The Twelve Months

Seems like a good place to find violets.

Salutations, reader! The fairy tale for this week comes from the Czech Republic. The Twelve Months is a pretty brutal story, but it has a mostly happy ending. Click the link above to read it and continue below to think about it with me.



The set up for this story is pretty basic. We have a beautiful protagonist who takes a lot of crap from her family with a smile and who just gets prettier; we have an entitled step-sister, Holena, who was trained to be that way by the entitled stepmother who thinks that life is a competition between her daughter and step-daughter and beauty is the only way to win. I feel like I could write a thesis just about that, but we'll keep moving.

Was anyone else super uncomfortable when Marushka got death threats from Holena and her stepmother if she couldn't find flowers blooming in the middle of winter? I understand the archetype of this story where they'll be abusive to her (not that I like that either) but death threats for an impossible task? This story starts out brutal, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised at the ending.

Before we get to the ending, let's look at the twelve months. I feel like they let Marushka find them, so they were already sympathetic to her plight, but I'm wondering what they thought of her actions. The first two times, Marushka brings back the requested items for her step-sister and doesn't take any for herself. It's in the story that Marushka was starving, and she didn't eat any of the strawberries that she picked. That tells me that she was more concerned about the consequences of eating than the consequences of not eating. Her home life was traumatizing.

Now, in my mind, there are two options for what happened the third time Marushka met the twelve months. Either, they had a meeting and decided that if they only let her take a little of what she needed, she'd stop bothering them, or they knew if she only took a little, Marushka's step-family would come out and look for more. Given how the twelve months behaved with her and how respectful Marushka was, I think it's the latter. Especially when we see the difference in how Holena treats them. She assumed everything exists for her benefit and that she has no need to ask for help. So she ends up freezing to death. The stepmother doesn't even find the twelve months. She just froze to death on the mountain.

I wonder how long Marushka waited for them to come home. I wonder if part of her was relieved when they didn't. I bet she felt guilty for feeling relieved, even though she shouldn't have. This is one of those rare fairy tales where the happy ending isn't that the beautiful lady gets married. Instead, the people who abused her die and she inherits everything. It sounds like she was already doing all of the work to keep the household running, so it was probably easier for her to keep house the way she wanted to and not have anyone screaming at her any more. Kind of a somber ending for a fairy tale.

The moral of this story is if you're going to demand flowers or fruit in the middle of winter, you'd better be nice to anyone you meet. Alternatively, if you raise your daughter to expect everything is for her benefit, then she will.

Have a different moral? Wondering if anyone in a nearby house noticed Holena and the stepmother died? Have a different story you want me to talk about? Comment below! And don't forget to subscribe if you're enjoying this blog.