Since we hadn't had a lot of time to talk about the individual tales in class, I thought I would bring up some things I was thinking about when reading "The Three Spinners." Just to remind you of what this tale deals with I'll give a quick summary:
There's a maiden who did not want to spin. Her mother is so angry with her that she beats the maiden, and as she screams, the queen just so happens to be driving by. The mother is ashamed to admit to the queen that her daughter is lazy, and instead lies and says she can't get her to stop spinning, though she is very poor and cannot afford so much flax. Delighted, the queen asks the mother if she can take the maiden to her kingdom to spin as much flax as she wants. The mother consents. The maiden is promised the queen's oldest son as her husband if she completes a tasks. Instead, the maiden gets three old women to do her job for her and promises them to be claimed at cousins at her wedding. When her new husband learns that the women had either a flat foot, a drooping lip, or a huge thumb form spinning, he declared that his wife would never spin again. So in the end, the maiden got out of the "terrible task" of spinning.
So I guess I wanted to look at what we are to gain from this fairytale. One one hand, the maiden did no spinning and yet got a prince as husband. Unlike most fairytales, it contains no element of hardwork to allow for her reward in the end. On the other hand though, it makes one consider her cleverness and that just maybe, her wits plus the fact that she kept her word to the women, allowed for her to reap a reward.
At the same time, however, I begin to wonder what the purpose of a fairytale is. Is it similar to a fable in which we are suppose to gain some sense of morality from it? Or should we consider that fairytales exists in a world in which rules are different and simply enjoy the story? For me at least, probably because I am so accustomed to Disney's version of fairytales, I often look for some moral message to be transmitted through the tale. But because it appears that "The Three Spinners" may lack some ethical code, we should maybe enjoy them for what they are and not assume them to need some moral agent. Some fairytales do of course teach lessons, but maybe that's just a plus, not something necessary by all means.
Just to clarify, I am not a fairytale expert and don't read them for fun. The ideas in the blog are really just questions that came up when reading. Please share your thoughts and opinions. How did "The Three Spinners" strike you all?
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ReplyDeleteI get what you mean a hundred percent, Chelsi. In fact I was going to write my blog on the same topic. I agree that when we are either reading or watching fairy tales we generally have many expectations regarding what we are going to hear in the story, like good being rewarded, bad being punished, and ending with a moral. These expectations must just lay with us in our subconscious only to appear when they have been violated. When I read The Three Spinners for the first time I was also surprised that the girl ended up getting out of ever spinning again in her life. She did keep her promise to the women who helped her, which was good but in the end she was rewarded for being lazy. She even got out of doing it for three days by whining about it and then lying to the queen! So it is very hard to try to come away with this story with a moral.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, the story about The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich presented no clear moral. The princess promised the Frog to let him be her companion and eat, sleep and play together with him if he retrieved her golden ball from the well. Then when he gave her back the ball she just ran away! He eventually hopped all the way to the castle doors and called on her, but when she saw he was at the door she slammed the door in his face. Only after her father forced her to keep her promise did she let the frog in and then reluctantly lug him around with her. When it came time to go to bed she put him on the floor in the corner of the room and when he asked to be let on the bed she picked him up and threw him at the wall saying, “now you can have your rest, you nasty frog!” When he hit the wall he turned into a handsome prince.
How would you expect the ending of this story to go? I would have thought for sure that the prince would have scolded her for being an evil biotch. Nope. In actuality he took her to his kingdom and made her his wife!!!! I kept waiting for something bad to happen to her but the story ended. Really? What moral can you come away with after this story? That you can be a whiny brat and run away from your responsibilities and still end up living happily ever after? So I must now realize that maybe not all stories are meant to have morals. As Chelsi said above, I must have gotten that idea from watching too many Disney movies and not reading enough of these stories. The Three Spinners and The Frog King among many other stories are just that – a story.
Thanks for the comment! And yea, I guess I didn't consider the other tale, but now that you mention it it had no clear moral either. The funny thing is we normally think of hard work as a realistic means for success, but in today's soceity there are many people you gain fame from doing "not so moral stuff" if you know what I mean, so its funny how realism is, to an extent, changing.
ReplyDeleteI was left wondering somewhat about everything that happened in The Three Spinners. As we talked about in class, the princess/heroine is typically the pious, devoted, industrious girl. Good character qualities typically exist without serious flaw. That being said, I was confused when the lying and deceitful girl assumed her throne as the princess. It seems that the actions she takes would not typically be rewarded in fairy tale culture. Since when is the lazy liar turned into a princess. That may be one of the reasons why this tales hasn't made it into mainstream culture. We can't encourage lying and deceit in our young maidens. For these reasons, I think The Three Spinners is definitely worthy of significant interest.
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