A school of humans.
This episode discusses sensitive topics. Please listen with care. My name is Miranda Hawkins. Welcome to the Deep Dark Woods. Today's story is Atu three ten or Rapunzel.
Rapunzel had splendid, long hair as fine as spun gold. When she heard the sorceress's voice, she untied her braids, wound them around a window hook, let her hair fall twenty yards to the ground, and the sorceress climbed up it. A few years later, it happened that a king's son was riding through the forest. As he approached the tower, he heard a psalm so beautiful that he stopped to listen. It was Rapunzel, who was passing the time by singing
with her sweet voice. The prince wanted to climb up to her and looked for a door in the tower, but none was to be found. He rode home, but the song had so touched his heart that he returned to the forest every day and listened to it. One time, as he was thus standing behind a tree, he saw the sorceress approach and heard her say, Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. Then Rapunzel let down her strands of
hair and the sorceress climbed up them to her. If that is the latter to the tower, then sometime I will try my luck. And the next day, just as it was beginning to get dark, he went to the tower and called out, Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. The hair fell down, and the prince climbed up. At first, Rapunzel was terribly frightened when a man such as she
had never seen before came in to her. However, the prince began talking to her in a very friendly manner, telling her that his heart had been so touched by her singing that he could have no peace until he had seen her in person. Then Rapunzel lost her fear, and when he asked her if she would take him as her husband, she thought he would rather have me than old fraw gothel. She said yes and placed her hand into his. She said, I would go with you gladly,
but I do not know how to get down. Every time that you come, bring a strand of silk from which I will weave a ladder. When it is finished, I will climb down and you can take me away on your horse. They arranged that he would come to her every evening for the old woman came by day. The sorceress did not notice what was happening until one day Rapunzel said to her, fraw gothel tell me why it is that you are more difficult to pull up than is the young young prince who will be arriving
any moment. Now, you godless child, cried the sorceress, What am I hearing from you? I thought that I had removed you from the whole world, but you have deceived me none the less. In her anger, she grabbed Rapunzel's beautiful hair, wrapped it a few times around her left hand, grasped a pair of scissors with her right hand, and snip snap, cut it off. And she was so unmerciful that she took Rapunzel into a wilderness, where she suffered greatly.
On the evening of the same day that she sent Rapunzel away, the sorceress tied the cut off hair to a hook at the top of the tower, and when the prince called out, Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. She let down the hair. The prince climbed up, but above, instead of his beloved Rapunzel, he found the sorceress, who peered at him with poisonous and evil looks.
Aha, she cried scornfully.
You have come for your man, mistress.
Darling, But that beautiful bird is no longer sitting in her nest, nor is she singing anymore. The cat got her, and I will scratch your eyes out, as will you have lost Rapunzel.
You will never.
See her again. The prince was overcome with grief, and in his despair, he threw himself from the tower. He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell poked out his eyes. Blind he wandered about the forest, eating nothing but grass and roots, and doing nothing but weeping and wailing over the loss of his beloved wife. Thus he wandered about miserably for some years, finally happening into the wilderness where Rapunzel lived miserably with the twins
that she had given birth to. He heard a voice and thought it was familiar. He advanced toward it, and as he approached, Rapunzel recognized him, and, crying, threw her arms around his neck. Two of her tears fell into his eyes, and they became clear once again, and he could see as well as before. He led her to his kingdom, where he was received with joy, and for a long time they lived happily and satisfied.
As someone who has an incredibly sensitive head, I always cringed at the prince climbing Rapunzel's hair, and also what about footholds, I don't know. It never made sense to me. The story of Rapunzel could have been based on the Christian legend of Saint Barbara, whose story was first recorded by the Archbishop of Genoa, Jacobis Dave Virognay. It was published in the Legenda Aria between twelve sixty five and
twelve sixty six. Saint Barbara was a third century martyr who lived in either what would now be present day Turkey or present day Lebanon. Dioscorus, who was her pagan father, locked her in a tower to hide her great beauty from the world. Still, many a prince called for her hand in marriage, but she refused them all. While Dioscorus was away on business, Saint Barbara had a third window installed in her tower in honor of the Blessed Trinity.
The Blessed Trinity is part of the Christian faith that believes the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all part of God. When Dioscorus returned, Saint Barbara showed him the window and confessed her Christian faith to him. Naturally, he was angry and drew his sword to kill his daughter, but Saint Barbara swiftly prayed to God, who opened a hole in the tower for her to escape. Unfortunately, it wasn't long until she was captured and tortured before being beheaded.
