Previously in this series: The Little Red Hen. Original texts by the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault.
There once was a king who had a beautiful wife, and many other beautiful things besides. He was gentle in peace and terrible in war. Every country he found, he conquered, and every country he conquered he plundered, because he was a man who knew the value of things. And he brought gifts on the backs of serving-men to his beautiful wife, and he had them spilled at her beautiful feet, until the floor of their castle shone almost as brilliantly as her golden hair. And she clapped her hands in delight to see what he had brought her.
She had no equal in beauty in any of the lands he visited, so he knew the value of her.
Then it happened that the queen was struck ill, and in her heart she knew that she was going to die. She was sick and sad in turns, and turned her face to the wall, and pushed away comfort, and she called for the king her husband.
“If I die,” she told him, “you must remarry, for we have no sons, but I ask that as a favor to me you do not wed any woman who is not as beautiful as I was, not unless her hair is as golden and brilliant as mine.” In doing this the queen hoped the king would never remarry, and that she would never be replaced in his heart. Better the floor of the throne-room lie empty than strewn with gifts for a plainer woman.
So the king agreed to the promise. Shortly after this the queen died, and so they put her away in the ground, where the dirt closed over her like a mouth and kept her brilliant hair for itself.
For a long time the king could not be led away from grief, and he would hear nothing about taking another wife. But there is no man so sad that he cannot be talked out of forgetting a woman, and his councillors had light and time and forgetfulness on their side.
“You must have a queen,” they told him, and he felt all the better for letting himself be persuaded.
So the king sent out messengers to all the lands he had conquered to find himself a bride from one of them, whose beauty matched that of the queen-in-the-dirt. But the king himself had traveled to these lands before, and he had not found her equal there then. She was not to be found now.
Now the king and queen had had a daughter, and it so happened that the hair on her head was golden also. And the king had not looked at her while he had a wife living, but he looked at her now.
The king’s daughter had lately come of age, and she had unbound her hair. And as she tried on one of the dresses her mother had left to her, her body and her beauty betrayed her, for the king saw that she looked like her mother in every way, and he was seized with a great desire for her.
Desire seized the king, and then the king seized his daughter, and so everyone was snatched up in turn. And his daughter cried out in confusion, for she did not know what her body had done to her.
Then the king strode into the hall, dragging his daughter behind him, and he said to his councillors, “Here is the woman I will make my queen, who is the equal of my dead wife. Her likeness I cannot find elsewhere, and no one else will content me.” And his daughter wept, but her tears did not detract from her beauty, so nobody minded.
When the councillors heard this they were horrified, and said, “This cannot be.” But there is no man so horrified he cannot be talked out of it, and the king persuaded them to be led away from their scruples. There was only one king, after all, and the king needed a son. And if the king was willing, that was consent enough for both of them.
The daughter’s heart shrank inside her when she saw no one would oppose the king’s decision. She ran to the kitchen and seized a knife from a scullery-maid and began to saw away at her golden hair. When she had finished, her scalp was glistening and patchy and covered in blood.
The king was not dissuaded. Conquerors never are. “It will grow back all the more beautiful,” he assured her, and he ordered all knives out of the castle.
And the princess grew frantic when she could not erase her own beauty, and she tore at her face with her fingernails. She tore out her eyelashes all in a row so her eyelids were red and skinless. She carved a hole in her cheek large enough for her pinky finger to fit through. She reached for her own skull.
But this only made her father the more tender. And as he grew more tender, he also grew more determined. “Have my daughter the princess’ hands bound in velvet and in silk,” he told her servants, “that she may not harm herself again.”
And the princess wandered the halls with muted hands and watchful attendants, and her hair began to grow back, and the king declared that the time had come for them to set a date for their wedding.
The princess had learned guile when the opportunity for force had been lost. “Before I marry you, great king,” she said to him, “I must have three dresses: one as golden as the sun, one as silver as the moon, and one that glistens like the stars. Further, I must have a cloak put together from a thousand kinds of pelts and fur. Every animal in your kingdom must contribute a piece of its skin for it.”
Now she thought, “That will be entirely impossible for him, and perhaps in the meantime I can find another bride for him.”
