Grimm Challenge: Rapunzel

For those of you new to this blog, I am ever so slowly slogging my way through the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Occasionally I do a blog post on my progress, and in this case the most recent one I read was Rapunzel.

Currently, Rapunzel is probably one of the more popular tales due to Disney's reworking with Tangled. It was an adorable movie and I loved it. Because it was a reworking it only very, very loosely represented the original tale.

In general though the Rapunzel story is pretty well known. This is how I always thought it went (with optional rarely mentioned Prince blinding) Princess is stuck in a tower with incredibly long hair with a witch who keeps her there. Prince stumbles his way to the tower and proceeds to climb her hair into the tower to woo her. The witch finds out and gets mad, but they escape and live happily ever after.

Well, it's pretty much that except the end is a bit different. When the witch finds out she gets mad and blinds the prince after kicking him out of the tower. After that she turns on Rapunzel, who she banishes from the tower to a desert to roam around, pregnant (!) and alone. I think it is something like years before the prince finds her and his child, and she heals his blindness with her tears. The witch just goes on living in the tower I guess.

My favorite part of the original tale was that the Prince and Rapunzel must have been having sexy times in the tower. It makes me laugh. Also, I like that the original is pretty close to how I have always heard it, a rare thing for a Grimm tale.

As with most of these entries, the moral eludes me. Don't let a man climb up your hair? Be a good hostage? It all works out in the end and your desert home becomes bearable?

I Googled it and I like what Digital Bits Skeptic says the moral is:

"A child maturing into adulthood can’t be stopped. It is a parent’s emotional burden to want to delay this process, though they shouldn’t act on it. "

I guess that makes sense. I don't really have to worry about that though since I have no kids to hide away from roaming princes. :)

A Grimm Challenge: Hansel and Gretel

Grimm Story Hansel and Gretel
Tales Read10 from the Barnes and Nobel classic eBook edition

So. Hansel and Gretel is one of Grimm's tales that most of us are familiar with, and surprisingly what I already knew was very similar to what I read. The evil step-mother wants to get rid of the kids so they lead them into the forest, trail of bread crumbs, candy house, witch... the whole shebang. It was actually quite cute that the two siblings loved each other so much to look out for one another.

The only thing that I can think of that was different was after they killed the witch by pushing her in the oven, her house was full of stack of pearls. So the took all they could carry, went back to their dad, the step mother now dead, and had money problems no longer. That made me laugh.

I love the sibling loyalty in this tale. And also picturing a candy house is always interesting.

A Grimm Challenge: Loyalty

I am at work right now and I left my nook and home, so I can’t remember the specific ones that I read but I’ll give you a review of what I can remember. I remember reading one about Faithful John, who gave his everything to protect his king and was rewarded with being turned to stone from a curse. The King realized he screwed up and agreed to sacrifice his kids to bring John back. It worked and the kids ended up not dying either.

As I read these, I try and figure out what lesson they were trying to teach kids. What is the message? I’m guessing that this one was a story of loyalty. Loyalty will be rewarded no matter how long you have to wait. A decent message.

Another loyalty was one where a girl accidentally turned her 9 brothers into crows. If she didn’t talk or laugh for 7 years, they would be restored. She got married and her evil mother in law painted her out to be some sort of freak to her husband and convinced him to kill her. Just when she was about to die, the 7 years were up and a happily ever after was achieved. Alright, family (*cough* loyalty) is important.

The Man Who Could Not Shiver (or something to that extent) was kind of creepy. He spent his whole life trying to learn how to shiver. He kept offering people money to teach him how and all these creepy things kept happening to him. But he just didn’t understand and thus was not scared. As for me, the idea of a burning corpse hanging from a rope on a tree is burning into my brain.

I can’t remember for sure how it ended, but I think it was love that made him learn how to shiver, which, if true, provokes a rolled-eyed reaction.

There is one more that I can vaguely remember. It was about old animals leaving their lives where they were about to be killed or replaced. They wanted to start a band, and ended up in a house living out their life in happy peace. What I get upon great reflection is be kind to your elders. Or that singing animals are awesome. Not sure which.

So far I’ve been disappointed in the creepiness of Grimm’s tales. I've heard that they are the creepy to define all creepy tales. They are similar to any Greek myths (like the one where the live children are in the wolves belly alive and whole and they cut it open and replace it with rocks), but where are the kids who dance until their feet bleed? Maybe coming up… I still have 500 more pages to go.

A Grimm Challenge: The Frog Prince

I have decided to start reading my way though the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Since there are quite a few, according to my nook 607 pages worth, I decided to do a small write up of each, or every couple, as I go through them.

The first one on the list is the story of The Frog Prince. I’ve heard of this tale. Girl goes to a fountain, meets a talking frog, kisses him, he turns into a handsome prince and they live happily ever after the end.

Well not quite.

In the original, we have a beautiful youngest daughter of the king playing with her golden ball. It falls in the fountain and she promises the talking frog that if he gets it for her, she will be his friend and let him live/be with her in the castle. Agreement occurs, but after she’s got her golden ball back she completely reneges and runs away.

The frog hobbles his way up to the castle and demands his fee. The daughter is like, “Ew gross! Frog cooties!”. The king intercedes and is all like “Dude, you made a promise. Stop being a brat.” She begrudgingly keeps her promise until she gets so pissed off at how ugly the thing is that she throws him against the wall.

She throws him against the wall! And this causes him to turn into a prince!

What kind of promotion of violence is this? What I get from the heroine in this story is make false promises and violence will lead to awesome rewards.

According to the footnote, the story is supposed to represent the scared virgin afraid of a man’s beastly desires, and then after the fear is gone it is replaced with happiness, because sex is not that bad. I guess I could see this, but taken at face value and not reading into it so much, the lesson I get is being a bitch will result in great rewards.

Maybe next time someone is annoying me I’ll throw them into the wall and get a prince in return.