It's said not long after that a bolt of lightning killed her father. Because of this, Saint Barbara became the patron Saint of explosives and lightning, and therefore artillery men and miners because they use explosives. As a side note, in twenty ten, thirty three Chilean miners were trapped underground for two months. Upon the rescue, many thinked Saint Barbara. There are many stories of maidens and towers, but the first time we hear of a maiden with long hair
is in an epic poem titled the Channamee. The story recounts the history of pre Islamic Persia or Greater Iran author and poet A Bulkassam for Dosi started this poem in nine seventy seven and finished thirty three years later. In ten ten. He wrote the poem at a time himwen Persia, which is now modern Iran, was forming and the standard for its language was being set. Unlike other maiden in Tower stories, the maiden in Shaannamee, Rudiba, isn't trapped.
She goes there to wait for her lovers all In the most famous scene, Rudiba lets down her long hair and tells him to climate, but Zal says no and uses a rope instead. But apart from a Filipino version, all stories of maidens in the Tower have long flowing hair. But how did we get from the Shanamee to Rapunzel, It actually started with Parsley. In sixteen thirty four, Italian author John Batista Bazilee published Petro Snela, which translates to
Little Parsley. Very few people saw this story because the language it was written in was obscure. A pregnant woman named Pascadosia was living beside an ogres. One day, she looks out her window and sees the ogress has a beautiful bed of parsley in her garden. The woman, unable to contain herself, waits for the ogress to leave before going to the garden to take a handful of the herb. The ogress comes home to cook her meal and sees
some of her parsley has been stolen. Angered she swears vengeance. Even so, Pascadosia continues to steal parsley from the ogress. One day, the ogress catches Pascadosia and the woman pleads for her in her unborn baby's life. The ogress says she'll spare the woman in exchange for the unborn cho Pascadosia agrees. Later, she gives birth to the most beautiful little girl named Petro Sonella. When the girl turns seven,
she is sent to school. Every day she passes by the ogress, and every day the ogress tells the girl to remind her mother of her promise. Finally, Pascadozia is so irritated she tells her daughter that the next time the ogress reminds Petro Snella of her mother's promise, to say take it. When the young girl does as she is told, the ogress grabs her by her hair and drags her to the woods and locks her in a tower.
There is no door or ladder. The only way to get in and out is to climb Petro Sonella's hair. Petro Sonella grows into a beautiful young woman with two gleaming braids of golden hair. One day after the ogre is away, a prince comes across her and instantly falls in love. She agrees to let him climb her hair into the tower. After that first encounter, there are many days of getting to know each other. As Basillie writes, Petra Snella and the prince becomes so intimate that they
made an appointment to meet. That night, Petra Snella doses the ogress with poppy juice so that she would not wake, and then pulls the prince into the tower with her hair, where he stays for the night. The next morning, Petrasonella lets him back down. This happens so much a local gossip finds out and tells the ogress. The ogress then puts a spell on Petrasnella so that she has to have three acorns or she won't find her way out.
Of the woods.
