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Author
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Comment
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Deb
Unregistered User
(11/30/02 5:48:54 pm)
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Abandoned princesses/daughters
Hello! I have just spent two hours reading many of your past postings and enjoyed myself thoroughly. I have been a fairy tale fan for years and took a number of classes from Professor Del Skeels at the University of Washington back in the mid-70's which I just loved. Now that I've stumbled on this website during my research for a Shakespeare class I'm taking, I just had to ask a question: I'm looking for some fairy tales that share the motif of "abandoned princess" or "abandoned daughter" from Shakespeare's "A Winter's Tale". I know I've run across it somewhere over the years in several stories, but before I start combing my Complete Works of Grimm and the Andrew Lang books, I was wondering if anything pops into your minds? Thanks in advance for your help.
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zanobia
Unregistered User
(12/1/02 8:52:01 am)
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abandoned girls
I'm probably listing the obvious, but its the only thing that comes to mind. Snow White. Sleeping Beauty. Red Shoes. Hmmm, what else?
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Jane Yolen
Unregistered User
(12/1/02 9:05:03 am)
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Abandonment
Atalanta, abandoned by king father, nrused by a bear
Gretel
There is a wonderful book-- The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance by John Boswell --that might set your quest in real terms.
Jane
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EdensEcho
Registered User
(12/1/02 9:14:34 pm)
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Re: Abandonment
Cinderella was abandoned, in the sense that nobody cared for her. Not until the prince came around at least. Even if her father wasn't dead he was out of the picture.
meghan *in a term paper state of mind*
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cpe
Unregistered User
(12/1/02 9:27:37 pm)
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abandonedments
>> I'm looking for some fairy tales that share the motif of "abandoned princess" or "abandoned daughter>>>>>>
goodness! think of it, almost every single heroine in fairytales is abandoned (betrayed, left without resource, misled, prevaricated to, given false instruction, etc, endangered by fa's foolishness, etc......) in some way; sleeping beauty (unguarded by those wo are supposed to be vigilant), cinderella (mother dies), hansel and gretl (sent into exile), handless maiden (father betrays), tattercoat (fa banishes), all furs (fa banishes), rapunzel (lack of vigilance), rumpelstiltskin heroine (father lied- his brag betrays daughter), beauty and beast heroine (foolish father allows dau to take his place in death) , red shoes heroine (orphaned), snow white (sent into exile), Match Girl (abandoned on streets), King Lear (sends dau into exile. ) I could go on til tomorrow (grin). There are a jillion inuit tales, mayan, nauatl, Tibetan, Hmong, and on and on tales, of fa abandoning dau. The lietmotif is in fact so ubiquitous that the list of daughters treated well by fathers would seem to be the much shorter list in comparison.
Good luck on your project. The subject motif is rich.
all best
cpe
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Deb
Unregistered User
(12/2/02 3:56:32 am)
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Abandoned princesses/daughters
Thanks for the comments -- especially on Atalanta -- thanks, Jane. (I've loved your books for years.) I should have been more specific -- "abandoned" in the sense that the parent actually gives up parentage and casts the child away. Though I would agree that almost every heroine in folklore/fairy tales is abandoned to some degree, I was looking for a specific type such as appears in "A Winter's Tale" where the king doubts the princess' parentage and puts her out to sea! Cinderella is certainly abandoned in another sense.
Thank you for the suggestions -- I tuned into "The Kindness of Strangers" and it is truly amazing how many children were actually sold or abandoned in Europe over the last thousand/two thousand years, to the extent that it wasn't all that "unusual" to the average person to know someone who had been abandoned.
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Midori
Unregistered User
(12/2/02 4:01:56 am)
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abandonment
I've mentioned this before, so I apologize if I seem to ramble on in the same groove: but one of the reasons I think there are so many incidents of abandonment of daughters have to do with the fact that unlike her male counterpart, the hero--who returns home victorious to take over his father's role as king, or rule, or emir--the female heroine does not return home. For women the journey is out--part of the one way trip of the exogamous marriage--and she must construct a new identity at the house of marriage--which belongs to her husband. In narrative terms then there can be no chance of her returning home, so usually the situation is fairly dire at home, propelling her out into that journey. No doubt to the young girl in a traditional society the thought of leaving home, not to return to the shelter and comfort of one's parents must have been quite frightening--especially since the role of daughter-in-law usually put her into direct conflict with her mother in law. So many of the bridal songs are expressions of grief at the thought of never returning home, never seeing one's parents again--marriage to the bride-- at least at the point of departure from home-- feels like a ritualized abandonment by her family.
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