Rapunzel

1
Rapunzel
Rapunzel
Illustration for the Brothers Grimm fairy tale
Author The Grimm Brothers
Publication date
1812
Mediatype Print
"Rapunzel" (/rpnzl/; German pronunciation: [apntsl]) 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.
[1]
The Grimm Brothers'
story is an adaptation of the fairy tale Persinette by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force originally published in
1698.
[2]
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 AarneThompson classification system for folktales it is type 310, "The Maiden in The Tower".
[3]
Andrew Lang included it in The Red Fairy Book.
[4]
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 and the
Disney movie Tangled.
Rapunzel's story has striking similarities to the 10th century AD Persian tale of Rudba, included in the epic poem
Shahnameh by Ferdowsi. Rudba offers to let down her hair from her tower so that her lover Zl can climb up to
her.
[5]
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.
[6]
Plot
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
[7]
of the story, rampion), growing in the garden and longs for it, desperate to the point of death. One night,
her husband breaks into the garden to gather some for her; on a second night, as he scales the wall to return home,
the enchantress catches him and accuses him of theft. He begs for mercy, and she agrees to be lenient, on condition
that the then-unborn child be given to her at birth. Desperate, he agrees. When the baby is born, the enchantress takes
her to raise as her own, and names her Rapunzel, after the plant her mother craved. She grows up to be the most
beautiful child in the world with long golden hair. When she 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 she
visits her, she stands beneath the tower and calls out:
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, so that I may climb the golden stair".
Rapunzel
2
Illustration by Johnny Gruelle
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 Rapunzel 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 her
and discovers the tower, but is naturally unable to enter. He returns
often, listening to her beautiful singing, and one day sees the
enchantress visit, and thus learns how to gain access to Rapunzel.
When the enchantress has 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. She agrees.
Together they plan a means of escape, wherein he will come each night
(thus avoiding the enchantress who visits her by day), and bring
Rapunzel a piece of silk, which she will gradually weave into a ladder.
Before the plan can come to fruition, however, she foolishly gives the
prince away. In the first edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales, she innocently says that her dress is getting tight around her
waist (indicating pregnancy); in the second edition, she asks the enchantress (in a moment of forgetfulness) why it is
easier for her to draw up the prince than her.
[8]
In anger, she cuts off Rapunzel's hair and casts her out into the
wilderness to fend for herself.
When the prince calls that night, the enchantress lets the severed hair down to haul him up. To his horror, he finds
himself staring at her instead of Rapunzel, who is 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,
she pushes him and he falls on the thorns, thus becoming blind.
For months, he wanders through the wastelands of the country and eventually comes to the wilderness where
Rapunzel now lives with the twins she has given birth to, a boy and a girl. One day, as she sings while fetching
water, the prince hears her voice again, and they are reunited. When they fall into each other's arms, her tears
immediately restore his sight. He leads her and their children to his kingdom, where they live happily ever after.
In some versions of the story, Rapunzel's hair magically grows back once the prince touched it.
In another version of the story, it ends with the revelation that the enchantress had untied Rapunzel's braid after the
prince leapt from the tower, and it slipped from her hands and landed far below, leaving her trapped in the tower.
Rapunzel
3
Commentary
Rapunzel Dresden in Saxony,
Germany.
The seemingly uneven bargain with which Rapunzel opens is a common trope in
fairy tales which is replicated in Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack trades a cow for
beans, and in Beauty and the Beast, Belle comes to the Beast in return for a
rose.
[9]
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.
[10]
Such desires for lettuce and like vegetables may
indicate a need on her part for vitamins. From a scientific ethnobotanic
interpretation the enchantress is rather obviously a witch or medicine woman,
who had mastered the use and production of a plant or drug capable of saving
Rapunzel's mother from complications of pregnancy. Ergotics, opioids or
cannabis can be considered candidates in the original Persian or subsequent
versions of the tale, by analogy to the problem of Delphos' Oracle.
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.
[8]
Film adaptations
A live action version was filmed for television as part of Shelley Duvall's series Faerie Tale Theatre, airing on
Showtime. It aired on 5 February 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.
The story is retold in a second season (1987) episode of Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics, aka Grimm Masterpiece
Theatre.
[11]
A 1988 German film adaption, Rapunzel oder der Zauber der Trnen (meaning "Rapunzel or the Magic of
Tears"), combines the story with the lesser known Grimm fairy tale Maid Maleen. After escaping the witch's
tower, Rapunzel finds work as a kitchen maid in the prince's court, where she must contend with an evil princess
who aims to marry her prince.
A 1990 straight-to-video animated film adaption by Hanna-Barbera and, unusually, Hallmark Cards, simply titled
" Rapunzel
[12]
", featured 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.
Into the Woods is a musical combining elements from several classic fairy tales, in which Rapunzel is one of the
main characters; it was also filmed for television
[13]
in 1991 by American Playhouse.
