Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you sitting
comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.
This week we look at a very disturbing tale from 1856.
It was collected by Ernst Ludwig Rochholz was a Swiss historian and
folklorist of German descent. He published Swiss Tales from the Aargau , vol. 1 in 1856.
According to Wikipedia:
Rochholz was a pioneer in the field
of legend research and philological-historical folklore . Together
with the Brothers Grimm and Wilhelm Wackernagel, he is at the
beginning of this then flourishing research direction. However, his works
as such were soon considered outdated because he did not publish the traditions
in a strictly scientific manner, but in an aesthetically and poetically revised
form.
This version is much more explicitly charged. In the
Grimm’s version the dwarfs are asexual beings who treat Snow White like a
daughter, albeit a daughter being trained up in the domestic arts to be a good
wife someday—just not their wife. It is the adult, full sized Prince that sees
her and sexually desires her even though she is “dead.” That distasteful whiff
of necrophilia will be discussed in full much later. In fact many versions have
the dwarfs ask our protagonist what she would prefer—to be treated as a wife or
a daughter/sister.
In this version she is not given a choice. Seeking
shelter because she is lost and hungry, an attractive young peasant girl is
faced with seven dwarfs who argue as to whose bed she will sleep in as there
are eight people and only seven beds. Now in the Grimm’s version The seventh
dwarf had to sleep with his companions, one hour with each one, and then the
night was done. In this story it says they fell to arguing with
one another, for each one wanted to give up his bed for the girl but in the
end the oldest dwarf wins the argument and takes the girl into his bed.
The implication is clear. When an old woman comes to the cottage and sees the
young girl she accuses the girl of being a slut, thinking that she was
cohabiting with all seven men and goes to get help from the Morality Police (or
at least some strong burly men who will mete out justice for her version of
morality).
Interestingly, it is the girl who receives the
accusation of sexual promiscuity, not the dwarfs. The old woman leaves "in
a rage" and returns with two men who break in, kill the dwarfs, and burn
down their house. The tale ends with no one knows what became of the girl.
One can hope that she escaped, but I fear a more likely scenario is that she merely changed hands “from the aroused dwarfs
to the full-fledged, sexual, and violently possessive men.” source
Folklore
scholar Wolfgang Mieder points out:
That despite the Grimms' fairly androgynous
published version, the sexual suggestiveness of Snow White living with seven
men recurs in various modern German aphorisms as well, among them one that
translates, "Did you know that Snow White had no rest on any day of the
week?" source
 |
| Charles Santore |
Death
of the Seven Dwarfs source
On one of the high plains between Brugg
and Waldshut, near the Black Forest, seven dwarfs lived together in a small
house. Late one evening an attractive young peasant girl, who was lost and
hungry, approached them and requested shelter for the night. The dwarfs
had only seven beds, and they fell to arguing with one another, for each one
wanted to give up his bed for the girl. Finally the oldest one took the
girl into his bed.
Before they could fall asleep a peasant
woman appeared before their house, knocked on the door, and asked to be let
inside. The girl got up immediately and told the woman that the dwarfs had
only seven beds, and that there was no room there for anyone else. With
this the woman became very angry and accused the girl of being a slut, thinking
that she was cohabiting with all seven men. Threatening to make a quick
end to such evil business, she went away in a rage.
That same night she returned with two men,
whom she had brought up from the bank of the Rhine. They immediately broke
into the house and killed the seven dwarfs. They buried the bodies outside
in the garden and burned the house to the ground. No one knows what became
of the girl.
That’s all for this week. Stay tuned next week as we
look at a tale with seven robbers instead of dwarfs.
No comments:
Post a Comment