Rapunzel, the Witch and How Life Works

What This Story is Really About…

Whenever I asked people what they remember about fairy tales I get lots of ums and ahs, and finally some story fragments which come out more as questions than real definite answers. "Is that the one with the bear," they'll say, "or the one with the mean stepsisters?" As they try to recall characters and storylines, they make guesses based on their very rusty sense of what fairy tales do or are about.

With Rapunzel, the answers are pretty sparse People remember a tower, and maybe some long hair. Some of the diehards can actually recite the litany "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair." But after that there's not much that comes to mind. If they work at it, they sorta remember there's a prince. But that's an easy guess, because many people presume there has to be romance if it's a fairy tale. And then they'll remember a witch or a sorceress or a cruel step-mother, they can't remember just who exactly. But there's got to be someone like that, because all good romances have to have a villainous person who's trying to thwart the lovers.

But almost no one remembers Rapunzel herself. She's one of those fairy tale characters who barely registers with readers. She's a blank slate, hardly a great characteristic if the story is named after you. And the plot line, such as it is, depicts someone who is utterly and completely acted upon. Passive hardly begins to cover it. It's enough to ask "Who's story is this, anyway?"

We're going to try and figure that out.

The story starts with a married couple who have longed for many years to have a child. Many fairy tales start with this motif and it rarely ends well for the future parents. But in the short term it appears their prayers have been answered and the wife is with child.

They live next to a beautiful garden, full of lovely flowers and shrubs that is surrounded by a high wall. No one dared to enter it, fearing the witch who owned the garden. But, of course, the mother looks into the garden and sees a bed planted with beautiful rampion (a healthy herb or green) and is seized by a great longing to eat some of it. Naturally, she can't have it, so the longing overtakes her and she grows weaker by the day. In desperation, the father with great fear and trepidation sneaks into the garden and steals the greens.

This part of the story has some drama, some nuance. As a kid I was transfixed by the existential dilemma it depicts, though I didn't know how to say or spell either of those words back then. I was just so fearful for the mother and of course for the baby. And the Dad who watching his love waste away knows he has to summon up great courage from within himself and find a way to bring some rampion back.

How come nobody remembers this part?

This was huge for me. In my family I was surrounded by many kids and two very harried but deeply loving parents. I got to witness how hard they worked to keep us together and to make sure each of us was safe and sound. The life-long lesson went in very deep. In our world, there wasn't anything you wouldn't do for your family, no matter how hard it might be.

In the way that only children can do, I was deeply embedded in the story. I read slowly and with great concentration. I felt it when the mother first saw the herb and longed for it. I was with the Dad when helplessly, he watched her fade away. I traveled with him as he scaled the wall and with great terror found the rampion and hurried home with it. Then I was flooded with temporary relief as she eats and seems better, only to have her develop an even greater longing that allows her no peace. In her desperation she begs her husband to go back into the garden once again, despite the great danger involved.

We can all guess what happens next, but as a child I couldn't. By the end of the fourth paragraph the father climbs over the wall again and this time is terrified to see the witch before him. He begs for mercy and tells her the whole story of his wife's great need. Her anger subsides and she kindly offers him all the rampion he would like. Only there's a catch - he must give her the child that is about to be born!

Foolishly, naively, I presumed that he would refuse, that he would face the consequences, whatever they might be, but never ever surrender the baby. I was a deeply romantic little kid and I had no worldly knowledge of the kinds of very bad bargains that adults sometimes have to make. So the next few paragraphs threw me right out of the story. Dad, fearing for his life, consents to the witch's demands and when the little girl is born, the witch reappears, takes the child away and names her Rapunzel (rampion).

There wasn't much point to the rest of the story for me. I was so angry at what happened, and by the behavior of all the adults in it, that I could no longer read it deeply. I skimmed through most of it, got to the end and hardly ever reread it. Whatever this story had to say was way beyond me and for the longest time, I gave it up as a hopeless cause.