But the king did not give in, and the most skilled maidens in his kingdom had to weave the three dresses, one as golden as the sun, one as silver as the moon, and one that glistened like the stars. And his huntsmen had to capture all the animals in his entire kingdom and take a piece of skin from each one. From these a cloak of a thousand kinds of fur was made.
Finally, when everything was finished, the king had the cloak brought to him. Spreading it out, he said, “Tomorrow is our wedding day.”
When the king’s daughter saw that she had lost all hope of changing her father’s mind, she rearranged her face entirely and embraced him smiling. “I have made up my mind to be a wife to you,” she told him, and everyone rejoiced at her obedience.
“I thank you for your promise,” he said, and kissed her solemnly on the forehead. “Rest well, and marry me in the morning.”
That night, while everyone else was asleep, the princess got up and took her three dresses and placed them in the smallest traveling-case she could find. She put on the cloak of furs and darkened her hair as best she could and covered her face and hands in dirt until she looked as much like a peasant-woman as a king’s daughter could hope. Then she left her father the king’s house.
She walked toward what she hoped was the border of her father’s kingdom, until she came to the edge of a great forest. Being tired, she sat down in a hollow tree and fell asleep.
The sun came up, and she continued to sleep, and she was still asleep by broad daylight. Now it came to pass that the king who owned these woods was hunting in them. When his dogs approached the tree they sniffed then ran around it barking.
The king said to the huntsmen. “See what kind of wild animal is hiding there.”
The huntsmen followed his command, and when they returned they said, “A strange animal, like none we have ever seen before, is lying in the hollow tree. There are a thousand kinds of fur on its skin. It is just lying there asleep.”
The king said, “See if you can capture it alive, then tie it onto the cart and bring it along.”
When the huntsmen took hold of the girl, she awoke. Filled with fear, she cried out, “I am a poor child who has been abandoned by her father and mother. Have pity on me and take me with you.”
Then they said, “Thousandfurs, you are good for the kitchen. Come with us. You can sweep up the ashes.”
Thus they set her on the cart and drove her home to the royal castle. There they showed her a little cubbyhole under the stairs, where the light of day never entered, and said, “This is where you can live and sleep,” and she rejoiced in it. She never wanted to be seen again.
Then she was sent to the kitchen, where she carried wood and water, tended the fire, plucked the poultry, sorted vegetables, swept up the ashes, and did all the dirty work, and she did it with a smile that no one saw. No one looked at her, and she grew all the more beautiful under her filthy disguise for it.
***
Now it happened that one day a feast was held in the castle, and Thousandfurs said to the cook her mistress, “May I go upstairs and look at all the guests through the window? I will only be a little while.”
And the cook gave her leave for half an hour. So the princess took her oil lamp and went to her room, where she took off her fur cloak and washed the ashes and dirt from herself, and unbound her hair for the first time since she had cut it. Then she opened her traveling-case and took out her dress that glistened like the sun. And after she had done all this she went upstairs to the banquet. Everyone stepped out of her way, for no one knew her, and everyone thought that she was a princess.
The king approached her, reached his hand out to her, and danced with her, and thought in his heart, “My eyes have never before seen such beauty.”
When the dance had ended, she curtsied, and while the king was looking around, she disappeared, and no one knew where she had gone. The guards who stood watch in front of the castle were called and questioned, but no one had seen her.
Now she had run back to her room, quickly taken off her dress, dirtied her hands and face, put on her cloak, and was once again Thousandfurs. She was not yet ready to be seen all the time.
After she had returned to the kitchen and was about to set to work and sweep up the ashes, the cook said, “That’s enough until tomorrow. Make the king’s supper for me, so I can have a look upstairs as well.”
Then the cook went away, and Thousandfurs made soup for the king. While she was making it, the golden ring she had worn on her finger for the dance slipped into the dish and sank to the bottom of the bowl, and she did not notice it.
When the dance was over, the king had his soup brought to him. He ate it, and it tasted so good to him, that he thought he had never eaten a better soup. But when he reached the bottom of the bowl, he saw a golden ring lying there, and he could not imagine how it had gotten there.
He ordered the cook to come before him. The cook was terrified when she heard this order, and when the king asked who had cooked the soup, she answered, “I cooked it,” for she did not want Thousandfurs to be punished.
The king said, “That is not true, for it was made in a different way, and much better than usual.”
The cook answered, “I must confess that it was the little Thousandfurs, who sweeps in the kitchen.”
