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Gretel Breadcrumbs
Unregistered User
(12/14/05 2:30 am)
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Wicked Stepmothers
Before I start this, I just want to state that I am new and just registered, so I'm sorry if I'm repeating the topic.
Anyway, I was reading some fairytales and noticed how there is the constant theme of a 'wicked stepmother', which I previously only thought occured in Cinderella, Snow White and Hansel and Gretel. What are your opinions on this?
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered
User
(12/14/05 10:53 am)
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Re: Wicked Stepmothers
Well, it's an interesting topic. In several fairytales, such as Snow White and H&G, the evil stepmother was originally an evil <i>mother</i>, but was changed to a stepmother by the Grimms because they felt that having infanticidal mothers did not reflect well on German womanhood. This would seem to add support to the psychoanalytic position that the stepmother and the mother are in fact the same person, but that it is too terrifying to imagine a hostile or angry mother, and so the child imaginatively splits the mother into two figures, one good (mother) and one bad (stepmother).
But several more historically-minded scholars have suggested that the presence of stepmothers is based in high rates of death in childbirth before the advent of modern medicine, etc, and thus the presence of stepmothers in the tales reflects a presence of stepmothers in real life. I'm...not convinced by this argument, as the research I've read on maternal mortality rates over the past four or five hundred years suggests that rates of death in childbirth were really not as high as we imagine them--more like 1% with each birth, so perhaps 6-7% over a woman's lifetime, depending on how many kids she had. This is certainly high by first-world 20th-century standards, but was no higher than all the many other ways you could die in the pre-antiseptic, pre-antibiotic era. On the other hand, fear of death in childbirth was certainly an issue, so perhaps the stories reflect historical fear rather than historical conditions.
I should add the maternal mortality research I've read is of maternal mortality rates in England, not Germany or France, so of course there's that issue as well; perhaps rates of death in childbirth were higher on the continent.
And...that's my stepmother schpiel.
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JennySchillig
Registered
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(12/14/05 1:09 pm)
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MST3K riff...
Time to share a favorite MST3K riff, from "Jack Frost", a Russo-Finnish fairy tale movie.
Ivan: "You must have a very wicked stepmother."
Tom (as Nastenka): Yep...standard issue.
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Rosemary Lake
Registered
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(12/14/05 6:55 pm)
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how many stepmothers
My favorite line on that was in a book by Maria Tatar iirc. She said people talked about 'countless' wicked stepmothers in Grimm, but: "It is quite easy to count them. There are thirteen." Hm, doubtless the Grimms were secretly collecting a coven....
As to real life stepmothers, it wouldn't just be a matter of mothers dying in childbirth, but the death rate for adult women overall. (Don't some stories make a point of the daughter having some happy years before the real mother dies? If she were raised from infancy by a cruel mother, there wouldn't be so much contrast.)
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered
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(12/14/05 6:59 pm)
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Re: how many stepmothers
I don't remember how many stepdaughters have happy years before the mother's death--Cinderella does. In that case, though, the discrepancy between the famous stepmothers and the non-existant stepfathers would be even more inexplicable, as men died at similar, if not greater rates.
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Rosemary Lake
Registered
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(12/14/05 8:37 pm)
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how many stepmothers?
Let's see, the stories that have step-parents are about ... going
to a ball, "Who is the fairest of them all?", household
chores ("Mother
Holle").... A stepfather wouldn't have made much sense
in those. (Also if a stepfather were wanting to be harsh with a
stepchild about chores or clothes, a loving real mother could foil
him. Also it's easier to imagine a loving father being detached
from such abuse, or being persuaded by the stepmother that the heroine
had become lazy and deserved harshness.)
In "Hansel and Gretal" I suppose either parent might have wanted to get rid of the children, tho if the woman did the cooking, she'd be the first to notice she could not feed everyone.
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered
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(12/14/05 8:46 pm)
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Re: how many stepmothers?
