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Rapunzel
By: Michelle Rogers
The following is based on the version of Rapunzel written by Sakamoto Mimei.
The story begins with Rapunzel as a young woman kept hidden away in
a tower with no doors or stairs by an old woman, Mistress Fairy.
After letting down her hair for the old woman to climb up the tower
to her chamber, the woman gives the girl food and a new dress. She
tells her the life in Fairy Land is better for her as she'll have no
hardships like she would if she were in the real world of humans. No
doubt she'd have met a man by now, and this would contribute to her
hardships and unhappiness. She is told to retain her youth and long
hair she must never leave, and in return she will be given food,
pleasure, whatever she desires. But one day a prince passes the
tower and notices Rapunzel's beauty. When he discovers the secret to
the girl and entering the tower, he climbs her hair to Rapunzel's
side. His union with her brings an end to the burning inside her and
begins her first step to ending her life in the tower. The prince
continues to visit her each night and the visits are only ended when
the old fairy discovers Rapunzel's dress has become tight around her
belly (her pregnancy giving her secret away). The old woman is
furious and banishes Rapunzel to the human world, to toil and old
age. She cuts the girl's hair and sends her from the tower. The
prince on his return is thrown from the tower and his eyes lost to
him. Time passes and Rapunzel regrets giving in to her desires and
curiosity (childbirth and labor in the fields are not realities she
wanted). Age begins to show in her skin.
Later, a blind man comes to her and her infant twins begging for
water. She obliges him and learns it is the prince she lost so long
ago. They go on to live together in a little cottage of their own
and Rapunzel finds herself growing happier now that he is by her
side, and the hardships that seemed so overwhelming before not as
great.
More time passes and the old fairy appears to Rapunzel. She tells
her that if she takes the dagger and kills her prince and the
children she will be able to return to her old life in the tower. No
more hardships, no ordinary human life. But Rapunzel can't do this.
She realizes her happiness is in her toil and in having her family.
She cries and holds her prince, the tears falling into his eyes (a
redemptive symbol in stories, and at times a magical catalyst coming
from within the heart). His site is restored to him. She tells him
not to look at her, but he replies she is more beautiful now in her
gentleness stripped of the pride of her youth. The story ends with
the couple happy in the life and love of matured years, and knowing
it is better than the love of youth.
Long hair is often an erotic symbol. It is also a sign of power or
youth. Samson only loses his strength once his hair is cut from his
head. A similar implication is given here about Rapunzel's hair. It
will help retain her youth and beauty as long as it is allowed to
grow. Other writers have used this motif of magic linked to hair
such as Naoko Takeuchi where the young princess has unusually long
hair in Sailor Moon and it only keeps growing once her hidden powers
of the Moon and lineage are reawakened.
In the beginning, the old fairy woman is a negative controlling
mother. An overprotective parent, hiding the child away from reality
of the world. The old woman as a witch figure (the old fairy) also
acts as a gateway figure for the heroine. She keeps Rapunzel hidden
from the world, from men, and doesn't allow her to grow. It's not
until Rapunzel's forced sexual awakening and encounter with the
prince that the world is opened to her and a journey into her Self.
As in stories such as certain versions of the Frog Prince, the
sexual awakening symbolizes the deeper awakening and awareness of
the psyche, the ending of physical innocence to parallel the entry
also into mental and emotional maturity.
Two ways the tower can be read is a parellel to old customs in some
cultures of secluding girls for their first menustration, or
secluding them to protect the village from the hidden power of the
female that is heightened by their bleeding. Only in the case of the
tower in this fairy tale, Rapunzel is not allowed to leave the tower
and thus her period of seclusion is extended past a natural time to
the point it begins to encroach on her development and the natural
way of coming into life. This would only strengthen the need for a
catalyst to shatter this existence and force Rapunzel into a
situation where she'd have to break from this stagnation and find
herself back in the flow of natural life.
Suffering and sacrifice play a role in this story just as in
redemptive sister tales, Cinderella, Cupid and Psyche, and such
stories. Rapunzel must go through a time of hardship once her glass
world is shattered, metaphorically speaking. She is forced to come
down from her tower, her high place in the sky (a bit like someone
who's had their head in the clouds for too long). She must toil and
earn her way back to a happy, comfortable place. Notice that once
she does so, only then does she value her lover's place at her side
in a genuine way (as a life partner), and through a non-egocentric
lens. In the tower, her concerns centered on food (primal needs) and
vanity (dresses, self-satisfaction in the form of pleasuring and in
idle days). Once she is forced from the tower, from the fairy world,
she is forced into taking into consideration not just herself, and
transforming the things from before into purer and higher states:
sex into mutual love and sharing, idleness into gratifying work, and
an unhealthy integration of the crone into a healthy one. I'll
explain the third transformation a bit more. The crone aspect of the
feminine should be a state (when in a healthy integration) that
teaches or leads into a deeper connection to Self. It should be part
of the transforming quality for a woman like Rapunzel, the witch
like Baba Yaga who can harm or aide, or the wise old woman who
passes knowledge or power. While in the tower, the old fairy does
not do this. She keeps Rapunzel trapped, keeps her from
transforming, from maturing. Rapunzel has to finally be cast out
from the tower, she has to defy the negative crone in order for the
crone to be transformed. Banishing her and taking Rapunzel's link to
the fairy world is the best thing for the young woman, and once the
banishment is forced upon her, the old fairy finally becomes a
transformative force, putting Rapunzel on the road to change. By the
time the prince arrives again and age has begun to flow through
Rapunzel, she is able to begin to take on not just the aspects of
mother but the positive aspects of the crone, coming into wisdom for
example and the gentleness that comes with age.
The second chance offered by the old fairy parallels the one offered
to the little mermaid in Anderson's famous tale. The sisters come
with a dagger after sacrificing their hair, telling the mermaid that
if she kills the prince she won't die but can return to the sea with
them. Like the mermaid, Rapunzel has come full circle. There is no
going back to the world under the sea, to the tower in the fairy
realm. She has found love and more importantly she has suffered and
found the strength of her heart, the strength and wisdom born of
suffering and experience. To kill the prince (the lover representing
part of the heroine herself that must be redeemed or integrated or
found) would mean destroying the part of herself gained or
discovered through her trials. Also, a marriage partner represents a
necessary union in fairy tales, and in real life a completeness for
both partners and a maturing stage in their life when the point of
marriage is reached. In the Little Mermaid, the reward is a soul, in
this version of Rapunzel, the reward is a soul in the sense that
Rapunzel will keep what she has earned in her life. She will keep
the deeper level of loving, of living, the deeper maturation of
Selfhood by passing her test. In both tales, a feminine figure from
the fairy world comes to the heroine and threatens, or tests one
should say, the heroine. Her journey leads her full circle back to
the gateway or the figure that stands at the threshold between the
real world and fairy world. Similar to the hero's journey of Joseph
Campbell, the heroine's journey leads finally back to that point
when she is psychically ready and the final testing by that feminine
threshold figure determines if she will continue on into a deeper
and fuller aspect of Self or if all will be lost and she will be
trapped in the tower and ultimately her Self destroyed or forgotten.
This essay is copyright of Michelle Rogers 2005.