The king said, “Go and have her come up here.”
When Thousandfurs arrived, the king asked her, “Who are you?”
“I am a poor child who no longer has a father or a mother.” (It is true, she told herself, because the king wishes to be my bridegroom and has relinquished his duties as a father.)
He asked further, “What are you doing in my castle?”
She answered, “I sweep and I peel the vegetables.”
He asked further, “Where did you get the ring that was in the soup?”
She answered, “I do not know anything about the ring.”
Thus the king could learn nothing, and he had to send her away again.
Some time later there was another feast, and Thousandfurs, as before, asked the cook for permission to have a look. She answered, “Yes, but come back in a half hour and cook the soup for the king that he likes so much.”
She ran to her room, quickly washed herself then took from the case the dress that was as silver as the moon and put it on. Then she went upstairs and looked like a princess. The king came up to her and was delighted to see her again, and because a dance was just beginning, they danced together. But as soon as the dance was over she again disappeared so quickly that the king did not notice where she went.
When the king gave a banquet for the third time, everything happened as before. But this time she put on the dress that glistened like the stars, and thus clothed she stepped into the hall. The king danced again with the beautiful maiden, thinking that she had never been so beautiful. And while he was dancing he placed the golden ring back on her finger, without her noticing it. Further, he had ordered that this dance should last a long time. When it was over, he tried to keep hold of her by her hands, but she tore herself loose and jumped so quickly into the crowd that she disappeared before his eyes. She ran as fast as she could to her room beneath the steps, but because she had stayed away too long, more than a half hour, she could not take off the beautiful dress, but instead just threw the fur cloak on over it.
Thousandfurs ran to the kitchen to make the soup for the king. But the king had followed her and took a hold of her gently by the hand, and held up the finger that bore the ring he had given her. As Thousandfurs struggled to free herself, her fur cloak opened a little, and the dress of stars peeked out. The king grabbed the cloak and tore it off.
The princess was no longer able to hide her beautiful hair. And after she had wiped the soot and ashes from her face, she was more beautiful than anyone who had ever been seen on earth. But this time she was not afraid to be seen.
The king said, “You are my dear bride, and we shall never part.”
Preparations for the wedding were begun at once, and the kings of all the surrounding countries were invited. From all the corners of the world they came and descended on the court in great numbers.
But neither the king of the country himself nor the many visiting kings appeared in such splendor as the bride’s father, who now recognized his daughter, whom he had not forgotten. He had been searching for her now for many months, and when he explained the situation to the king of the new country, Thousandfurs was given back to her father, because kings owe more to other kings than they do to women.
“You should have told me you belonged to someone else,” he said to her. And Thousandfurs said nothing.
And the king of the far country was sad, for he had loved Thousandfurs, but he soon allowed himself to be persuaded out of his sadness, and married another.
And Thousandfurs was returned to her kingdom and her father and her promise. And the kingdom rejoiced at her obedience.
[Image by Gustave Doré]
Tags: books, children’s stories made horrific, fairy tales
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Damn. I think this is the most horrific story yet. I’m not sure if I’ve read the original, but the description of Thousandfur’s dresses rings a bell.
Donkeyskin is the original.
I think there might be versions of Cinderella with similar dresses.
NOPE
NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE
NOOOOOOPPPPPPEEEEEE
ETA: Obligatory plug for Robin McKinley’s “Deerskin”; it is an excellent retelling of the original that does not wince away from the horror.
Seconded! One of my favorite books ever.
Oh man, I read that when I was twelve and was NOT OKAY with it. (I tried to tell the librarian at my elementary school that she should probably get rid of it, but she didn’t listen.)
That book is so good!
I liked the first half a lot more than the second half. All the stuff about the mom at the end seemed kind of scattered. But everyone being like “this is ok!” or “this is her fault” was pretty disturbing. I still remember line “he took from her what he had thrice been denied” (or something like that) SHUDDER
Yeah I’m going to go reread it to make myself feel better.
No! I was hoping to read about how she took a piece of skin from every man who had wronged her and sewn herself wings with which to fly away from them. Instead… Ugh, my heart hurts so much. I had a visceral reaction to this piece.
Damn.
That’s what was so great about the Maleficent movie. She pretty much did EXACTLY THAT. A great parable of feminist rage.