But that is the point, isn't it? Stories aren't handed down from on high--there's no intrinsic reason why there couldn't have been stories about stepfathers who mistreat their sons, perhaps taking them hunting in the woods and then trying to kill them, or stepfathers who terrorize both wife and daughter, but there aren't. The questions are both why and what does that signify--why these stories? Why these kinds of hostility and these characters?
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Rosemary Lake
Registered
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(12/14/05 10:28 pm)
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why
Hm. In plots about dragon slaying or wizard slaying (mostly from Russia, iirc?) the dragon or Koschei is enough of an antagonist, and one the hero can enthusiastically slay. Such violence against a family member, even a 'step', would be strange.
In plots about balls or chores, the antagonist may not be physically fought at all, certainly not by the heroine.
Maybe it has something to do with whether the tellers (and their adult audiences) were more interested in balls and housekeeping, or in fighting. I should re-read Maria Warner. I wonder why more fighting tales have come down to us in Russia than in Grimm or Italian collections.
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Helen J Pilinovsky
Registered
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(12/14/05 10:59 pm)
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Re: why
Well, tales in Russia were collected at a later date than in most Western European countries, and the folklorists were very dedicated to maintaining the tales in the forms that they originally received them: given the strong tendencies towards bowdlerization in Germany, there's a possibility that tales did contain such elements, which were excised for reasons of contemporary morality. Also, many of the tales as we now know them come from the
bylina
, the heroic folk ballads, which did tend to focus more on courageous actions then on tales of individual maturation.
Some tales from Italy and Germany - "The Cat Cinderella" and "The Girl With the Silver Hands", for example - do contain that kind of violence, which
is
directed at family members, but looking over anthologies through the years, we see them fade in popularity as notions of what a fairy tale was, and who its appropriate audience was, became more prevalent. At more or less that same rate, tales concerning villanous males ("Donkeyskin") and masculine heroes become less and less popular. Some critics have theorized that the popularity of feminine coming-of-age stories containing female rivalries are related to the audience: going past that in the age of literacy, we can in all probability assume a kind of an intensification of that, from women and children being thought of as the "natural audience" for fairy tales to fairy tales being tailored to encourage proper socialization ... with respect for figures of authority (typically male) being a given, and villains being the more easily demonized older women (traditions of witchcraft, etc.).
Will have to think about this a bit more on a night when papers are not glaring balefully from my desk ....
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered
User
(12/14/05 11:03 pm)
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Re: why
Also, don't forget the King Arthur tales, in which the King meets his killer in the person of his son, Mordred.
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Rosemary Lake
Registered
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(12/15/05 12:09 am)
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why
In these examples iirc the in-family violence is done or begun by the villain. I don't recall any 'rousing swordfighting hero' stories where the hero attacks a family member (even a wicked 'step').
For a story about clothes or housekeeping, an antagonist who is traditionally involved with clothes and housekeeping seems an obvious choice -- and a very powerful, and chilling, antagonist would be the heroine's mother/stepmother. (I wouldn't say stories like "Many-Fur" are really 'about' clothes in the same way that Perrault's Cinderella is.)
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Helen J Pilinovsky
Registered
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(12/15/05 12:35 am)
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Re: why
Hm, took me a bit to track your original argument there (sorry!). As I'm reading it now, you're saying that the majority of stories featuring wicked stepmothers are those connected to household activities - in the domestic sphere, where female authority is societally typical. That makes a great deal of sense, in some ways, but your point in conjunction with Veronica's makes for an interesting chicken-or-the-egg dichotomy ... because looking at the wide variety of household stories, one is still left to wonder just why so many stories are focused on that aspect of domesticity, and not on, say, the rivalry between father and son in other tasks (or, with the exception of tales such as "Donkeyskin" or "The Girl With the Silver Hands", on the challenging of authority between father and daughter).
