Rumpelstiltskin: the Original Fairy Tale

Famous for having a character with a difficult to guess (and spell!) name, the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin has enjoyed a decent level of popularity. But how well do you know the original story.

Since I started writing my series of fairy tale retellings, I have longed for the day that I get to attack the story of Rumpelstiltskin, because the original fairy tale is cray-cray and I have always wanted to smack the heroine. After finishing all my research for my book (title: Rumpelstiltskin) I was even more annoyed by some of the core points of this story, so brace yourself for a sarcastic summary!

The story goes like this...

An idiotic miller tells his King (no clues how the two came to be chatting, we’re just told the miller does this) that his daughter has the ability to spin straw into gold. What. First of all, what could possibly inspire a person to tell such an obvious falsehood, and secondly, WHY would he tell the King this, because the King is obviously NUTS. King Crazy summons the poor girl, shuts her up in a room filled with straw, and tells her to spin it all into gold in one night, or he’ll have her killed the following morning. Stable this King is not.

Now either the miller’s daughter is smart and refrains from telling King Crazy that her father was lying because she knows it’s going to get her killed, or she has the same intelligence level as her father and went along with it because…I don’t know. So the girl sits in the room and cries. It is then that an imp-like creature–or a little man depending on the version–mysteriously enters this locked and guarded room, and offers to spin all the straw into gold in exchange for the girl’s necklace. She agrees, and the little guy does manual labor for her all night. In the morning the King sees the straw-turned-to-gold, and tells the girl she better do it again, sticking her in an even bigger room of straw, or he will kill her.

Again the little dude shows up when the miller’s daughter starts crying. This time he offers to spin all the straw into gold for her gold ring. (Where the miller’s daughter is getting all this bling is not explained.) Instead of asking how he got in and requesting that he would help her escape, the girl agrees, and the little dude saves her–without being thanked or named, might I add. Two things that I would think someone in the same position as the miller’s daughter would feel to be vitally important.

But is King Crazy satisfied with two rooms full of gold? Nope. So he tosses her in a third room with the same threat, only this time he promises he’ll marry her if she does it again. (Because marrying the guy who commonly threatens to kill you would be such a treat.)

This time when the little imp-man shows up, the miller’s daughter has no more bling. So, naturally, the next thing the little man asks for is her firstborn daughter.

Talk about a jump in price.

Truthfully, I think this was his terrible attempt to hit on her. I mean come on, what VILLAIN would do manual labor for a chick for three nights? If he wanted a baby for some nefarious reason I’m sure he could have plucked one off the streets. But no, instead he chooses to trade enough gold to outfit a kingdom to get a chance at swiping the firstborn child of the miller’s daughter.

The miller’s daughter is too oblivious to notice she is being courted, or she has the same parenting instincts as her father, and agrees to the trade. The straw is spun into gold, and the next day King Crazy is satisfied with all the gold and marries the miller’s daughter. (Oddly she doesn’t fight him or run away.)

For an unexplained reason, King Crazy finally ceases with the death threats. Time passes, and the miller’s daughter–who is now the queen–gives birth. The little-imp-man shows up, asking for the queen to hand the child over–probably intending to save the poor thing from its homicidal father and twit of a mother. The queen begs the little man to reconsider the bargain, offering up all the wealth she has, aka all-the-wealth-imp-man-spun-for-King-Crazy. Imp-man refuses, but he softens up and tells her that if she can guess his name within three days, she can keep the baby. Guess she should have made it a bigger priority to send him a thank you, huh?

Does anyone else think Rumpelstiltskin looks like one of Santa’s elves?

Apparently imp-man hangs around the palace (probably attempting to further hit on the queen) so he can tell the queen if she guesses incorrectly. The queen spends the first two days coming up with names, but sadly none of these names belong to imp-man. In the last few hours the queen wigs out because it appears that she’s going to lose her child. She sends out a messenger who stumbles upon imp-man, singing a song that his name is Rumpelstiltskin.

Let’s pause here for a moment. Imp-man was most assuredly at the palace, otherwise the queen wouldn’t know she was guessing incorrectly if he wasn’t there to tell her so. How did imp-man go from the palace, to being out in the wilds in the mountains, singing about his name? This is a guy who is sneaky enough to break into a locked, guarded room and spin straw into gold. Do you really think he couldn’t hide the truth of his name? I’m telling you, he’s totally sweet on the idiot of a queen.

Anyway, the messenger goes back and tells the queen what he heard. When imp-man/Rumpelstiltskin tells her the three days are up, the queen is feigns ignorance for a little while before declaring imp-man’s name to be Rumpelstiltskin.

At this point the versions differ on what happens. In the Grimm brother’s original 1812 story imp-man runs away and is never seen again. In a re-released version in 1857 he tears himself in half. In the oral version of the story that the Grimm brothers based their story off, imp-man flies way on a cooking ladle.