In Shrek the Third (2007), Rapunzel (voiced by Maya Rudolph) is a character who is later revealed as the
secondary antagonist and was friends with Princess Fiona. She is shown to be the true love of the evil Prince
Charming and helps to fool Princess Fiona and her group when they try to escape from Charming's wrath.
Disney Animation's 50th feature Tangled (released in 2010) presents a loose retelling of the Grimm fairy tale. In
this version, Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore), while still innocent, is far more assertive in character and has
magical hair that can be used to heal or restore youth in others. This power is gained from the plant, a golden
Rapunzel
4
flower, taken to cure her mother during pregnancy. To activate her 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. Further departures include Rapunzel being born a princess, her captor, Mother Gothel (voiced by Donna
Murphy), kidnapping the infant girl for her hair, and the introduction of Flynn Rider (voiced by Zachary Levi), a
handsome yet self-interested thief, who replaces the prince as Rapunzel's rescuer. The film was originally titled
Rapunzel.
[14]
References
[1] Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (1884) Household Tales (English translation by Margaretmm Hunt), " Rapunzel (http:/ / myweb. dal. ca/ barkerb/
fairies/ grimm/ 012.html)"
[2] Jack Zipes (1991) Spells of Enchantment: The Wondrous Fairy Tales of Western Culture, Viking, p. 794, ISBN 0670830534.
[3] D. L. Ashliman, " The Grimm Brothers' Children's and Household Tales (http:/ / www. pitt. edu/ ~dash/ grimmtales. html)"
[4] Andrew Lang, The Red Fairy Book, " Rapunzel (http:/ / www. mythfolklore. net/ andrewlang/ 094. htm)"
[5] Rapunzal? (http:/ / web.archive. org/ web/ 20120131084722/ http:/ / www. iranian. com/ main/ 2009/ nov/ rapunzal) iranian.com, 9
November 2009.
[6] A Day to Honor Saint Barbara (http:/ / www.folkstory. com/ articles/ stbabs. html). Folkstory.com (30 November 1997). Retrieved on 6 April
2013.
[7] Rapunzel (http:/ / web.archive.org/ web/ 20120122211814/ http:/ / german. berkeley. edu/ poetry/ rapunzel. php). german.berkeley.edu,
adapted from: Rinkes, Kathleen J. Translating Rapunzel; A very Long Process. 17 April 2001.
[8] Maria Tatar (1987) The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, Princeton University Press, p. 18, ISBN 0-691-06722-8
[9] Maria Tatar (2004) The Annotated Brothers Grimm, W W Norton & Company Incorporated, p. 58 ISBN 0-393-05848-4.
[10] Jack Zipes (2001) The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, p. 474, ISBN 0-393-97636-X
[11] http:/ / www.imdb.com/ title/ tt0305033/ ?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
[12] http:/ / www.imdb.com/ title/ tt1217949/
[13] http:/ / www.imdb.com/ title/ tt0099851/
[14] Tangled (2010) (http:/ / www. imdb.com/ title/ tt0398286/ ). IMDb.com
External links
D.L. Ashliman's Grimm Brothers website (http:/ / www. pitt. edu/ ~dash/ grimmtales. html). 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 (http:/ / www. pitt. edu/ ~dash/ grimm012a. html)
The Annotated Rapunzel with variants, illustrations and annotations (http:/ / www. surlalunefairytales. com/
rapunzel/ index. html)
Article Sources and Contributors
5
Article Sources and Contributors
Rapunzel Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=595210133 Contributors: 16@r, 2love, ABC1356msep1, AGMeade, Aaronbolton, Abd, Abe Lincoln, Aeroluvr123, Aidsguyy23,
Aiman abmajid, Aipeursson, Airodyssey, Ajd, Ajitter89, Ajraddatz, Amandeep.sohi, AndrewHowse, AndrewvdBK, Andycjp, Antaeus Feldspar, Ariadrake, Arthena, Artw, Ashton1983,
Awesomeomar, Az29, Azure12, Azuris, Benjithekkkool, Bignomadbob, Blackwood13, Bluquail, Bobo192, Bobthekidfromdetroit, Boneyard90, Bookworm857158367, BorgQueen, Boxing245,
Brianmsn, Btpow91, BuzzWoof, CJLL Wright, CJSciara, CactusWriter, Calabe1992, Caltas, Cannolis, Ccacsmss, Cculber007, Chensiyuan, Chips&hoverlike, Chowbok, CommonsDelinker,