But Petra Snella overhears the ogress talking to the gossip about the spell. Night, she has the prince find the acorns. The two had been working on a rope ladder that they used to climb down the tower. Before they head for the city, the gossip sees Petra Snella and the Prince and yells so loudly it wakes the Ogres. The
woman and ogress then begins chasing the couple. Petra Snella throws an acorn at them, and when it breaks open, a ferocious dog springs forth and swallows the gossip, But the Ogress pulls out some bread to give to the dog and continues to pursue the lovers. Then Petra Snella throws the second acorn and a lion jumps out. The Ogress quickly finds a donkey in the middle of a meadow, strips it of its skin, and then puts it on and attacks the lion. The lion, thinking it's a real donkey,
runs away. Petra Snella throws the third and final acorn. The Ogris, who is worried the lion might come back, is still wearing the donkey's skin, so when a wolf jumps out, it devours her whole. The lovers are safe. They return to the Prince's kingdom, where the king gives the too his blessing. Petra Snella and the Prince Mary. The moral Basilier writes at the end of this story is when hour in port, the sailor, freed from fears,
forgets the tempests of one hundred years. Basically, basili is saying that Petrasonnella's happily ever after can help her forget the awfulness she dealt with before. In most Rapunzel stories, the pregnant woman craves Parsley or Rapunzel, or some kind of vegetable or fruit. In the seventeenth century, when Basilier was writing, folk wisdom held the denying a pregnant woman her cravings would calls a miscarriage, stillbirth, or bad luck
for the baby. That's why family members would go to great links to satisfy those cravings, and why in these particular tales, couples made these really intense deals. We now know that pregnancy cravings indicated that a woman probably wasn't getting the vitamins and minerals she needed, especially in the lower farming classes, which highlights the story's humble beginnings. But there were a lot of takes on Parsley. In nineteenth century Britain. Many believed that of too much parsley grut
in one's garden, a family would have only girls. Common British law also held that if a woman of childbearing age planted parsley, she would become pregnant before it began to grow. There are a lot of ideas about parsley, but here are a couple I've found really interesting. Parsley it flourishes only when planted by a witch. One should never transplant or give away parsley as a gift, lest
the recipient become ill or have bad luck. Stories abound in rule England that children who ask about the origin of babies are told babies are dug up from parsi beds using golden shovels, and an old English saying goes Parsley grows for the wicked, but not for the just. It's important to note that evil was often used to condemn a witch, midwife, or medicine woman because it was suspicious they knew how to use plants to save a
woman's life if there were complications during pregnancy. After Bazille published his version of Rapunzel, French author Charlotte Rose de Commande de la Force published Percinet in sixteen ninety seven. This was during the time when women in French salon culture were writing fairy tales. In fact, many Rapunzel like stories came from France because tower prisons were popular devices of the French salon authors. Folklore's doctor Claudia Schwabe is
a professor of German at Utah State University. She explained why seventeenth century women wrote these stories.
Most of these were told by women from the French salon culture, so these were told by women for women, and a lot of these tales were sort of meant to give women an idea about marriage and what kind of challenges to expect when you get married, and then also to give them an idea of independence and how that could look like.
But unlike the brothers Grim who claimed their stories came from everyday people, these authors wanted to distance themselves from the folk. To drive home that point, De la Force even claimed that the idea for Percinet was entirely her own creation. Percinet is different, and that it is almost four times longer than the brother's Grim version and includes
many additions to the plot. In her version, a young couple is preparing for their first child when the woman starts craving parsley, she sees some in the garden next door. The two know the garden is owned by a fairy, but the husband sneaks in Parsley anyway. The second time the husband sneaks into the garden, he is caught by the fairy. She promises to let him go and exchange for the unborn child. After the girl is born, the wife willingly gives the girl to the fairy. The fairy
raises the girl Personette. When she has grown, the fairy locks her in a silver tower. It's beautiful, except it has no doors. The fairy must call Percinet and climb up her hair to get in. Personette is given all the luxuries in this version. Her tower has grand rooms filled with all the natural daylight. As a baby, her sheets are made of gold, She has drawers full of jewels, and her wardrobe was as magnificent as that of the Queen of Asia. She has delicious food, reads pains, and
plays music. She is raised as a well educated woman. This mirrors the fact that when da la Force wrote this, French culture was all about having the best and newest luxuries. It was all about opulence and indulgence. Years go by until one day a prince here's a maiden singing. He follows the voice until he finds Percinet. He calls to her, but she is terrified and doesn't respond. The fairy has taught her men are monsters who can kill with a
single look. The prince learns from a nearby village that Perconet is the fairy's prisoner, so he goes back and hides and waits for the fairy. He then sees how the fairy calls to Perconet to get into the tower. The next day, the prince returns and mimics the fairy when he reaches the top. Perconete is again terrified, but the prince convinces her of his love. He immediately proposes
to her, and then the two have sex. Or, as Mademoiselle de la Force puts it, Percinette consented without hardly knowing what she was doing, Even so she was able to complete the ceremony. The prince continues to visit, but Percinette's belly begins to swell. Not understanding she is pregnant, she asks the fairy why her clothes have gotten tighter. The fairy realizes what's happened and is furious. She cuts off Personette's braids and uses magic to send her to
a remote place, where Percinet gives birth to twins. When the prince shows up, the fairy tricks him into climbing up and then flings him from the tower, where he is blinded by briar thorns. The prince searches for Percinet for years. When he finds her, Percinet cries tears of joy at the reunion, Her tears fall into his eyes and heal his sight. But the Fairy is still angry, so she makes their life a living hell. The family prepares to die, but the lovers continue to stay happy
at finally finding each other again. It is this happiness that finally melts the Fairy's heart. She forgives them, blesses them, and then returns them to the castle, where the king and Queen receive them with open arms. In these stories, although Reponsel has little say in her fate due to her parents' choices, she is not a passive maiden. She is rebellious and strong willed. In Bezillai's version, she's even cunning.