“Made horrific” is redundant in this case.
I don’t know if I’ve read the original, but I did read Robin McKinley’s Deerskin, and that was such a terrifying story told really well that it is burned into my brain and I can never reread it.
MALLORY. This story is horrible enough as it is (you left out the fact that her bridegroom-to-be is a total creeper who watches her change!) but to make her go back?? 🙁
Robin McKinley did an adult novel adaptation called Deerskin (other versions of this story are called Donkeyskin) that I read at an impressionable age when devouring all her other books, but it’s heartbreaking and lovely and the prince she meets when she runs away is a pretty stellar human being who she bonds with over their love of dogs. It doesn’t shy away from the incest/rape element, though, so be warned.
Deerskin is so good/horrifying (much like this story).
Yup! Pretty sure I wrote a paper about it for a fairy tale class in college, I should see if I have it somewhere. And it’s been a while since I reread it, might be time to pull it out again.
I love that there are already three different plugs for “Deerskin” in these comments– it is one of my favourite Robin McKinley books, but so tragic and wonderful at the same time.
Although, I would read any story that involved raising puppies.
The puppy raising is seriously one of the best parts, and a big reason the love story works for me. You just get to see them as people, and I really felt like Ossin KNOWS Lissar by the end and understands her.
Yes! The puppies are such a good vehicle for her humanity and personality to come through, rather than the vague princess or traumatized victim before that.
Robin McKinley’s essay about that story where she RIPS INTO PERRAULT for making the prince such a creeper is a thing of beauty. Deerskin is a harrowing book, but god bless McKinley for giving Lissar a prince who is, as you say, a pretty stellar human being.
I feel like I’ve read that essay, but it doesn’t seem to be on her site. Is it in the book?
Huh. I definitely read it on her site about ten years ago, but it doesn’t look like it’s there anymore. As I recall, the basic gist was that it is irresponsible storytelling to send the princess from one sexual predator to another, and that part of what Deerskin is supposed to do is to offer hope for recovery and healing.
Jo Walton has a nice essay here http://www.tor.com/blogs/2009/01/deerskin, though the romance doesn’t work for her apparently.
Jo Walton is so smart. I actually agree with her that McKinley tends to have trouble emotionally connecting with love stories that don’t follow the Beauty and the Beast pattern, but Ossin works so well as a symbol for me that I don’t particularly mind that he isn’t all that interesting as a character. I’m way more invested in his role in Lissar’s healing than I am in him as his own person, and I’m fine with that.
That makes a lot of sense. It’s really HER story, after all, and while he helps with her healing he’s not the only reason she’s able to.
And yeah, the Luthe/Tor and Narl romances never lived up to Beauty — or for that matter, Harry and Corlath!
I love love love Ossin and Lissar as a love story – maybe he’s just my type so I like him, but its one of my favourite novels and the romance rings really true for me.
Oh, my goodness, the Aerin/Tor relationship turns out to be so unsatisfactory — Tor is my type, so I loved him, but I always craved more development.
But, again, her books always focused much better on the heroines and their own personal development, with the princes as a bit of an afterthought, which worked for me.
The romance in Sunshine is pretty satisfactory, but that’s just because I feel that Sunshine is much more of a dynamic figure than some of the other heroines.
Another point: Deerskin is sometimes marketed as YA, and it really shouldn’t be.
My mother gave it to me as a present when I was 11 (I had devoured Beauty and the Hero and the Crown), and I think she probably would have hesitated if she’d known how intense the subject matter was… but it was in the YA section of my local bookstore!
Yup — picked it up at 13 or so, and I think I sort of knew what it was about, but I also thought I was pretty mature at 13, so, you know.
Yeah, I don’t think I was quite mature enough to handle it at that age, but I still read it and loved it.
Haha, nice try, Ortberg. I’m not reading this; I still have a little bit of joy left in my heart.
And once everyone thinks she’s totally cool and chill and so so obedient, Thousandfurs calls all the animals of the kingdom up and they recognize her as their queen and they massacre the king at her bidding, and then she commands the sun and moon and stars, and all the men get banished to their airless/burning surfaces, and leave behind just a world of nice ladies who make good soup, right?
Right?
So glad I read this because now I don’t hate everything and want the world to burn.
