Rapunzel

This article is about the traditional fairy tale. For the Disney character, see Rapunzel (Disney). For other uses, see Rapunzel (disambiguation).

Illustration by Johnny Gruelle

"Rapunzel" (English: /rəˈpʌnzəl/; German pronunciation: [ʁaˈpʊnt͡səl]) is a German fairy tale in the collection assembled by the Brothers Grimm, and first published in 1812 as part of Children's and Household Tales. The Grimm Brothers' story is an adaptation of the fairy tale Persinette by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force originally published in 1698. Its plot has been used and parodied in various media and its best known line ("Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair") is an idiom of popular culture.

In the Aarne–Thompson classification system for folktales it is type 310, "The Maiden in The Tower".

Andrew Lang included it in The Red Fairy Book. Other versions of the tale also appear in A Book of Witches by Ruth Manning-Sanders and in Paul O. Zelinsky's 1998 Caldecott Medal-winning picture book, Rapunzel.

Rapunzel's story has striking similarities to the 10th century AD Persian tale of Rudāba, included in the epic poem Shahnameh by Ferdowsi. Rudāba offers to let down her hair from her tower so that her lover Zāl can climb up to her. Some elements of the fairy tale might also have originally been based upon the tale of Saint Barbara, who was said to have been locked in a tower by her father.

Synopsis

A lonely couple who want a child, live next to a walled garden belonging to an enchantress. The wife, experiencing the cravings associated with the arrival of her long-awaited pregnancy, notices a rapunzel plant (or, in some versions of the story, rampion radishes or lamb's lettuce) growing in the garden and longs for it, desperate to the point of death. On each of two nights, the husband breaks into the garden to gather some for her; on a third night, as he scales the wall to return home, the enchantress, "Dame Gothel," catches him and accuses him of theft. He begs for mercy, and the old woman agrees to be lenient, on condition that the then-unborn child be surrendered to her at birth. Desperate, the man agrees. When the baby girl is born, the enchantress takes the child to raise as her own, and names the baby Rapunzel. Rapunzel grows up to be the most beautiful child in the world with long golden hair. When Rapunzel reaches her twelfth year, the enchantress shuts her away in a tower in the middle of the woods, with neither stairs nor a door, and only one room and one window. When the witch visits Rapunzel, she stands beneath the tower and calls out:

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, so that I may climb the golden stair.

Rapunzel in the fairy tale garden in Ludwigsburg, Germany

Upon hearing these words, Rapunzel would wrap her long, fair hair around a hook beside the window, dropping it down to the enchantress, who would then climb up the hair to Rapunzel's tower room. (A variation on the story also has the enchantress imbued with the power of flight and/or levitation and the young girl unaware of her hair's length.)

One day, a prince rides through the forest and hears Rapunzel singing from the tower. Entranced by her ethereal voice, he searches for the girl and discovers the tower, but is naturally unable to enter. He returns often, listening to her beautiful singing, and one day sees Dame Gothel visit, and thus learns how to gain access to Rapunzel. When Dame Gothel is gone, he bids Rapunzel let her hair down. When she does so, he climbs up, makes her acquaintance, and eventually asks her to marry him. Rapunzel agrees.

Together they plan a means of escape, wherein he will come each night (thus avoiding the enchantress who visited her by day), and bring her silk, which Rapunzel will gradually weave into a ladder. Before the plan can come to fruition, however, Rapunzel foolishly gives the prince away. In the first edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales, Rapunzel innocently says that her dress is getting tight around her belly (indicating pregnancy); in subsequent editions, she asks the witch (in a moment of forgetfulness) why it is easier for her to draw up the prince than her. In anger, Dame Gothel cuts short Rapunzel's braided hair and casts her out into the wilderness to fend for herself. When the prince calls that night, the enchantress lets the severed braids down to haul him up. To his horror, he finds himself staring at the witch instead of Rapunzel, nowhere to be found. When she tells him in anger that he will never see Rapunzel again, he leaps from the tower in despair and is blinded by the thorns below. In another version, the witch pushes him and he falls on the thorns, thus becoming blind.

For months he wanders through the wastelands of the country. One day, as Rapunzel sings while she fetches water, the prince hears Rapunzel's voice again, and they are reunited. When they fall into each others' arms, her tears immediately restore his sight. In another variation, it is said that Rapunzel eventually gives birth to twin boys (in some variations, a girl and a boy). The prince leads her to his kingdom, where they live happily ever after.

In another version of the story, the story ends with the revelation that the witch had untied Rapunzel's braid after the prince leapt from the tower, and the braid slipped from her hands and landed far below, leaving her trapped in the tower.

Commentary

Rapunzel – Rapunzel statue at the Old Market of Dresden in Saxony, Germany.

The uneven bargain with which Rapunzel opens is quite common in fairy tales having little else in common with this one: in Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack trades a cow for beans, and in Beauty and the Beast, Beauty comes to the Beast in return for a rose. Folkloric beliefs often regarded it as quite dangerous to deny a pregnant woman any food she craved. Family members would often go to great lengths to secure such cravings. Such desires for lettuce and like vegetables may indicate a need on her part for vitamins.

The witch is called "Mother Gothel", a common term for a godmother in German. She features as the overprotective parent, and interpretations often differ on how negatively she is to be regarded.

An influence on Grimm's Rapunzel was Petrosinella or Parsley, written by Giambattista Basile in his collection of fairy tales in 1634, Lo cunto de li cunti (The Story of Stories), or Pentamerone. This tells a similar tale of a pregnant woman desiring some parsley from the garden of an ogress, getting caught, and having to promise the ogress her baby. The encounters between the prince and the maiden in the tower are described in quite bawdy language. A similar story was published in France by Mademoiselle de la Force, called "Persinette". As Rapunzel did in the first edition of the Brothers Grimm, Persinette becomes pregnant during the course of the prince's visits.

