Illustration by Johnny Gruelle

"Rapunzel" is a German fairy tale in the collection assembled by the Brothers Grimm, and first published in 1812 as part of Children's and Household Tales.^[1] It is one of the best known fairy tales, and its plot has been used and parodied by many cartoonists and comedians, its best known line ("Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair") having entered popular culture.

Andrew Lang included it in The Red Fairy Book.^[2] Another version of the tale also appears in A Book of Witches by Ruth Manning-Sanders.

Synopsis

A childless couple who wanted a child lived next to a walled garden which belonged to an enchantress. The wife, as a result of her long-awaited pregnancy, noticed some rapunzel plant (or, in some versions^[3] of the story, radishes or lamb's lettuce), planted in the garden and longed for it to the point of death. For two nights, the husband went out and broke into the garden to gather some for her; on the third night, as he was scaling the wall to return home, the enchantress, whose name is said to be "Dame Gothel", caught him accused him of theft. He begged for mercy, and the old woman agreed to be lenient, on condition that the then-unborn child be surrendered to her at birth. Desperate, the man agreed. When a girl was born, the enchantress took her and raised her as a ward, naming her Rapunzel. When Rapunzel reached her twelfth year, the enchantress shut her away into a tower in the middle of the woods, with neither stairs nor door, and only one room and one window. When the witch went to visit Rapunzel, she stood beneath the tower and called out:

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, so that I may climb the golden stair.

Rapunzel in the castle park in Ludwigsburg

Upon hearing these words, Rapunzel would wrap her long, fair hair around a hook that sat beside the window and drop it down to the enchantress, who would then climb up the hair to Rapunzel's tower room.

One day, a prince rode through the forest and heard Rapunzel singing from the tower. Entranced by her ethereal voice, he went to look for the girl and found the tower, but was unable to enter. He then returned often, listening to her beautiful singing, and one day saw Dame Gothel visit, thus learning how to gain access to Rapunzel. When Dame Gothel was gone, he bade Rapunzel let her hair down. When she did this, he climbed up, made her acquaintance, and finally asked her to marry him. Rapunzel agreed.

Together they planned a means of escape, wherein he would come each night (thus avoiding the enchantress who visited her by day), and bring her silk, which Rapunzel would gradually weave into a ladder. Before the plan came to fruition, however, Rapunzel foolishly gave the prince away. In the first edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales, Rapunzel innocently asks why her dress was getting tight around her belly; in subsequent editions, she asks the witch (in a moment of forgetfulness) why it was easier for her to draw him up than her.^[4] In anger, Dame Gothel cut short Rapunzel's braided hair and cast her out into the wilderness to fend for herself.

When the prince called that night, the enchantress let the severed braids down to haul him up. To his horror, he found himself staring at the witch instead of Rapunzel, who was nowhere to be found. When she told him in anger that he would never see Rapunzel again, he leapt from the tower in despair and was blinded by the thorns below.

For months he wandered through the wastelands of the country. During this time, Rapunzel gave birth to the prince's twin children, a boy and a girl. One day, while Rapunzel sang as she fetched water, the prince heard Rapunzel's voice again, and they were reunited. When they fell into each other's arms, her tears immediately restored his sight. The prince led her and their children to his kingdom, where they lived happily ever after.

Commentary

The witch is called "Mother Gothel", a common term for a godmother in German.^[5] She features as the overprotective parent, and interpretations often differ on how negatively she is to be regarded.^[6]

Folkloric beliefs often regarded it as quite dangerous to deny a pregnant woman any food she craved. Family members would often go to great lengths to secure such cravings. ^[7] Such desires for lettuce and like vegetables may indicate a need on her part for vitamins.^[8]

The uneven bargain with which it opens is quite common in fairy tales having little else in common with this one: in Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack trades a cow for beans, and in Beauty and the Beast, Beauty comes to the Beast in return for a rose.^[9]

An influence on Grimm's Rapunzel was Petrosinella or Parsley, written by Giambattist Basile in his collection of fairy tales in 1634, Lo cunto de li cunti (The Story of Stories), or "Pentamerone". This tells a similar tale of a pregnant woman desiring some parsley from the garden of an ogress, getting caught, and having to promise the ogress her baby. The encounters between the prince and the maiden in the tower are described in quite bawdy language. Maria Tatar, The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales

About half a century later, in France, a similar story was published by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont La Force|Mademoiselle de la Force, called "Persinette". As Rapunzel did in the first edition of the Brothers Grimm, Persinette becomes pregnant because of the prince's visits. Maria Tatar, The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales

Variants

Italo Calvino included in his Italian Folktales a similar tale of a princess imprisoned in a tower, "The Canary Prince", though the imprisonment was caused by her stepmother's jealousy.

A German tale Puddocky also opens with a girl falling into the hands of a witch because of stolen food, but the person who craves it is the girl herself, and the person who steals it her mother. Another Italian tale, Prunella, has the girl steal the food and be captured by a witch.

Snow-White-Fire-Red, another Italian tale of this type, and Anthousa, Xanthousa, Chrisomalousa tell the story from the hero's point of view; he and the heroine escape the ogress, but have to deal with a curse after.

What is "Rapunzel"?

Campanula rapunculus, one candidate

It is difficult to be certain which plant species the Brothers Grimm meant by the word "Rapunzel", but the following, listed in their own dictionary,^[10] are candidates.

1. Valerianella locusta, common names: Corn salad, mache, lamb's lettuce, field salad. Rapunzel is called Feldsalat in Germany, Nuesslisalat in Switzerland and Vogerlsalat in Austria. In cultivated form it has a low growing rosette of succulent green rounded leaves when young, when they are picked whole, washed of grit and eaten with oil and vinegar. When it bolts to seed it shows clusters of small white flowers.^[11] Etty's seed catalogue^[12] states Corn Salad (Verte de Cambrai) was in use by 1810.
2. Campanula rapunculus is known as Rapunzel-Glockenblume in German, and as Rampion^[13] in Etty's seed catalogue, and although classified under a different family, Campanulaceae, has a similar rosette when young, although with pointed leaves. Some English translations of Rapunzel used the word Rampion. Etty's catalogue states that it was noted in 1633, an esteemed root in salads, and to be sown in April or May. Herb catalogue Sand Mountain Herbs^[14] describes the root as extremely tasty, and the rosette leaves as edible, and that its blue bell-flowers^[15] appear in June or July."
3. Phyteuma spicata,^[16] known as Ährige Teufelskralle in German.