So are all the animals of the kingdom actually still alive? Did they just, like, each get a tiny piece of their skin surgically removed for Thousandfurs’ cloak? (If so, ew, and I see why they would have murder on their minds.)
Wait, but wouldn’t the animals be like, “Hey Thousandfurs, we get that you were in a tight spot, but couldn’t you have thought of an impossible quest for your gross father that didn’t involve our…skin?”
I read it as one skin/piece of from a thousand different TYPES of animal, not that there were only 1000 animals in the kingdom and now they’re all dead.
And idk, I feel like once I encounter a queen who has a habit of wearing my uncle Bob’s skin, I might 1/1000th of murder a guy in hopes of a little gratitude so she doesn’t decide she wants to wear mine, too. But that’s just me!!
Further, I must have a cloak put together from a thousand kinds of pelts and fur. Every animal in your kingdom must contribute a piece of its skin for it.”
Ah, yes. I think you’re right that this should be read as “” Every *type* of animal”
Also lolol at “uncle Bob’s skin”. This story just does not stop with the horror! Shudder
Didn’t you ever have a weird friend who wanted to borrow, like, your finger or something for her strange quest?
I think I might be sick. 🙁
Noooooooooooo.
This was one of my favourite books as a child (title was “Princess Furball”, aw). I honestly do not remember the awful beginning, so I’ll have to dig my copy out and recoil forever.
I had and loved that book, too! Just checked, and they changed the beginning so that her father wants to marry her off to an ogre…It was still disturbing to me as a child, but less so than the real thing, I guess?
Oh, yes! I recall now … he wants to buy her, essentially, with wagons of silver.
I’m reeling slightly now from these lessons we absorbed as small female children.
UPDATE: I pulled out the book. I forgot the nurse who cares for the princess after her mother dies, explaining how a princess learned to cook and bake, etc.
There’s a note from the author! She explains this is a variant of the Cinderella story, and that there are other versions — including the others mentioned by everyone here. She says that this variant with the “hated marriage” motif is among the most popular. “Many of these tales included an unlawful marriage or an incestuous theme. In rewriting this version, I believe I have been faithful to the psychological truth of the earlier tellings.”
Just scrolling down immediately to say this story is already horrific, what can you possibly do, Ortberg? I know I will regret this once I actually read it.
I thought the same thing. Alas, I will never doubt Mallory again.
Oh god oh god I forgot “made horrific” and was unprepared for the ending.
Also, I went read the Grimm version first and TOTALLY MISSED that there were two different kings, so that was confusing.
I missed that, too. I kept thinking, “He’s been dancing with her, how did he not recognize his daughter until NOW?!”
I’m glad I’m not the only one who was confused by that. I had the impression for years that she didn’t want to marry the king (her father!) so she ran away and hid in…his kitchens? So she can seduce the guy she doesn’t want to sleep with?
Different king. DIFFERENT king. (Yet in this version, all too similar. I’m surprised the original doesn’t end like this.)
Jeez, my heart. Also: this is hands-down my favorite fairy tale, I eat up just about every version of it I can find. In addition to Deerskin, I’d like to do the obligatory “Jim Henson’s Storyteller” plug for their episode ‘Sapsorrow’ that does another version of this story (with mice, actual mice, in her hair. and a mega-poncy 80s prince). It was my introduction to this story and so, so weird. Apparently it’s on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSA6Fro7MSE
Man – so as a folktale, why exactly are people repeating this one to their children? And who are the storytellers here?
The more I think about it, the darker my conclusions become.
Not to go super Freudian here, but the story of the girl struggling to leave her parents’ house and move to her husband’s house after she reaches adolescence and her parents begin to respond to her beauty in sinister ways–that’s one of the basic fairy tale narratives, isn’t it? Beauty and the Beast, for sure, but also Snow White and Cinderella. Donkeyskin/Thousandfur is just one of the most explicitly horrific versions.
Spinning Straw into Gold: What Fairy Tales Reveal About the Transformations in a Woman’s Life by Joan Gould is a really good book on this topic (what fairy tales give to women psychologically/ how these stories are horrible because they are designed to prepare girls for the horribleness of grownup life)
Ooh, thank you! Adding it to my list.
Yeah – but to turn subtext into text on that particular points seems more ominous to me.
