temporus | Witches: Entowering women since the 1790's...

Okay, in a further overly critical look at some fairy tales brought to you courtesy of my son's exposure to some audio versions, today I take on Rapunzel. Never mind that "rapunzel" is a vegetable that apparently there is no set consensus as to the specific plant this represents. A little fact I didn't know until I looked into this particular old tale. No, the thing that gets me about this particular tale is the tower itself. In the version I've got, the tower exists in the woods. It's something that the witch finds. She didn't build it. So....who the heck builds a tower with no windows or doors anywhere near the floor? Why is the only entrance/egress something like 30 or more feet in the air via a window? In the Sur La Lune version, there's no identification as to who built the tower, or if it was found by the witch, or made special built.

Now, you can make a lot out of the phallic symbolism of a single tower in the woods, with only one tiny hole up near the top. Yup. You could. But that's not where I'm going with this. I'm taking things the more literal route.

First: Rapunzel gets sent up to the tower when she's twelve. At that age, she doesn't have long enough hair yet to do the whole "Let down your golden hair" bit. But even if magically her hair was long enough at that young age (and it seems to me that Rapunzel's hair *IS* a magical element) how useful would it be to her or the witch from outside the tower? So that implies that the witch must have a way up into the tower even if without the hair. Either that, or they tied a grappling hook on it and climbed on up. To further this line of thought, if the witch could get up that distance without the aid of the hair, then why would she even bother with the hair later? I mean, climbing up a rope like that is hard work. If she could fly or use a ladder or something, wouldn't that just be easier in the long run to do all the time? I would think so.

So the premise of the story, the long hair, to enter the tower through the high up window seems rather silly. I mean if the witch can get in and out when she wants, why would she always announce her presence? If she's the sort of overprotective/controlling type that doesn't really trust Rapunzel, I'd expect her to make surprise inspections. But there's no evidence of that here. The whole thing kind of falls flat to my mind.

In any case, here's a little photo to go along with the subject matter:

Click to embiggen. This was taken at the National Botanical Garden in DC over the holidays.

Date: 2010-01-28 05:26 pm (UTC)

From:

temporus.livejournal.com

no subject

I don't even remember who it was that I first saw use the term. I'll unofficially give credit to Scalzi's blog. I can't prove it was there I first ran across it, but I know for sure it gets used there a lot.