Rapunzel doesn't lack agency, and in the end takes control of her own fate, but she doesn't stay that way for long. Parsley became Rapunzel in seventeen ninety when Frederick Schultz created his own tail, which was basically a German translation of Percinet. That is, where the Brother's Grim pick it up. Like its predecessors, the Brother's Grim version begins pretty much the same way. A couple desperately wants a child,
but to no avail. Every day, the woman looks into the garden next door and sees the most beautiful flowers and herbs. The garden is surrounded by a high wall, and no one dares enter because everyone knows a garden is owned by a sorceress. One day, the woman is staring at the rapunzel plant, which is also known as rampion, and begins craving sound. She would have no peace until her craving could be satisfied, so her husband sneaks into
the garden and steals them for his wife. She makes a salad and is content, that is until the next day, when her craving returns threefold. The husband waits until it's dark before once again climbing over the wall, but this time the sorceress is waiting for him, taking pity on him. Mother Gothel, who is the sorceress, says he can take as much a Punzel as he wants in exchange for
his firstborn. The man agrees. When the woman gives birth, the sorceress appears, names the child Rapunzel, and then takes her away. Rapunzel becomes the most beautiful child under the sun. When Rapunzel turns twelve years old, the sorceress locks her in a tower with only a window to get anyone in or out. And here is where we come full circle to the brother's Grim excerpt you heard at the
beginning of the episode. Doctor Schwabe says the biggest difference in the Grim version and the previous versions is the explicit mention of premarital sex. The Grims eventually removed that completely.
Previously, there was a reference of a Punzel saying to mother Gothel, how come my dress is getting so tight around my waistline, And this was implying that she is already pregnant. So the prince and to her they had sex, and that was just too much for the Grims, so they just eliminated this reference and swapped it out with the slip of tongue.
In the original eighteen twelve story, the Grims or Punzel was like earlier tales, and that the maiden gets pregnant and gives birth to twins. But the Grims were conservative, and when they realized their stories were popular with children, they did some strategic censoring. By their eighteen fifty seven edition of Collected Tales, the pregnancy and twins had been removed entirely. That's a version you heard in this episode. In removing the pregnancy and birth, the Grims made their
Rapunzel more passive. It ennuls the story of a woman giving birth alone in the wild, which, if you ask anyone who has given birth, is not an easy feat. So throughout two hundred years, Rapunzel's character changed from a spunky heroine who has sex, rescues herself from prison, and gives birth solo to a naive, innocent But Rapunzel wouldn't stay a meek woman for long. Walt Disney released its
own adaptation of Rapunzel in twenty ten. The feature length cartoon is titled Tangled, and it involves a princess, sorceress, thief, and cute little chameleon. In this story, a thief named Flynn Writer happens upon Rapunzel while he's trying to avoid the King's guards. Unlike other stories, Rapunzel is already a princess, she just doesn't know it. And once a year, the whole kingdom releases sky lanterns with lights in them and
hopes the princess will find her way back home. The kingdom doesn't know that the sorceress Mother Goffel, had stolen Rapunzel from her crib. The story is similar to De la Forces and that Rapunzel is given luxuries, and one such luxury is paints. She sees the sky lanterns every year and has painted them on her wall, and she's smart enough to recognize the sky lanterns align with her birthday. Rapunzel begs Mother Gofel to let her go see the sky lanterns, but Mother Gothel talks her out of it.
The sorceress scares her and convinces Rapunzel she needs to stay isolated and protected. Giving in to Mother Gothel's argument, Rapundle agrees, that is until Flynn Writer shows up. Doctor Schwabe says, in this version, Disney made the characters more relatable. For example, when Flynn Rider first climbs into the tower, Rapunzel clabors him with the frying pan.
I think modern readers and viewers they really want an active heroine these days who can be a match for any fairy or witch. What I personally like how feisty she is and how she takes the pan and whips the pan over Flynn Ryder. Yeah, so she takes the pan and she smacks him with it. Even though she's sort of trapped in this tower and seems helpless, she actually can stand up for herself. She's not afraid of
the robbers. Den Flynn writer tries to scare her by taking her to this in filled with thieves and robbers, but she's not scared at all. And she uses her hair as a weapon. How cool is that. I mean she can use it, you know, to strike out, and she stared these karate moves and she's very independent and self confident that way.