Stories that reinforce incest taboos are always out there – Oedipus, speaking of Freud – but I don’t really see it here. The king is the villain of the story, but he goes unpunished. Plus, he gets a rationalization, however fucked up it is, so it seems like the story is saying that keeping a promise is more important than the taboo. Oedipus and Jocasta both suffer, and they don’t make the conscious choice, but are pushed into it unwittingly by fate after every attempt to avoid it.
This feels like a warning to me – not only could this happen to you, child, but your only hope is going to be to run away after buying yourself as much time as possible. You will not find justice, and you may not even find sympathy, and you must hide everything about it from everyone. Cinderella has vengeance against her tormenters when the birds get them, but Deerskin has to move out of the jurisdiction, change her name, and hide herself.
It’s also interesting that this is both one of the few versions of the story where the father is actively threatening (as opposed to the mother), and, as you point out, the one where the villain isn’t punished. In the versions of the story where the mother is threatened by her daughter’s beauty the mother is punished violently and graphically (red hot shoes! birds peck out her eyes!), but in the version where the father desires his daughter, he gets away with it and it’s the daughter who has to flee.
Yeah. Every permutation is so nauseating, and each in its own way. Happy royal families are all alike, unhappy royal families…
Thousandfurs, at least, gets a happy ending. Which is a relief, but I’m vacillating on exactly which virtues are being rewarded here. Certainly her resistance and escape from her “betrothal” makes her worthy, in part. But I also fear that some of it is hush money, too. If she told her story, it would justify (perhaps require?) war against her father’s kingdom, which has a little bit of a “you’re tearing this family apart with your accusations” in it. With the lengths she goes to to hide her identity, I can’t shake the feeling of “this is yours to bear alone,” along with “you should be ashamed that you caused this to happen by being so beautiful.”
Well, in the Perrault version she does reveal her identity at the end, and she and her new husband then reconcile with her father. (“Weeping with joy, he embraced her tenderly. His happiness was shared by all, and the future husband was delighted to find that his father-in-law was such a powerful king.”) Which is obviously super messed up in its own way–it’s just less hush money and more, “Well, you’re so beautiful that who could blame your father? We’re all pals now anyway.” I think the virtue that’s being rewarded here is feminine beauty and passivity in the face of hardship–Donkeyskin is the more virtuous for how she suffers without complaint as a kitchen maid, and the more beautiful for how she hides her beauty under her donkeyskin.
Every outcome feels more brutal than the last.
Are there any versions of this story where the father takes a harder hit? Or does the narrative always bend over backwards to excuse him (promises, kings need queens, etc.)
None that I know of! In versions where the narrative is softened, what usually happens is that the father is trying to marry the daughter off to someone else against her will rather than trying to marry her himself. Someone else might be more knowledgable, though?
Also the virtue of managing men’s relationships/behaviour, maybe. Her father is abusive, and she’s the one who has to fix it, and she’s rewarded for doing so. But there’s still an element of passivity, in that she has to fix things by running away rather than, say, stabbing him.
Or maybe I’m reading modern gender relations into an old story, I don’t know.
Oh yeah, I think that’s absolutely right. The story is structured so that it’s the daughter’s feminine beauty that has warped the family—if she had stayed forever childlike and pure, her father wouldn’t desire her—and so it’s on her to fix things. And to do that, she has to be the perfect embodiment of passive womanly virtues, all to make up for her crime of having a woman’s body.
I think she deserves credit for rebelling against patriarchal authority! Criticizing a victim of incest for running away instead of murdering her abuser seems a little harsh even when seen through the lens of modern gender attitudes. And FWIW I think the centrality of the girl’s defiance of authority is the reason this tale is so obscure compared to its sister-tale Cinderella. No matter how much the (historically sexist) tale collectors/retellers bent over backwards to redeem the king and make his transgression the fault of his dead wife or advisers (or even the daughter, for being so beautiful that he just couldn’t help it), they can’t disguise the story’s fundamental premise — the king who is in the wrong and the girl who takes action to prevent the wrong from happening. So eventually they just stopped telling/collecting it. The only version of this story that’s really survived in the popular imagination is King Lear.
