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neetu
Unregistered User
(2/25/01 10:44:26 am)
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psychoanalytic analysis of rapuntzel
i am a college student doing a research papar on fairy tales. I need help in finding the psychoanalytic analysis of Rapuntzel. Can somebody please help me
Thanks
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Laura
Registered User
(2/25/01 1:18:29 pm)
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Rapunzel
Your best bet, for the granddaddy of them all, is to hit Bruno Bettelheim's _The Uses of Enchantment : The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales_. Also, try reading/searching through the old posts on this board, and explore Heidi's wonderful Sur La Lune site. You should have no trouble at all with this! Good luck ...
Laura
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Gregor9
Registered User
(2/27/01 9:52:34 am)
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Sources for Rapunzel
I suggest you take your Bettleheim with a grain of salt. Other than that, you might try Anne Sexton's poem, too, as something that goes straight for the psychosexual heart of the story.
Greg
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Terri
Registered User
(2/27/01 12:24:59 pm)
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Re: Sources for Rapunzel
I'm not a great Bettleheim fan either. He's much too limited by his Freudian bias, and his ideas about the meanings of fairy tales (and what "is" and "isn't" a fairy tale) are both rigid and idiosyncratic. All of which, sadly, undercuts some otherwise interesting observations.
There are some good Rapunzel insights in Marina Warner's From the Beast to the Blonde, and I second Greg's recommendation of the Sexton poem. Olga Broumas has a good Rapunzel poem as well, in her collection Beginning With O. You'll also find some more discussion of Rapunzel on the previous fairy tale boards, which can be accessed from Heidi's SurLaLune site. (If I remember right, Carrie had a whole discussion going on the symbology of long hair....)
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allysonrosen
Registered User
(2/28/01 9:31:52 pm)
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Repunzel as a metaphor
This may be war far off base, but what do you guys think of this? To my chagrin, I am aware of the ritual of female circumcision (that is, the removal of the clitoris and/or the labia) as an initiation ritual in (I beleive) Mid-Eastern cultures. Would you say that the act of Repunzel's witch/mother cutting her locks could be a metaphor for such a ritual? Just food for thought...I want to see how this translates as I am trying to tie in woman's initiation rituals to fairy tales for my thesis production...
Allyson
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Gregor9
Registered User
(3/2/01 6:14:07 am)
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Pleasure Denied
Allyson,
It might not be too much of a stretch to make that comparison. Both are attempts at control by denying pleasure. Since in the original version of Rapunzel, she reveals her double life when she becomes pregnant, the cutting off of her hair is analogous to denying her further pleasure--in fact, would be more extreme metaphorically than circumcision in that it takes from her even the possibility of *having* sex. There's probably a parallel to some "armless maiden" tales here as well, but you'd better ask Terri if she agrees with that opinion.
The prince, too, is blinded, and I seem to recall somewhere reading that as a metaphor for castration, which would make your case even stronger if true.
Greg
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Karen
Unregistered User
(3/5/01 4:07:00 pm)
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Locks
The cutting of a lock of hair is more commonly used (or interpreted) as a metaphor for losing one's virginity/ the sexual act itself. The instances which immediately spring to mind are Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock and Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market. Of course, you could argue that the severring of the lock(s) functions as a quasi-circumsion in these narratives. Laura, in GM, is deadened to the pleasures of goblin fruit after she loses her lock. In Pope, the fate of the lock determines the fate of Belinda's reputation- so there is a potential to be sexually disempowered by the lost of one's lock.
Karen.
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BradleyHeadstone
Unregistered User
(3/9/01 2:55:36 pm)
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Re: Pleasure Denied
The prince, too, is blinded,
and I seem to recall somewhere reading that as a metaphor for castration,
which would make your case even stronger if true.
That's right. If you'll recall your Greek mythology, Oedipus' blinding is sometimes construed as symbolic for castration (Oedipus blinds himself upon learning that he has unwittingly killed his father and married his mother).
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Karen
Unregistered User
(3/9/01 6:42:39 pm)
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Blinding= Castration
Freud discusses this association and the Oedipus myth in his essay "The Uncanny". There's also a very interesting interpretation of ETA Hoffman's "The Sand Man" in relation to the blinding-castration nexis in this essay.
Karen
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allysonrosen
Registered User
(3/11/01 7:50:21 pm)
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Re: Locks
Veering slightly off topic, where can I get a hold of a video of "Goblin Market?" My room mate who is a costume designer worked on a theatrical version of GM a few years ago and she keeps telling me I must see it. I am assuming that Goblin Market was a novel or story or something, but I'd love to see the play...
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Gregor9
Registered User
(3/12/01 5:59:11 am)
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Goblin Market
Allyson,
The Goblin Market is a poem by Christina Rosetti that I think you can safely say has had an immense influence upon writers in the fantasy genre, and is still doing this. One of my students at Clarion this past summer was hard at work upon a science fiction tale--probably a novel in my estimation--that is spun off the poem.
The full text, including illustrations by Houseman, is available for reading at:
landow.stg.brown.edu/vict...arket.html
Greg
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