Rapunzel

Maiden, how is your hair that long?

Salutations, dear reader. I'm not sure how, but I've never talked about Rapunzel yet, so we're going to remedy that today. If you want to brush up on the gruesome Grimm version of the tale, click the link above. When you're ready, continue reading below for my analysis.

There's a lot to dig into in this story, but let's start with the witch. Apparently "gothel" means godmother in some almost-forgotten version of German, so she never actually gets a name, which is typical. However, I'm going to call her Gothel anyway because it makes my life easier. So, we have this enchantress who agrees to trade away some cabbage for a child. I have to wonder why she wanted a child. There are many possible reasons, obviously. She could have been lonely and wanted someone to love who would never run away from her. Maybe she wanted a baby, but all the men were too scared of her to romance her and make a family with her. Whatever the reason, she wanted a baby and trading some produce for one seemed like an easy deal to her.

What puzzles me is that once Rapunzel moved into her tower, Gothel didn't live with her. I know Gothel would have things to do with her life, witchy or otherwise, but it reads like she never spends the night in the tower with Rapunzel. What the crap. Gothel goes through all this trouble raising this girl and then only spends days with her and sleeps somewhere else. Did Gothel decide she didn't like Rapunzel and was trying to avoid the girl? Was that somehow part of Gothel's witchiness that she had to live somewhere other than a tower? I'm assuming the two lived together before Gothel put Rapunzel in a tower. It's just weird. Not that sticking a preteen in a tower is normal, but I digress.

Next we have Rapunzel herself. Who in the world has hair as long as a tower by the time they're 12 years old? After awhile, human hair stops growing. It does get really long, but not that long! So, either there's something magic about Rapunzel, or Gothel bewitched her. As long as we're on the subject, taking the weight of an entire person on your scalp seems like a sure way to get the hair ripped out of your head. So, I guess Rapunzel is double magic. It's amazing Gothel was able to cut her hair. Maybe they were magic scissors.

Anyway, we're ignoring Rapunzel herself. She is severely taken advantage of. Obviously Gothel didn't let her meet anyone, which is not okay, but let's think about that. Whatever Rapunzel didn't learn about the world before age 12, she had to learn from Gothel. Gothel the enchantress who locked a child in a tower in the middle of the woods for no explained reason. It's safe to say Rapunzel's world view is a little skewed.

Then, Rapunzel meets a man, a prince, even! He proposes to her as soon as he sees her and she accepts. Does Rapunzel know what goes into a marriage? It is probable that Gothel mentioned something about Rapunzel's parents and how they were married, but Rapunzel would have no idea what a marriage looked like, even from the outside. I kind of doubt Gothel let Rapunzel hang out with anyone before the tower. So, the first man she's seen since puberty climbs up her hair and offers to marry her. It's not surprising that Rapunzel says yes. What is surprising is that her relationship with Gothel is so bad that Rapunzel doesn't share her news. Obviously, Gothel didn't really care for Rapunzel, but you would think Rapunzel cared for Gothel. Then again, maybe that's why she agreed to marry literally the first man who asked, so she could get away. Also, I'm assuming that at some point after their "marriage", this prince had to give Rapunzel the sex talk, because I can almost guarantee that Gothel didn't. As hilarious as that would be, it's also terrible. Everything that is wrong with the prince's and Rapunzel's relationship could probably fill a doctoral thesis, so we'll just leave that where it is.

We should probably look at the prince next. We have no idea of his true motivation at the beginning of the story. He hears a pretty voice in the woods, finds the source, and immediately proposes to the girl singing. This is probably more interaction than he would get with whoever his parents wanted him to marry before their wedding. So for him it almost makes sense and maybe he was genuine about it. But then we have the skeins of silk for her to weave a ladder with. Could he not bring an actual ladder? Or a rope? Or literally anything else that would get her out of that tower right away instead of making her wait so long? Either this prince is dumb as a bag of rocks, or he didn't really want Rapunzel out of that tower. We know he proposed to her, and made babies with her, but we don't know if he really wanted to be with her. It could have been very cozy for him to have a girl in the woods and a wife at home. However, once the prince is blinded, then we know he was sad that he lost Rapunzel. So maybe he did care? It's hard to tell, honestly. But at least once he found Rapunzel again, his blindness was cured and they lived happily together with their twins. So I guess it works out for everyone except Gothel. Who just...gave up on Rapunzel. Forever.

So, the moral of this story is that if you're being held captive by an enchantress but you manage to make her so mad she sends you into the dessert, she'll never bother you again. Alternatively, if you find a girl in a tower you want to marry, bring a ladder with you when you come back.

Have a different moral? Want me to talk about a different fairy tale? Comment below! And come back next week for when I take this crazy story into our era.