If we were discussing a true story, I would certainly agree that she deserved credit for running away. Lots of it! But it’s a fairy tale, and I’m used to fairy tales where justice prevails, often bloodily. So the total lack of punishment for the king really does stand out to me. I’d be just as happy if he’d suffered in some other way at someone else’s hand, but that seems like it wouldn’t fit, since the story pretty clearly makes it her job to fix the problem he caused. Which is all kinds of victim-blame-y, of course, and that’s another reason why this story is depressing.
I ran the 1812 Grimm version through Google Translate, and though the result was a bit garbled, it doesn’t seem to have any punishment for the king either. My understanding is that the Grimm brothers didn’t make all that many changes in that first edition from the versions they’d collected, so I’m not sure how much we can blame men for this one.
Well, obviously we can blame men for being terrible enough to inspire it. But I’m not sure we can blame them for the father being let off easy.
Yeah, I think the story is really about the collision of patriarchal authority and moral abominations. The king is wrong: there’s definitely no sense in there that the heroine should go along with things. In at least one version I found online, his court is horrified about this, and fear divine retribution against all of them for his sin. But they don’t stop him, because he’s the King and can do as he wishes.
That means that the daughter has a double bind – the story forces the moral duty on her to both resist her father and respect him and not cause trouble. So she runs away – heroic! But not just because she saves herself; she also saves the king (and kingdom) from himself. And his sin is therefore never punished, just accepted as one of the risks of having a king.
This thread here was fascinating and really great to read, thanks guys!
“The king was not dissuaded. Conquerors never are.”
fuck, mallory.
There is nothing about this story that wasn’t horrific already and you made it worse
I did read an amazing webcomic version of it. The whole site is a bunch of lesser known fairy tales made into webcomics (including my favorite- The Farmer’s Clever Daughter).
Hooray! Another Erstwhile fan! I love their interpretations of fairy tales (and how diverse they make their characters). Plus, I got to see one of the artists at ECCC and she was super nice and gave me and my friends free stickers because we were so excited to see her.
Here it is, I thought. A story that Mallory cannot possibly make more horrific.
I was wrong. I was wrong.
P.S. You should do “The Girl Without Hands” next.
Have you ever read the story “The Color Master” by Aimee Bender? It tells the story of the people who made those dresses and it is so very very good.
LOVED it. Was literally the only story in that collection of retellings that worked for me.
Based on this one comment I decided to read this, searched our library catalogue, and found we have a copy sitting on the shelf right now! Metres away from me! Going to read that story at lunchtime, for sure.
This probably is my favorite Aimee Bender story and her stuff is usually so hit or miss for me.
I’d never heard of her before, but I just read that story and it’s so great! All the good things about women’s fantasy writing: anger and hard work and getting-things-done and all the inevitability that comes with fairy tales. So happy to have read it!
Eeeee thanks for writing this, now I realize it’s part of one of HER collections, instead of just being part of My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me collection by a bunch of authors. Must track down.
But there is no man so sad that he cannot be talked out of forgetting a woman,
That cuts a little deep right now since my mom died in 2012 and my father is currently on a cruise with his girlfriend.
(I’ve learned that spring makes me miss her extra hard, even though she died around Christmas.)
I’m so sorry for your loss.
*hugs*
*jedi hugs*
This is the first one where I wasn’t familiar with the original story. It is appropriately terrible.
Also I would like a dress that glistens like stars, but without the accompanying royal incest/rape.
Poe totally wrote this too, in “Morella.”
I can’t wait for the Disney version.
I can hear Merchandising now: “She has 3 dresses AND a cloak, you say? There must be some way we can spin this.”
Oo, this or a version of it is in the Grey Book of Fairy Tales which I LOVE, and all of those stories are creepy to some degree or another – but this is just hauntingly beautiful. And I’ll be saying that every time you make a post in this series.
I knew, I KNEW that if I clicked on this and read it, it would haunt my nightmares. I’ve read Deerskin. I know the fairy tale. I do not doubt Mallory’s ability to scar my soul. But I did it anyway.
I have no one to blame but myself.
THIS IS THE WORST ONE YET.
Shortly after this the queen died, and so they put her away in the ground, where the dirt closed over her like a mouth and kept her brilliant hair for itself.
that’s a fantastic line, though
That was the first of, like, a dozen times that I whispered “JESUS CHRIST, MALLORY.”