I had a very narrow view of fairy tales when I was a child. I thought they were meant to be adventure stories where a character, usually poor or badly treated or in some way deficient sets out in the world and overcomes great obstacles. With a little help from magical helpers or talking animals the character triumphs and achieves her goals. She has now been transformed by all the trials and tests she endured and has achieved her true place in life. How romantic!

But not every fairy tale is a Hero’s Journey,

It would seem that the people for whom these stories were told had more on their minds than just a character’s possible growth and change. Some of the stories use romantic notions but are actually describing something more than two people’s happiness. It turns out that Rapunzel is one of those stories interested in exploring something more elemental.

There are many variations of this story but they share some very important details. In each story, a mother-to-be sees something that she must have. She has looked down into a walled garden owned by a witch. It is filled with many beautiful flowers and shrubs. But what the mother sees and craves is a leafy green vegetable. Not a rose or a golden object, it is always food. The food she is drawn to is rampion, in some stories it is parsley, but always some life giving substance.

When the father is caught by the old woman in her garden, she demands recompense for the food he has stolen. She wants the soon to arrive baby. She wants the life that the parents have created. Nothing less will do.

The witch is not cruel. She is nothing like the monstrous woman in Hansel and Gretel who desires nothing but to lure children into her home so she can devour them. The witch treats the little girl kindly and she grows up living with her until her twelfth birthday. Then she takes her to a tower in the woods, that has no door or staircase but only a window high up the wall. Rapunzel, like the life-giving vegetable she’s named for is walled off just at the point (puberty) where she could produce life.

The surest sign of life is growth. All her life Rapunzel’s hair grows and grows. Once imprisoned, it is her hair that helps both the witch and eventually the prince climb up the tower. Without her hair, that growth, she would be completely alone.

The romantic elements now enter the story and a handsome prince discovers Rapunzel when he hears her sing. He is so entranced by her voice that he begins to secretly visit her when the witch is not around. He, like Rapunzel’s mother, craves her and cannot stay away, despite the great danger.

In the first edition that the Grimms’ published Rapunzel outs herself when she tells the witch that her clothes no longer fit. She is pregnant! The witch in her fury takes her out of the tower and leaves her deep in the woods. Where she is again isolated and kept from others, far away from the life she hoped to have.

When the prince comes to help Rapunzel escape, the witch taunts him that his love is forever lost to him. He can no longer have that which he greatly desires, what he needs. In great despair, he jumps out of the window and is blinded by the thorns below. In both these instances the witch does not harm either Rapunzel or her lover, but leaves them to a fate that seems worse than death.

By this point the witch has once again tried to dominate and control life for herself. First her garden, kept separate from all other living creatures with its high walls, it is intended only for her. Then the child who she cares for but who also must be walled off and kept separate. Finally the new life that the prince and Rapunzel have created drives her to punish Rapunzel by keeping her apart from her prince, sundering the relationship that has produced a child.

But life can’t be controlled. It can’t be walled off or kept prisoner. Life seeks life and at each turn of the story someone or something counters the witch’s efforts; efforts that can never stifle the flow of aliveness that permeates everything.

It’s a story worth repeating It can be easy to despair about the world and all the terrible things that happen in it. But the people who long ago told this story knew that life cannot be stopped, it cannot be overcome. It is larger than any one person’s plans. It is what the poet* called “The force that though the green fuse drives the flower…”.

The witch’s cause is a hopeless one. And the key is in the refrain: “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair.” It tells us that despite the prison, despite the witch’s intentions and precautions, life is still there. The witch is unaware that the very tresses she relies on to climb the tower will soon let the prince climb too. It keeps growing and developing but stays unseen, unnoticed, an invisible force that drives the circumstances of Rapunzel’s eventual freedom. Its very existence thwarts all the witch’s plans and it leads Rapunzel to have the long delayed life she so richly deserves.

*Dylan Thomas

Photo by Krisztina Papp on Unspash