To me, in many ways, that does go back to the validity of authority, with fathers going unchallenged, but mothers being fair game ... something which might relate to the step-parent relationship (although, given that many of those are late changes to the stories, perhaps not so much), but which, to me, anyway, speaks as much to endogamny vs. exogamy as anything else. Men, staying in their father's homes to inherit might have to compete against siblings at their father's commands - as in the many three-sons-set-out-on-a-task tales - but they'd still have to recognize that final authority. Women, being sent into their husbands homes, would have very different lessons to learn, lessons which might well hinge on the ability to challenge a "foreign" woman in a mother's role's authority ....
Just thinking out loud. And realizing it might be time to get some sleep, at that .... :)
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princessterribel
Registered
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(12/15/05 3:42 am)
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wicked stepmothers
I have read all of the posts here and there are certainly a number of valid arguments going on, however, it may also be worth considering the social aspects alongside the psychological and literal. Socially and Medically more cases of child abuse are recorded as having being conducted by stepmothers...cases of abuse by stepfathers are much rarer and are usually connected to sexual abuse of the child (hence the stories where the father falls in love with the daughter) whereas abuse by a stepmother is verbal or physical or neglectful. There is of course the more ancient connection to teh role of mothers and wives. In many eastern/ middle eastern cultures both in ancient times and today the man would marry and his mother (if widowed) would move in with the young couple. There would be competition between the new wife and the mother for the son's/husnabnd's attention. However, the mother knows that without the son she would be financially and physically unstable and would probably die. So she is entirely dependant on the man (as is the young wife in many ways). My point is this jealousy betweent he two women not only results in a cinderella type situation but also the exhalted position of the man/hero we see in many fairy stories.
I am sorry I cannot offer more legitimate facts...I do have them somewhere and will seek them out for you.
Also you may find it helpful to read the following:
Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment - A psychological reading of Cinderella.
Marina Warner's 'From the Beast To The Blonde' - a few very interesting chapters on Absent mothers/ wicked stepmothers and Fathers.
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DividedSelf
Registered
User
(12/15/05 7:14 am)
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Re: wicked stepmothers
I'm not happy with the idea that it's easier for loving fathers to be blind to abuse going on in their own homes. If you properly care for a child and are in a position to be informed at first hand then you broadly know whether or not it's happy and healthy. It's simply a matter of a little time and empathy.
I was going to add "The Juniper Tree" to the thread of favourite tales. This surely must contain one of the worst of all stepmothers. And I love this story because, through the fairy tale flatness, it sears with emotion, of the girl especially (for whom the mother is not step- but birth-).
I mention it here mainly because it's resolution comes about through revenge violence by a stepson on a stepmother.
I guess this thing about stepmothers can never be resolved to universal satisfaction. Even if we could speak to all the storytellers in history who were significant in shaping these tales, we might not be much wiser. I imagine they'd acknowledge most of the points raised here, and more.
A point no one's mentioned on this thread is that the most important reason why a story teller tells things a certain way is because it makes a better story. A stepmother coming into a new and patriarchal home is in an ambiguous and fairly vulnerable position. This makes her power status far more
interesting than that of the patriarch. In "The Girl Without Hands" the witch is a sister-in-law rather than a step-mother, but her role is very similar, and the reason it's similar is because she has this vulnerability.
I think most of these witch or witchlike characters are incredibly powerful "story generators" (sorry for that!) because they're in the middle of such a delicate power structure. Most of them seem to me to be true tragic heroines cast in the villain's role. (The only exception to this I can think of is the witch in H&G - unless she's somehow taken to be an aspect of the stepmother.) In this power sense, the patriarch is of little interest. He fears no loss and hopes for no gain.
Storytellers are inseparable from their times, and so all the arguments about death rates, maturation, exogamy etc. are going to be an important part of their stories. But I bet that's not what they had in the front of their minds when they told them.