JESUS CHRIST, MALLORY
Apart from the overt horrificness of the original there is the nauseating aftertaste of the fact that, as has been said upthread, 1) the king in this story is an outright villain who gets absolutely no comeuppance whatsoever apart from not getting to screw his daughter and 2) you get the feeling the moral fulcrum in this tale is more about respecting the incest taboo than about respecting women.
Is there a word for being devoutly, desperately grateful you do not live at any of the other bazillion points in human history when your life as an Other (woman, person of color etc.) would statistically almost certainly be hideous?
This story plays a key role in The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth, which is about Dortchen Wild who married Wilhelm Grimm. Very much worth reading, though should come with a trigger warning for abuse and incest themes.
Wait, I thought this was called “Donkeyskins” or something.
I think there are actually a bunch of similar tales with slight variations but the weird incest stuff.
Ok so once for my French class, I read the Charles Perrault version and maybe my grasp of French wasn’t all that it should’ve been, but I totally missed the incest part? Jesus this is horrifying and disgusting. Also, what made my teacher think that this story was a good assignment to give to a bunch of 8th graders?
JESUS CHRIST, MALLORY.
Oh, and this bit is Tess of the D’urbervilles, as written by someone who isn’t secretly enjoying the heroine’s pain:
And the princess grew frantic when she could not erase her own beauty, and she tore at her face with her fingernails. She tore out her eyelashes all in a row so her eyelids were red and skinless. She carved a hole in her cheek large enough for her pinky finger to fit through. She reached for her own skull.
JESUS CHRIST, MALLORY.
“And the king had not looked at her while he had a wife living, but he looked at her now.”
Holy shit.
When this story was mentioned in the last CSMH comments, I went and read it, and as many others have mentioned, thought, how could you possibly make this more horrific?
I so badly wanted her to get a little mermaid ending, just kill everyone and take to the sea. Nope.
You know how the Little Mermaid ends, right? In the original?
From memory, she turns into foam and dies forever because no soul while the prince marries someone else? I liked Mallory’s ending better.
I kind of want every fairy tale to end that way now. Murder everyone, take to the sea.
Next: Mallory makes “How Some Children Played at Slaughtering”* even more horrific.
Grimm’s. Exactly what it says on the tin. There is no plot.
… wow.
“In a city named Franecker, located in West Friesland, some young boys and girls between the ages of five and six happened to be playing with one another. They chose one boy to play a butcher, another boy to play was to be a cook, and a third boy was to be a pig. Then they chose one girl to be a cook and another girl her assistant. The assistant was to catch the blood of the pig in a little bowl so they could make sausages. As agreed, the butcher now fell upon the little boy playing the pig, threw him to the ground, and slit his throat open with a knife, while the assistant cook caught the blood in her little bowl.”
( http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/case-studies/113 )
This story is already horrific and you made it worse. I dunno if I should give you props or not.
This is absolutely horrific…. Why, why did I read it at work???
(I would totally buy a book of Mallory’s fairy tales though.)
I was just saying to my sister that a book of Mallory’s horrific fairytales is all I want out of life.
Someday I will open this website and I will see CHILDREN’S STORIES MADE HORRIFIC: WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE and then I will close my computer, and take to the sea.
T_T
T_T
Mallory’s going to write a book of horrific fairy tales, right? I would read it to bits.
Yeah I'm going to go reread it to make myself feel better.
I think I’m going to go read Struwwelpeter to make myself feel better.
Donkeyskin was in The Fairy Tale Book I had as a kid. It has these great, somewhat sinister, illustrations by Adrienne Segur that I always thought captured how unhappy these women were. http://s1249.photobucket.com/user/djevojka1/media…
“Thousandfurs was given back to her father, because kings owe more to other kings than they do to women.” Jeebus, Ortberg. Your accuracy is breaking my heart.
Oh god. this was truly horrific.
I wish she had slit his throat like the mermaid did.
🙁
I love that mermaid.
Oh god. this was truly horrific.
I wish she had slit his throat like the mermaid did.
🙁
I love that mermaid.
Just saying, I read this in second grade. Part of a whole weird study unit on Cinderella variants.
“The king grabbed the cloak and tore it off.
The princess was no longer able to hide her beautiful hair. And after she had wiped the soot and ashes from her face, she was more beautiful than anyone who had ever been seen on earth. But this time she was not afraid to be seen.”
You sure she wasn’t