any school of thought) can be invaluable, some times. But, like anything, it can be taken too far. Some times, you just have to accept the story at face value for its own sake.

And yes, the stories we tell can be very healing. That's one reason why we share stories, I believe.