What I find most confusing about the story is this: the short little guy, who saves the miller’s daughter from her father’s stupidity, herself, and the King’s threat is the villain. The King who threatened to kill the miller’s daughter? He’s the hero, I guess, because he gets the girl. Or we could say the miller’s daughter/the queen was the hero…but she lies to King Crazy, delegates her work to imp-man, and then essentially stiffs him. Some hero.

Don’t let my abundant sarcasm fool you, I am a big fan of the fairy tale! I also believe it has hidden depths to it which I discuss more in this other blog post.

Due to my annoyance with parts of the original fairy tale I made some major changes in my version, the most of important of which is the male lead is NOT King Crazy! If you're interested in reading it, here are the links:

Click here for Amazon.com Or Click here for all other Amazon stores

Cinderella Differences & Similarities

As I discussed in this blog post I based my Cinderella off Charles Perrault’s Cendrillon, which was written in 1697. My adaptation, Cinderella and the Colonel, strays decently far from the details of Cendrillon and I'm dedicating this blog post to discussing the differences and reviewing the morals from the original fairy tale. (Note: SPOILERS AHEAD!)

In example:

1. My Cinderella’s father is dead, Cendrillon’s is still alive

2. My Cinderella attends one ball, Cendrillon attends two

3. My fairy godmother uses goats for a coachman and a footman, Cendrillon’s used lizards and rats.

4. Cinderella knows the prince for a full season before she admits she loves him, Cendrillon met her prince twice

5. My Prince (Friedrich targets) Cinderella from the get-go, and knows perfectly well who she is at the ball, versus Cendrillon’s prince had a super poor memory, and uses a shoe to identify her.

I knew I was going to change the romance aspect of Cinderella because I disliked so greatly how stupid Cinderella’s prince was. (Please, who falls in love with a girl and then can’t remember what she looks like or anything about her?! Even Romeo wasn’t that bad!)

I also knew I wanted to get closer to the bones of the Cendrillon story. Perrault was vocal in explaining that the moral of Cendrillion is that beauty is to be treasured, but graciousness is priceless. (Remember, in Perrault's version Cinderella forgave her step siblings, who both married lords and also lived happily ever after.) I felt like Perrault’s moral was great, but the graciousness bit of the story doesn’t show up until the last few lines of the story.

Keeping that in mind, I threw out the romance of Cinderella and rehashed it to reflect my more personal tastes (more of getting to know a person and less of love at first sight) and took the story back to Perrault’s moral. I needed to make a world where Cinderella would be loved and adored because she was gracious and able to forgive. Thus, the conflict of Erlauf and Trieux was born. Cinderella’s personality was embedded with a forgiving nature, which is the only reason why she is able to be Queen of Erlauf, and why both counties will follow her. Cinderella’s forgiving personality is why she saw the logic in Fredrich’s reasoning for keeping his royal position secret and accepted it instead of throwing a hissy fit. (COUGH Severin, Beauty and the Beast, COUGH)

I killed Cinderella’s father off because I wanted to push Cinderella to the brink of extreme hatred, which would make her relationship with Friedrich more dynamic. I knew I didn’t want Cinderella’s step-family to be the cause of her unusual position. (I dedicated an entire blog post to explain why I made this choice.) However, I needed an emotionally charged reason for Cinderella’s selfless acts. Her desire to keep her servants gainfully employed was what I came up with–once again giving Cinderella the opportunity to be hateful and spiteful over the taxes and fines.

I’ve received messages from Champions and readers who are awed, and perhaps a little disbelieving, of Cinderella’s ability to forgive. They don’t question that it’s in character–Cinderella’s graciousness lies deep in her bones–but they do wonder if someone could actually do that. This takes me back to the Perrault’s moral: graciousness is priceless.

There’s no way I could do what the original Cendrillon did. She served her step sisters–who did everything possible to make her miserable–and then forgave them and welcomed them into her courts. That’s unfathomable to me. But I know Cendrillon would do it because that’s the kind of person she is. My Cinderella almost has an easier time forgiving because Erlauf had decent reasons for just about everything they did. Cendrillon’s step sisters had no such excuses. So if you too are wowed by Cinderella’s ability to forgive, I’m thrilled. That means I was able to bring a little bit of the graciousness of Perrault’s Cendrillion into my Cinderella.

As for the remaining, notable differences, I decided it wasn’t feasible for Cinderella to attend two balls without being caught. Also, I had my fairy godmother use goats instead of lizards because I wanted Cinderella’s help to be ‘homegrown’ so to speak. It seemed fitting that Cinderella, who sacrificed so much for her servants, lands, crops, and so on, would in turn be aided by her duchy’s servants (with the fine on her land) crops (the pumpkin) and animals.  Also, I obviously changed the story in that I had Angelique help Cinderella in addition to Sybilla. Angelique will be involved in every Timeless Fairy Tale I write.