Variants

Rapunzel is blonde in the original Brothers Grimm tale, so in every medium since she is featured with her long golden hair.

Likely, the oldest European variant of this tale is Petrosinella, one of the Neapolitan tales in the Pentamerone (1634) by Giambattista Basile.

Italo Calvino included in his Italian Folktales a similar tale of a princess imprisoned in a tower, "The Canary Prince", though the imprisonment was caused by her stepmother's jealousy.

A German tale Puddocky also opens with a girl falling into the hands of a witch because of stolen food, but the person who craves it is the girl herself, and the person who steals it her mother. Another Italian tale, Prunella, has the girl steal the food and be captured by a witch.

Snow-White-Fire-Red, another Italian tale of this type, and Anthousa, Xanthousa, Chrisomalousa, a Greek one, tell the story from the hero's point of view; he and the heroine escape the ogress, but have to deal with a curse after.

In some newer versions Rapunzel is portrayed as a painter, such as the Barbie and Disney version.

In the novel Golden by Cameron Dokey, Rapunzel is given to the witch (named Melisande) as a result of a deal between her and Rapunzel's mother - if her mother cannot love Rapunzel no matter her appearance, she must surrender Rapunzel to the witch. Rapunzel is born bald without hope of ever growing hair, and is therefore given into the witch's care.

Grimm Fairy Tales comic series issue #19 is entitled Rapunzel. When Sela encounters a couple who makes their living hustling people out of their life savings, it's time for her to step in and teach them a lesson. The beautiful Rapunzel doesn't let her hair down just for any man; she lets it down for every man! And she's leading the love-struck fools directly into a horrible trap. But like the old saying goes 'Love is Blind' and sometimes the people you care about the most are the ones you can trust the least.

Rapunzel in music

The first two movements of Märchenbilder (Schumann) depict scenes from the story (source: section of Schumann's journals "hard to find and not translated into English". Gerhard Schmidt, who taught at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and at the City of London School for Girls, had access to a copy of this section before he left Austria for the UK).

Film adaptations

Don Bluth originally planned an animated film adaptation entitled Rapuzel, but due to the failure of The Pebble and the Penguin, the film was shelved.

An adaptation featuring Barbie, entitled Barbie as Rapunzel, was released in 2002. In this version, Rapunzel is not trapped inside her tower until she explores the outside world. Gothel also keeps Rapunzel in a tower not because of a vegetable but because she wants revenge on an old boyfriend. The main concept of hair in this version is also not extremely important. Rather, it focuses more on a magic paintbrush.

Disney released a 2010 version of the tale, Tangled, originally titled Rapunzel. In this version, Rapunzel, while still innocent, is far more assertive in character and has magical hair, 70 feet (21 m) in length, that can be used to heal or restore youth in others (notably Mother Gothel, which is why she locked Rapunzel in the tower in the first place). To activate her golden hair's healing properties, Rapunzel must sing an incantation. As with many variations of the fairy tale, Rapunzel's tears are also shown to possess healing powers.

There was also an earlier animated film adaptation with Olivia Newton-John narrating the story. The major difference between the film and the Grimm tale is that instead of making the prince blind, the witch transforms him into a bird, possibly a reference to The Blue Bird, a French variant of the story.

A live action version was filmed for television as part of Shelley Duvall's series Faerie Tale Theatre, airing on Showtime. It aired on February 5, 1983. In it, the main character (played by Shelley Duvall) is taken from her parents by a witch (Gena Rowlands), and is brought up in an isolated tower that can only be accessed by climbing her unnaturally long hair. Jeff Bridges played the prince, and Roddy McDowall narrated.

Name origin

Campanula rapunculus, one candidate

It is difficult to be certain which plant species the Brothers Grimm meant by the word Rapunzel, but the following, listed in their own dictionary, are candidates.

1. Valerianella locusta, common names: Corn salad, mache, lamb's lettuce, field salad. Rapunzel is called Feldsalat in Germany, Nuesslisalat in Switzerland and Vogerlsalat in Austria. In cultivated form it has a low growing rosette of succulent green rounded leaves when young, when they are picked whole, washed of grit and eaten with oil and vinegar. When it bolts to seed it shows clusters of small white flowers. Etty's seed catalogue states Corn Salad (Verte de Cambrai) was in use by 1810.
2. Campanula rapunculus is known as Rapunzel-Glockenblume in German, and as Rampion in Etty's seed catalogue, and although classified under a different family, Campanulaceae, has a similar rosette when young, although with pointed leaves. Some English translations of Rapunzel used the word Rampion. Etty's catalogue states that it was noted in 1633, an esteemed root in salads, and to be sown in April or May. The herb catalogue Sand Mountain Herbs describes the root as extremely tasty, and the rosette leaves as edible, and that its blue bell-flowers appear in June or July.
3. Phyteuma spicata, known as Ährige Teufelskralle in German.

Cultural References

In a live performance of "Musta got lost" J. Geils Band lead singer Peter Wolf during the rap intro to the song, makes reference to the character, initially referring to her as "Ratumba" and then asks, "What's the name of that chick with the long hair?" The performance was recorded at the Cinderella Ballroom in 1976 and was published on the Blow your face out album.

See also

• Rapunzel syndrome

External links

• D.L. Ashliman's Grimm Brothers website. The classification is based on Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography, (Helsinki, 1961).
• Translated comparison of 1812 and 1857 versions
• The Annotated Rapunzel with variants, illustrations and annotations