The story “replays a conflict familiar from the stories of Odysseus and the Cyclops, David and Goliath, Tom Thumb and the ogre” (Tatar 131).  It is found frequently in English-speaking countries but has few native analogues in other cultures.  However, Bettelheim states that many of the elements of the story may be found elsewhere, e.g., “the seemingly stupid exchange which provides something of magic power; the miraculous seed from which a tree grows that reaches into heaven,” etc. (184)
        The first recorded version is from Benjamin Tabart in 1807, but Tabart’s version “moralized” the folk original, having Jack turn from an indolent boy into a model of duty and obedience who is only recovering his father’s property.  There was also another, poetic version published that same year, which bears signs of having derived from a different source than Tabart’s.  That the story was known in England prior to this is attested to by references in a 1734 publication, “Round about our Coal-Fire: or Christmas Entertainments” (Opies 162).  Jacobs used instead a version he recalled from his childhood in Australia  and that eliminated this moralizing, relying more on his memory of an oral version from childhood.  Jacobs also objected to the fairy at the top of the beanstalk, which appears in many versions to explain how Jack knows the stolen objects are his father’s property.  Jacobs argued the fairy was a late addition to prevent the tale from encouraging theft, part of the moralizing which he opposed.  Later versions vary on whether or not they include her and how much of her story they include - always it is his father's property, but notalways does he know it.
        Tatar and others connect the beanstalk to Yggdrasil, the world-tree of Norse mythology, to the similar Buddhist tradition of the Bodhi tree, and to Jacob’s ladder, connecting earth to a higher realm.   Note also the similarity in Jack's thefts of objects from the giant to Molly Whuppie's similar thefts.
        Bettelheim says this is “a story which asserts the desirability of social and sexual self-assertion in the pubertal boy” (184), significantly basing his psychoanalytic interpretation on a related tale in which Jack and his father vie for dominance, and Jack succeeds based on the acquisition of a magic cudgel that beats his father; however, the story, while part of the Jack cycle of tales, does not appear to be sufficiently close to “Jack and the Beanstalk” to be considered a true variant.  In “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “[t]he phallic beanstalk permits Jack to engage in oedipal conflict with the ogre” (187),
        The sequence of things that Jack steals: first, the sack of gold, which pays for what Jack and his mother need to live, but runs out; then, the hen that lays golden eggs, because Jack now knows that he needs a continuous source of production; finally, the golden harp, which adds beauty and art – higher-level things that can only be appreciated when one’s basic needs have been cared for (Bettelheim 191).
 

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