If you'd like to read my adaptation of this popular fairy tale (where the Prince does not instantly forget what Cinderella looks like!) here are the links to my book:

Click here for Amazon.com  Or Click here for all other Amazon stores

Cinderella: the Original Fairy Tale

 Cinderella, as you might have noticed with all my trumpeting, has been Let's talk about the fairy tale that created one of these most popular Disney princesses: Cinderella!

I'm going to sarcastically summarize the original fairy tale and share some interesting facts I learned in my research for writing my own retelling of this story. You can find my Cinderella book here! I will be candid and admit that with my story I deviated pretty far from the original. Mostly because I think Cinderella’s prince is lazy and/or lame, so this should be an entertaining summary!

Unlike The Wild Swans–which is a German and Dutch fairy tale–and Beauty and the Beast–which is a French fairytale, Cinderella is a European fairy tale. There are French, German, and Italian versions of this story–there’s even a Greek/Egyptian version. I chose to base most of my Cinderella off the French version, which is the most widely known version of the story as Disney’s Cinderella closely mirrors it. It was written in 1697 by Charles Perrault and was called Cendrillon.

Cendrillon opens with a widower marrying a haughty widow who has two daughters. The new stepmother is proud, and greedy–as her her daughters. The three force Cendrillon to perform chores and menial labor in her house. To complete her stepmother’s cruelty, the woman makes Cendrillon sleep in a cold, bare room. To keep warm Cendrillon sleeps near the fireplace in the room, and as a result is often covered in cinders. As you can guess, her stepfamily then gives her the name of Cinderella. Cendrillon’s father still lives, but Cendrillon dares not complain because he is under his wife’s thumb.

One day the prince invites all the young ladies in the land to a ball, intending to choose a bride from them. (Because it’s TOTALLY a good idea to pick the person you’ll spend the rest of your life with, after spending a few hours socializing with a couple hundred girls.) Cendrillon’s stepsisters mock her as they leave in their beautiful dresses.

When they are gone, Cendrillon weeps, and her fairy godmother appears. As you can probably guess, the fairy godmother transforms Cendrillon’s rags into a beautiful, jeweled dress. Mice are turned into horses, a pumpkin into a coach, a rat becomes the coachmen, and lizards the footmen. The fairy godmother also bestows a pair of glass slippers, and warns Cendrillon that the magic will fade by midnight.

Cendrillon attends the ball, enchants the courts and the prince, and remembers to leave the ball in time. The following day Cendrillon’s stepsisters–who did not recognize her–are furious. There is a second ball the following evening, which Cendrillon attends again with the help of her fairy godmother. The prince grows even more infatuated with her, and Cendrillon loses track of time until the clock strikes midnight and she realizes her mistake. As she flees she loses one of her glass slippers.

Being that the prince apparently cannot remember what she looks like, he resolves to try the slipper on all the girls in the kingdom (because, of course, no one could share Cendrillon’s shoe size) and marry whomever it belongs to.

Naturally, he ends up at Cendrillon’s villa where the stepsisters try to win him over. After their failed attempts to try on the slipper, Cendrillon asks if she may try. It fits, and the two are happily married.  In this version, the stepsisters plead for forgiveness, and Cendrillon agrees to let bygones be bygones. In the end the stepsisters both marry lords as well. The moral, according to Perrault, is that beauty is to be treasured, but graciousness is priceless.

The version recorded by the Brothers Grimm is vastly different. Instead of a fairy godmother, Cinderella receives help from…well…birds. She goes out to a hazel tree growing on her mother’s grave (her mother plays a larger role in the story) and a beautiful dress is brought down by birds who prepared it in advance.

Also, instead of making amends with her stepsisters, the girls cut off various parts of their feet to make fit into the shoe–which this time is a golden slipper.

The prince either is a total idiot and cannot remember what Cinderella looks like, or he’s the biggest dope ever because he believes both sisters, one after another, when they come out with cut up feet fitting in their shoes and rides off, again one after another, intending to make them his bride before Cinderella steps in.

To make it even worse, on Cinderella’s wedding day two pigeons pluck the stepsisters’ eyes out. Pretty opposed to “graciousness is priceless,” hmm?

In this separate blog post I talk about how I portrayed my heroine for Cinderella (and why) but I do want to take this moment to point out something: Beauty, from the original B&B; Elise, from the original Wild Swans; and Cinderella, from Cendrillon all had the "he falls first" trope with their eventual husbands. In all three fairy tales it is clearly written that their various princes fall madly in love with them first. In fact, Beauty is the only girl to ever actually say she fell in love back. Elise and Cinderella never confirm this–who knows, maybe they’re just thrilled their terrible/painful pasts are over and now they’re going to be princesses.

If you'd like to read my adaptation of this popular fairy tale (where the Prince does not instantly forget what Cinderella looks like!) here are the links to my book:

Click here for Amazon.com Or Click here for all other Amazon stores