The youngest son is a stock character in fairy tales, where he features as the hero. He is usually the third son, but sometimes there are more brothers, and sometimes he has only one; usually, they have no sisters.
In a family of many daughters, the youngest daughter may be an equivalent figure.
Read more about Youngest Son: Traits, Plots, Youngest Daughters, Sibling Pairs, Brothers With A Sister, Modern Variants, Fairy Tales
Famous quotes containing the words youngest and/or son:
“The youngest of four sons, but not the youngest of the family!—you conceive the sort of negligence that creeps over even the kindest maternities, in such case ...”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“The mother must teach her son how to respect and follow the rules. She must teach him how to compete successfully with the other boys. And she must teach him how to find a woman to take care of him and finish the job she began of training him how to live in a family. But no matter how good a job a woman does in teaching a boy how to be a man, he knows that she is not the real thing, and so he tends to exaggerate the differences between men and women that she embodies.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)