In the previous stories, Rapunzel is a maiden who comes from a humble background. She becomes a princess when the Prince finds her and the two Mary, But in Disney's Tangled, the roles have been reversed. Rapunzel is a princess and Flynn Wrider is a lily thief, so it's his status that becomes elevated when the two are married. Then, in twenty twelve, international best selling author Kate Forsyth published Bitter Greens. The novel blends De la Force's personal story with that
of De la Force's history is colorful. She was the cousin of Louis the fourteenth of France, who was known as a son king. She was banished from court for having an affair with an impoverished actor, who she later dressed as a dancing bear to try and help rescue. She was also accused of using black magic to ensnare a husband, and then later she wrote scandalous novels about the king's even more notorious sexual exploits.
So off to a.
Convent she was sent, and it was there she wrote Rapunzel. In Forcis's Bitter Greens, De la Force is a character who is comforted by an old nun. The nun tells her the story of a young girl from one hundred years earlier whose parents sold her for a handful of bitter greens. The novel is set in Italy, and the young girl's name in the novel is Margarita. It's her father who steals part from a cortison named Selina Leonelli. Leah Nelly threatens to cut off the man's hands unless
he and his wife give her their little girl. Of course, they acquiesce. The story continues from there in your weaving de la Force's, Margarita's, and Lea Nelly's stories. It's an exploration about the difficult situations and the limited world women found themselves in and how they endured. In twenty fourteen, New York Times bestselling author Marissa Meyer published her adaptation Kres. We've talked about the Lunar chronicles in the show a
couple different times. Cress is the third book in the series. I interviewed Marissa Meyer in a previous episode if you'd like to hear more about her and her fairy tale adaptations. In Meyer's novel, sixteen year old Kress isn't trapped in a tower but an orbiting satellite, and she's a hacker and programmer. And the Prince isn't a prince but a space thief named Carswell Thorn whose ship is named Rampion.
Cress is trapped by the evil queen and her hacker powers are being used to help the bad guys, but Cres rebels and eventually escapes. This adaptation has a strong reflection of the medieval stories, and that Thorn, who is aptly named, is blinded from a blow to the head. When the satellite crash lands with him and Kress aboard, they are stuck in the desert, and Chress is the
one who must bring the two to safety. Again we see the Rapunzel character pushing against the boundaries she's been given, and again it's her saving herself and in this case the guy as well. She may have been trapped, but she found a way out. Although these modern adaptations have reclaimed Rapunzel's agency, there are other ways to interpret her story. For example, Pullitz, surprise winning poet and Sexton's adaptation her
poem Rapunzel, was published in nineteen seventy one. An essay by Britney Cussman argues the first half of the poem alludes to sexual abuse between an older and younger woman, something Sexton survived as a child with a predatory aunt. It isn't until halfway through the poem that the story we know of her Punzel shows back up without Sexton
telling us directly. Maybe that is how she viewed her Punzel, an older woman locking away a beautiful young woman so only she would have access to her, and maybe she used the story as a way to work through it. Another idea comes from doctor Schwabe.
You can read their tale and say, Okay, maybe this is a cautionary tale addressed to the parents to show, hey, you know the overprotective kind. You cannot overprotect your child and expect everything to go well in the end. Imprisoning your child is a little bit over the top. But we still have helicopter parents, and we still have parents who try to really protect their children from every single thing. And I think this is something we can take away
even today. So in a sense, these tales are still contemporary.
You can read the de la Force, forsythe and Meyer stories of her Punzle as examples of a maiden who rescues herself. It's also a story that shows us all that we have the power to change our fate. Her Punzel is a force to be reckoned with. She's brave and headstrong and curious, and she's a reminder to any of us who feel trapped there is a way out. Next time, Who's the Fairest in All the Land? The Deep Dark Woods is a production of School of Humans
and iheartpot Casts. It was created, written, and hosted by me Miranda Hawkins. This episode was produced by mikel. June was senior producer Gabby Watts. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, Elsie Crowley, and Maya Howard. Stories were voiced by Julia Christgau. Theme song was composed by Jesse Niswanger. This episode was sound designed and mixed by Chris Childs.
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