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Rosemary Lake
Registered
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(12/15/05 8:44 pm)
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male Cinderellas
www.lib.rochester.edu/cam...r/cin3.htm
CINDERELLA BIBLIOGRAPHY
by Russell A. Peck
About half way down the file begins a long section summarizing many stories Peck calls 'male cinderellas'. Some of them do have mean stepmothers who are killed (tho not in direct battle, and after trying to do something quite serious, such as killing the hero's pet bull). Then the hero leaves home and has some quite active adventures elsewhere, which earn him reward after he is recognized by a shoe or other token. In some of the stories the boy is abused by older brothers.
Looking at the obvious wonder which a story is "about".... H&G, Cinderella, and Mother Holle rather need a stepmother. But there's a Russian kind/unkind story where a mean stepfather might serve as well as the stepmother: the girl is sent to live in a hut alone in the wood, meets a bear, and comes home rewarded.
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Chris Peltier
Registered
User
(12/15/05 10:12 pm)
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Wicked Stepmothers
I thought that I would make mention of Kate
Crackernuts
, as an example of a
domestic power struggle. In this story, the widowed king takes a
new wife, both bringing daughters to this union from previous marriages.
Both girls regard one another as sisters, but the queen sees the
king's daughter standing in the way of her own child's future. The
king's daughter is cursed with wearing a sheep's head, but the queen's
daughter Kate will have none of it, and the two girls leave to seek
their fortune.
I find this story interesting because the two girls side with one another rather than with either parent, and Kate, the less attractive of the two (and who potentially had more to gain as a passive figure), wins the fortune for both girls through her own cleverness and resourcefulness.
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Gretal Breadcrumbs
Unregistered User
(12/16/05 9:18 pm)
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Thanks! :)
thank you all so much for replying! You're opinions are all really interesting. Thanks! :)
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Gretal Breadcrumbs
Unregistered User
(12/16/05 9:21 pm)
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Kate Crackernuts Fairytale
Do you know where I could read this? It sounds really good. It reminds me a lot of Tatterhood, except in there the daughter is cursed with a calf's head :\ It sounds really good though! Is it on Surlalune?
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evil little pixie
Registered
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(12/16/05 9:32 pm)
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Kate Crackernuts
Here's a link to the story:
www.authorama.com/english...es-40.html
I'm not sure if this link is the "original" version or not. There's a retelling in _Tatterhood and Other Tales_ (edited by Ethel Johnston Phelps), and a footnote saying "the original and only version of this tale was collected in the nineteenth century from an elderly woman in the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland."
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Rosemary Lake
Registered
User
(12/16/05 11:43 pm)
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gold tree, and stepparents
There's another story (English iirc) about two young women helping each other -- they even share a husband I think. :) I remember it as having a sort of Snow White plot: an evil queen was trying from afar to harm one girl, and the other kept saving her. "Gold Tree and Silver Tree" or some such title.
As for the stepparents, it's reasonable there would be more stepparents of both sexes in a time with higher mortality. But any time a widow marries a widower (both with children), they are both step-parents, so there must be some reason other than statistics why only the cruel step-mothers appear in stories; perhaps some sort of bias in the selection or creation of stories. For example, a mother and children escaping together from a cruel father would be a good story, but I don't recall any among the well-known European tales
One factor might be, that the audience for a rousing sword fight adventure sort of tale, might feel that a hero old enough to go fight a dragon would just do that, instead of wasting time fighting with his step-father. But I'd think there would be at least some tales with a motif of a son defending his mother and sisters against an abusive father/stepfather/uncle/landlord/etc.
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bielie
Unregistered User
(12/17/05 4:42 am)
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Step mothers and first wives
Hi. I'd like to float two ideas:
I think there is so many step mother- daughter conflict in fairy tales because in oral tradition the story tellers were probably the child minders: females. They would by default tell stories about female heroes. Mother-daughter conflict is archetypal, or freudian, if you wish.
The second is a question: In middle eastern society there is always tention between first and second (or whatever) wives. Does anyone know of any stories about this conflict? Would this conflict replace the step mother - daughter conflict of western tales?
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