Concreteveneers, Cookiecrumbs1530, Cooleooleo, Courcelles, Creol, Csendesmark, Cst17, CucumberBandersnatch, DBigXray, DGG, DVdm, Dannyofborg, Dark Vinca, DarkAudit,
DarkDancer06, Dave.Dunford, Davidmiller10, Deb2222, Defense Mechanism, Deflective, Delldot, DemirBajraktarevic, Diddims, Disnerd, Doc glasgow, Dogman15, Download, Dpv,
DragonSlaveII, Drcaldev, Dreadstar, DreamGuy, Dyeote, Ebil noob, El C, Emeraldcityserendipity, Emersoni, Empoor, EpicGabrielIsEpic, Eve Hall, Extropian314, Falcon8765, Favonian, Filiep,
Flyhighplato, Foonly, Funandtrvl, Gary, Geebee100, George Ponderevo, Glen, Goldfritha, Goodsblame45, Goustien, GraemeLeggett, Grassynoel, Grey ghost, GroovySandwich, Haki23,
Halbared, Halmstad, HannahMiley, HerrDalton, Hmains, Hmrox, Hobartimus, Hornean, Hotmommeow1, Hydrogen Iodide, Icseaturtles, Ignus, Iridescent, Isarra (HG), Isean, J36miles,
JDspeeder1, JXtra, Jagged 85, JakobSteenberg, Japanese Searobin, Jargon777, Jhjh2004, Jim1138, Jjeerr, Jnorm, John of Wood Green, Jojhutton, Jokes Free4Me, Jonnybgoode44, Jpgordon,
Jsharpminor, June6290, Jusdafax, Jwy, K8cpa, Kawaii-kenchan, Kchishol1970, Kdoebel, Keith111, Khazar2, Kittoo, Lateg, Lele giannoni, LieutenantLatvia, Lindert, Longhairadmirer, Lord
Opeth, Lotje, LtPowers, Lyra bree, MBerrill, MC10, MER-C, Macphisto, Macslacker, Maikeru Go, Makki98, Marcika, Marek69, Mark v1.0, Materialscientist, Mctutu, Mel Etitis, MiChaos,
MikeyMouse10, Millahnna, Mirokado, Mistress of Awesome, Mlpearc, Momet, Monty845, Mygerardromance, NMChico24, Nanami Kamimura, Neddyseagoon, NeilN, Nelson Teixeira, Niemti,
Non-ya, Nunh-huh, Nuttycoconut, Nymf, Oliverlyc, One of many night stars, OneWeirdDude, Oscar6969696969, Otrfan, Otto1970, Oxymoron83, Pbtimmins, Pdbg, Pekinensis, Penguinwithin,
Peregrine Fisher, Petrb, Philip Trueman, Picapica, Pikazilla, Pilaf, Pio.au, PizzaMonster01, Plantdrew, Plutosdogscat, Pooze, PranksterTurtle, PrincessKirlia, Proxxt, Pruneau, Quaeler, Quake44,
Quenhitran, RA0808, RadManCF, Randee15, RattleMan, Reader34, Rebel-Angel-Hero, RetiredUser124642196, RexNL, RicardoSignes, Rich Farmbrough, Robodoc.at, Roger Davies, Rowdy the
Ant, Rtkat3, Ruwolf, Sadads, Samthemanispoo, Samuel Blanning, Sango123, Sarahgeorge, SchfiftyThree, Sharkface217, Sietse Snel, SilentGuy, SilverDragon234, Sj122390, Sketchmoose,
Skidude9950, Spellcast, Spidey0110, SqueakBox, Ssilvers, Steerpike, Stratford490, SuperJew, TPIRFanSteve, TParis, TX55, Ted Wilkes, Teiladnam, TenPoundHammer, Teresa Ngan, Tesi1700,
The Thing That Should Not Be, The wub, Thingg, Thu, Tide rolls, Timrollpickering, Toddst1, TonyTheTiger, Trishm, Truetom, Trusilver, Tusitala, Tyrenius, UberMan5000, Uncle Dick,
Urahara, Utinomen, Victoria.heck, Victoriaearle, Vrok, Wayne Riddock, Werideatdusk33, Wetman, Widr, Wikianon, Wikibob, Willjasen, Woohookitty, Wplonk, XX-59-40, Xcountry99,
Xyzzyva, Yokum, Zzombie, Zzyzx11, , 636 anonymous edits
Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors
File:Illustration for the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Rapunzel..jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Illustration_for_the_Brothers_Grimm_fairy_tale_Rapunzel..jpg
License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Contributors: User: SLKozhin, Simon Kozhin/..
Image:Johnny Gruelle illustration - Rapunzel - Project Gutenberg etext 11027.jpg Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Johnny_Gruelle_illustration_-_Rapunzel_-_Project_Gutenberg_etext_11027.jpg License: Public Domain Contributors: Badseed, Colin Douglas
Howell, Howcheng, Jacklee, Mattes, Tagishsimon, Wst, 4 anonymous edits
Image:Dresden Altmarkt 14.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Dresden_Altmarkt_14.jpg License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.5 Contributors: Kay
Krner, Dresden (Saxony)
License
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
//creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/