Fairy Tales

Fairy Tales are the myths we live by, evoking the imagination and teaching us the lessons of the heart. At first glance, most famous fairy tales seem so implausible and irrelevant to contemporary life that their survival is hard to understand. The story of "Rapunzel" involves a heroine with hair at least twenty feet long. To many readers, the most memorable feature of "Rapunzel" is the incantation "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair," with its accompanying image of a beautiful young girl standing in the window of a tower with her magically long golden hair hanging down outside.

Long think hair has always been thought beautiful and erotically alluring; artists and writers have celebrated it as the sign of a lush, intensified womanliness. In nineteenth-century America, it was a source of pride if you could actually sit on your hair, and to lose it was a disaster. When Jo in Little Women sells her thick chestnut mane it is treated by her family as a kind of minor tragedy. Similarly, in "Rapunzel" and its variants, the witch often begins her revenge by violently chopping off the heroine's long hair.

But though long, thick hair was often referred to as "woman's glory," it was also her burden. Washing it, drying it, combing out the tangles, brushing it plaiting it, pinning it up, and taking it down took a lot of effort.

The Moral (to some)

In the Grimms' tale of "Rapunzel", the prince is a fairly ineffective figure. After he climbs Rapunzel's hair into the tower and is confronted by the witch, he jumps from the window in despair and is blinded by thorns. Both he and his beloved then wander about alone in misery for several years, but at last they are reunited and when Rapunzel's tears fall on his eyes, his sight is restored. In many modern versions the hero is a stronger character. These stories usually omit his blinding, or treat it metaphorically: he gets a concussion when he falls from the tower, and cannot remember Rapunzel and his love for her; or his glasses are broken and he can't see her; or he believes that she has abandoned him rather than been banished to the wilderness by the witch. In the end,, however, the lovers are reunited, one way or another. Men may appear to desert or forget you, but not forever is the moral.