Two Sisters and an Old Man

Probably take this one.

Hello, reader. This week, our tale comes from West Africa. Two Sisters and an Old Man has some familiar elements to it, but is still an intriguing tale. Follow the link above to read the story and then ponder it with me below.

To begin with, we have the "good sister" Ranti and the "bad sister" Bisi. Ranti is bullied every day and her mother tells her to return bad behavior with kindness, so Ranti does nothing back. I have to wonder about what else was going on in this house. Did the girls' father not care that one of them was bullying the other? Did Ranti's mother tell her daughter to put up with it because she knew her husband wouldn't do anything to stop it? I wonder what Ranti's mother and Bisi's mother's relationship was like. Obviously it wasn't good if they didn't work together to stop the bullying. In any case, Ranti is building lots of character and muscles by doing the work of two people while Bisi does whatever she wants.

The test was a little different than I expected. I knew Ranti would pass, because she's the good sister and that Bisi would fail because she's the bad sister, but it wasn't quite how I thought. Ranti stopped to give the old man water and washed his sores. Bisi just asked him where the garden was and didn't do anything for him. I had thought that Bisi would be punished for her rudeness and wouldn't get to go the garden, but he still told her where it was. What really interested me was the fruit of this garden. Ranti, following directions, takes one of the rotten fruits with her and gets expensive presents from it. Bisi, not following directions, takes several of the golden fruits and gets all manner of creepy-crawlies from it. The fruits match the girls. Ranti takes the fruit that looks rotten on the outside and is golden and precious inside. Doing that much hard work would probably take away from her looks. I don't think Ranti looked "rotten" but she would have been in the sun much more than her sister, with rough hands, and no real time to take care of herself or her appearance. Bisi, on the other hand, had plenty of time to make herself look pretty, or "golden" but was mean and poisonous on the inside. The girls chose themselves from this garden and had to live with the consequences.

The only thing I wonder is if this adventure changed Bisi at all. Did she learn her lesson, or did she drown in snakes and spiders? Eeeww.

The moral of this story is, if you're following a magic man's advice to get to a magic garden, you should do what he tells you to do once you're there. Alternatively, make sure you open up your treasure outside so if it's bad, you can get away from it.

Have a different moral? Want to see a different story? Comment below!

Bluebeard

Don't use this unique and alluring key. Don't do it.

Hello, reader. This week's tale comes to us from France. Charles Perrault has written many of the versions of fairy tales that are common today and his telling of Bluebeard is probably the most common for that story. Click the link to read Bluebeard, and then continue below to think about it in depth with me.

It bothers me that this tale is often used as a warning about "women's curiosity". If the wife hadn't been so curious about that closet, Bluebeard wouldn't have tried to kill her, after all. There's one flaw with this theory, and that is Bluebeard himself. We don't know why he killed his first wife. Obviously, it wasn't finding the bodies of the other wives. Maybe it was over something petty, or maybe it was something serious. Either way, Bluebeard is a murderer and, apparently, killed his other wives to cover it up. Putting the murder of the first wife aside, there are many ways Bluebeard could have hidden these bodies, but he chose to leave them rotting in his house instead. He wanted his next wife to find the bodies so he could kill her, too. He didn't have to give her the magic key, after all. Furthermore, if the key is magic, maybe it let him know to return home the same night his newest wife failed her test. Otherwise, that timing is a little too coincidental. So, this woman married a serial murder who's had plenty of time to hone his craft and his timing.

I think it's a good thing the wife found that room. If she had passed that test, there would have been another and he would have set her up to go into that room against his orders again and again until she did. Bluebeard wants to kill his wives. However he got started down this path, he clearly will not change his ways. Imagine if our heroine hadn't looked in that closet when she did. Her brothers would have come to visit and she would have thought nothing of them leaving her alone with Bluebeard afterwards to be tested again and again until she failed. If she hadn't looked in that closet when she did, he would have ended up trying to kill her later, probably when help wasn't so conveniently close. In the long run, her curiosity saved her life.

The moral of this story is either: feed your curiosity at the right moment so you aren't murdered, or don't marry a man whose previous wives all mysteriously vanished.

Like this story? Have a different moral? Want to talk about this woman's friends and family who paid her no attention when she found a closet of bodies? Comment below!