Rapunzel

Rapunzel" (/rpnzl/; German pronunciation: [apnttsl]) 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] The Grimm Brothers' story is an
adaptation of the fairy tale Rapunzel by Friedrich Schulz published in 1790.[2] The Schulz version is based on Persinette by
Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force originally published in 1698[3] which in turn was influenced by an even earlier tale,
Petrosinella by Giambattista Basile, published in 1634.[4] Its plot has been used and parodied in various media and its best
known line ("Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair") is an idiom of popular culture. In volume I of the 1812 annotations
(Anhang), it is listed as coming from Friedrich Schulz Kleine Romane, Book 5, pp. 269288, published in Leipzig 1790.
In the AarneThompson classification system for folktales it is type 310, "The Maiden in The Tower".[5]
Andrew Lang included it in The Red Fairy Book.[6] Other versions of the tale also appear in A Book of Witches by Ruth
Manning-Sanders and in Paul O. Zelinsky's 1997 Caldecott Medal-winning picture book, Rapunzel and the Disney movie
Tangled.
Rapunzel's story has striking similarities to the 11th-century Persian tale of Rudba, included in the epic poem Shahnameh
by Ferdowsi. Rudba offers to let down her hair from her tower so that her lover Zl can climb up to her.[7] Some elements
of the fairy tale might also have originally been based upon the tale of Saint Barbara, who was said to have been locked in a
tower by her father.[8]
Contents [hide]
1 Plot
2 Commentary
3 Literary adaptations
4 Film adaptations
5 Television adaptations
6 See also
7 References
8 External links
Plot[edit]
Illustration by Johnny Gruelle
A lonely couple, who want a child, live next to a walled garden belonging to an evil witch named Dame Gothel. The wife,
experiencing the cravings associated with the arrival of her long-awaited pregnancy, notices some rapunzel (or, in most
translated-to-English versions[9] of the story, rampion), growing in the garden and longs for it, desperate to the point of
death. One night, her husband breaks into the garden to get some for her. She makes a salad out of it and greedily eats it. It
tastes so good that she longs for more. So her husband goes to get some more for her. As he scales the wall to return home,
Dame Gothel catches him and accuses him of theft. He begs for mercy, and she agrees to be lenient, and allows him to take
all the rapunzel he wants, on condition that the baby be given to her when it's born. Desperate, he agrees. When his wife
has a baby girl, Dame Gothel takes her to raise as her own and names her Rapunzel after the plant her mother craved. She
grows up to be the most beautiful child in the world with long golden hair. When she turns twelve, Dame Gothel lockes her
up inside a tower in the middle of the woods, with neither stairs nor a door, and only one room and one window. When she
visits her, she stands beneath the tower and calls out:
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, so that I may climb thy golden stair.
One day, a prince rides through the forest and hears Rapunzel singing from the tower. Entranced by her ethereal voice, he
searches for her and discovers the tower, but is naturally unable to enter it. He returns often, listening to her beautiful
singing, and one day sees Dame Gothel visit, and thus learns how to gain access to Rapunzel. When Dame Gothel leaves, he
bids Rapunzel let her hair down. When she does so, he climbs up, makes her acquaintance, and eventually asks her to marry
him. She agrees.
Together they plan a means of escape, wherein he will come each night (thus avoiding Dame Gothel who visits her by day),
and bring Rapunzel a piece of silk, which she will gradually weave into a ladder. Before the plan can come to fruition,
however, she foolishly gives him away. In the first edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales, she innocently says that her dress is getting
tight around her waist (indicating pregnancy); in the second edition, she asks Dame Gothel (in a moment of forgetfulness)
why it is easier for her to draw up the prince than her.[10] In anger, she cuts off Rapunzel's hair and casts her out into the
wilderness to fend for herself.
When the prince calls that night, Dame Gothel lets the severed hair down to haul him up. To his horror, he finds himself
staring at her instead of Rapunzel, who is nowhere to be found. When she tells him in a jealous rage that he will never see
Rapunzel again, he leaps from the tower and lands on some thorns, which blind him.
For months, he wanders through the wastelands of the country and eventually comes to the wilderness where Rapunzel
now lives with the twins she has given birth to, a boy and a girl. One day, as she sings, he hears her voice again, and they are
reunited. When they fall into each other's arms, her tears immediately restore his sight. He leads her and their twins to his
kingdom, where they live happily ever after.
In some versions of the story, Rapunzel's hair magically grows back after the prince touches it.
Another version of the story ends with the revelation that Dame Gothel had untied Rapunzel's hair after the prince leapt
from the tower, and it slipped from her hands and landed far below, leaving her trapped in the tower.[1]

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Rapunzel" (/rpnzl/; German pronunciation: [apnttsl]) is a German fairy tale in the collection assembled by the

Illustration by Johnny Gruelle

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