Adaptations

• In "Treehouse of Horror XI" episode of The Simpsons, Homer tries to climb a wall using Rapunzel's hair and it results in the hair being ripped from her head and his falling, due to his weight. It is unknown whether she died or not, and Homer, who is distraught by this, quietly hides the hair behind a bush and walks away whistling.
• In a ChalkZone short originally featured on Oh Yeah! Cartoons, Snap takes Rudy and Penny to see Queen Rapsheeba performing a stage musical of the story, which is threatened by a storm cloud that nearly demolishes the theater.
• Rapunzel appears in the Doctor Who story The Mind Robber.
• In Happy Tree Friends, in the "Dunce Upon a Time" episode, Petunia is portrayed as Rapunzel.
• Don Bluth and Gary Goldman were working on their version of Rapunzel but abandoned it/Shelved it to work on An American Tail. Some of it was used for a video for The Scissor Sisters which had a Rapunzel theme. ^[17]
• Donna Jo Napoli wrote a young adult novel, Zel, based on a sixteenth-century Swiss Rapunzel.
• The German industrial rock group Megaherz adapted the story to a song, also called "Rappunzel", for their 1998 album Kopfschuss.
• Faerie Tale Theatre did an episode entitled, "Rapunzel."
• The Rapunzel concept was featured in an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch (TV Series)
• Emilie Autumn's album Enchant includes another version of the story in song form entitled "Rapunzel".
• California composer Lou Harrison wrote his opera "Rapunzel" in 2001.
• Upcoming animated feature from Walt Disney Feature Animation, Rapunzel.
• The story of Rapunzel is one of the plotlines of the musical Into the Woods.Rapunzel herself was one of many characters, as was her Prince; but the Witch served a more important role, tying all of the tales together.
• Rapunzel is a character in the comic book series Fables in which her forays into the mundane world are strictly limited to 25 minutes at a time and no more than 2 hours at the most a day so that people will not notice her unusually fast-growing hair. Her hair has to be cut 3 times a day by Joel. She was also seen in the Last Castle one shot along with the fables fleeing the homelands after the last grisly battle. She is on the boat with the other fables as well as at the mini Remembrance Day to honor the fables who had not escaped and died in battle.
• The story was adapted in one of the episodes for the 1987 anime series Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics by Nippon Animation 1. The English adaptation of this episode produced by Saban Entertainment made a few changes to the story: instead of rapunzel or radishes, it was Rapunzel's father's theft of lettuce from Dame Gothel's (the witch is not given a name in this version) field that set the story in motion; and instead of leaping out the window of Rapunzel's tower on his own, the prince was pushed out the window by Dame Gothel's magic.
• In Airplane!, Captain Kramer states that they are moving to the air control tower. Johnny leaps and cries out "The tower? The tower? Rapunzel! Rapunzel!".
• The videos for Vanessa Carlton's Nolita Fairytale and Gwen Stefani's The Sweet Escape (song) each feature a Rapunzel concept.
• Scissor Sisters' video for "Mary" features an animated segment that tells a version of the Rapunzel story.
• One of the animated Barbie movies "Rapunzel" adapts the fairytale significantly featuring Barbie as Rapunzel who holds a magic paintbrush which allows her to leave her tower and meet the prince.
• The first episode of Fractured Fairy Tales on Rocky & His Friends was an adaptation of Rapunzel.
• Dave Matthews Band produced a song called Rapunzel.
• J. R. R. Tolkien seems to have drawn upon this fairy tale in chapter 19 of The Silmarillion, entitled "Of Beren and Lúthien". In it, Lúthien uses her hair to escape her prison in a tall tree-house, and also to weave a cloak of invisibility.^[18]
• Thomas Pynchon's novel The Crying of Lot 49 includes a deconstructed version of the Rapunzel fairy tale in which gender roles are satirized.
• John Moore (author) used a character of Rapunzel in his novel The Unhandsome Prince, humorously. She discusses with the main character what kind of shampoo she has to used to have shiny long hair.
• Rapunzel is in cahoots with Prince Charming in the 2007 film Shrek the Third.
• The story of Rapunzel was parodied in a Sesame Street News Flash.
• In the NBC TV Movie series consisting of many episodes The 10th Kingdom the character played by Kimberly Williams is cursed to have everlasting growing hair, which is later used as a spoof of Rapunzel when the male lead must climb her hair to save her from a tree wherein she is trapped.
• In the 2008 Fairy Tales series, the story is adapted to make Rapunzel a female tennis player with an overprotective mother-manager.
• Golden by Cameron Dokey is a much-revised version of Rapunzel, where the role of the Rapunzel character is divided between two of the main characters.
• Rapunzel's Revenge by Newbery Honor recipient Shannon Hale and her husband Dean Hale is inspired by the original Grimm's tale. A graphic novel, the book is illustrated by Nathan Hale (no relation), and will be released August 2008.
• The video and song lyrics of Fairytale by Sara Bareilles features Rapunzel and her Prince in a more negative light.
• The manga Koori no Mamono no Monogatari includes an arc in which Rapunzel, in this case a young man, is kept in a tower by a demon.
• The Visual Kei band Metis Gretel have made a song by the name of Rapunzel on their album "FairyTale -Gothic-".
• The manga Ludwig Kakumei by Kaori Yuki includes a chapter called Rapunzel which is derived from the original Grimm's tale.

See also

• Rapunzel syndrome

References

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Rapunzel

• Annotated Rapunzel on SurLaLune Fairy Tales, featuring bibliography of Rapunzel variations, history, illustrations and more
• D.L. Ashliman's Grimm Brothers website. The classification is based on Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography, (Helsinki, 1961).
• Translated comparison of 1812 and 1857 versions
• "Rapunzel" by William Morris
• Rapunzel AudioStory