Rapunzel the Grimm Brothers\' Fairy

Rapunzel

The Grimm brothers' fairy tale "Rapunzel" is ripe for psychoanalytic interpretation because it includes a number of peculiar textual details requiring analysis. In particular, the way the story is broken up into three distinct parts and the relation these divisions have to the characters (especially the prince and the enchantress) demonstrate how the story formulates the journey from child to adult as one of a conflict and eventual reconciliation between the notions of eros and thanatos. Examining the function of the prince and the enchantress in relation to Rapunzel reveals that they serve as representations of eros and thanatos, respectively, ultimately explaining some of the more mysterious details of the text. The story is making a claim regarding the importance of reconciling death with one's own desire for life, essentially arguing that the successful embodiment of eros may only be achieved through a confrontation with and internalization of thanatos.

Before examining the characters of the prince and the enchantress in more detail, it will be useful to examine how the story is divided up by location, because this will give a clue to the functioning of the characters within these locations as well as demonstrate the transition which occurs over the course of the story. In turn, this will reveal what Christine Jones calls the portrayal of "emotional response in the fairy tale," meaning how the tale uses its own peculiar logic to express something about the human psyche (Jones 13). The story begins in the home of Rapunzel's parents, which overlooks "a splendid garden […] full of the most beautiful flowers and herbs," and these two locations serve as the setting for the first segment of the story (Grimm & Grimm 1857). This remains the setting until Rapunzel's birth, after which the enchantress takes her to a "tower, which lay in a forest, and had neither stairs nor door, but quite at the top was a little window," and Rapunzel's parents are forgotten about for the rest of the story. The tower and surrounding forest serves as the setting for the next segment of the story, and the forests and desert through which the prince wanders until he finds Rapunzel constitute the last portion.

Noting these divisions highlights the particular importance of the prince and the enchantress, because they are the only characters who can cross the boundaries between these segments (except for Rapunzel, who is present throughout). The enchantress appears only in the first and second segment, and the prince appears only in the second and third (and for good measure, one may note that Rapunzel's parents only appear in the first, and Rapunzel's children only appear in the third). Thus, the changes in location denote the three distinct phases of Rapunzel's transition from newborn child to mother, a transition that is made possible through the reconciliation of the oppositional drives of eros and thanatos as represented by the prince and enchantress. It is important to note that this claim is supported by the structure and function of the story itself, because too often discussions "of Eros and Thanatos veer toward pop psychology," so the remaining analysis will focus on pointing out evidence for this interpretation within the text (Lang 129).

Having examined how the overall structure of the story reveals the specific functions of the characters, it will now be possible to discuss in more detail how the characters of the prince and the enchantress function as the representations of eros and thanatos in relation to Rapunzel. One must necessarily begin with the enchantress, because the text seemingly presents a problem in interpreting the enchantress as the representation of thanatos by connecting her so closely with birth in the first segment of the story. However, a look at the earlier circumstances of Rapunzel's parents will reveal the unique circumstances of Rapunzel's birth that make the presence of thanatos' avatar entirely appropriate.

The story opens by noting Rapunzel's parents' long and fruitless wish for a child, and this detail reveals the reason for the enchantress' presence at Rapunzel's birth, both literally and figuratively, because as will be shown, the enchantress is not even there to necessarily "steal" Rapunzel. The story notes that "there were once a man and a woman who had long in vain wished for a child," and "at length the woman hoped that God was about to grant her desire" (Grimm & Grimm 1857). The fact that the woman will have a child is never actually confirmed until the enchantress demands that it be given to her in payment for the rampion, and this fact is the central detail which explains the enchantress' actions throughout the rest of the story. Although the story does not dwell on it, the fact that the rampion comes from an enchantress' garden makes it entirely reasonable to presume that the rampion is in some way magical, and furthermore, that this is the reason the woman becomes pregnant, and not her hope in God. Therefore, the exchange of Rapunzel for the rampion can be seen as the exchange of life for life, because Rapunzel's mother needs the rampion or else she "shall die." As thanatos cannot find expression in the mother, then it will simply take the daughter, displacing its influence from the (possibly) dying mother to the newly born daughter.

Thus, Rapunzel's birth can be seen as going against a natural order, because her mother was seemingly infertile until taking some sustenance from the enchantress' garden. Whereas normally eros is impetus for a birth, the first segment of the story represents an inversion, such that thanatos becomes the reason for Rapunzel's birth. This is unnatural, of course, so the enchantress takes Rapunzel to raise her as her own, fulfilling her promise that she "will care for it like a mother," albeit as a kind of inverted, thanatonic mother, enclosing her bodily and not allowing Rapunzel any sort of freedom or expression. Thus, the transition from the first segment of the story to the second is a transition from the usual world of the mother and father to the conceptual world of thanatos and eros.

Because Rapunzel represents the triumph of eros over thanatos (as the infertile mother gave birth by stealing some "life" from thanatos' garden), the enchantress attempts to surround and enforce all the attributes of thanatos upon Rapunzel, keeping her locked up and anonymous in a tower, unable to express herself or relate to anyone else. Rapunzel's life is one dictated almost entirely by thanatos, and only with the arrival of the prince does her life begin to include the influence of eros. As will be seen, however, the unexpected arrival of the prince causes her to swing too far the other way, which in turn precipitates an even greater swing back, towards thanatos (only to finally be reconciled with the arrival of Rapunzel's twin children).

As Manuel Aguirre remarks, "the motif of the maiden locked up in a tower to prevent her having sexual contact is familiar from both folktale (Rapunzel) and myth (Danae)," so care must be taken to uncover what, in particular, this story of a maiden in a tower is saying about that maiden and her relation to the world (Aguirre 42). Rapunzel's time in the tower is clearly characterized as predominantly influenced by thanatos, not only because of the clear depression, isolation, and meaninglessness of her captivity, but also the contrast created by the arrival of the prince. That he represents eros is a fairly obvious claim to make, especially in light of the enchantress' oppositional position, but the prince's character nonetheless requires deeper examination.

The prince is immediately associated with eros when he first notices Rapunzel, because he is attracted by "a song, which was so charming that he stood still and listened" (Grimm & Grimm 1857). As Asha notes in his essay "History, mystery and chemistry of eroticism: Emphasis on sexual health and dysfunction," eros "does not necessarily denote somatic, sensual pleasures, but love, affection, friendship and other related non-sexual expressions" (Asha 142). Thus, that the prince is first attracted by the creative expression of Rapunzel's voice, having not yet seen her and thus not knowing that Rapunzel is "the most beautiful child under the sun," demonstrates that the prince is attracted specifically by Rapunzel's expressive character, quite in opposition to the enchantress' reasons for keeping her locked up. In fact, "the singing had so deeply touched his heart, that every day he went out into the forest and listened to it," so that it is Rapunzel's singing that provides the catalyst for the rest of the story, thus demonstrating the moment at which her life shifts from the overbearing influence of thanatos and begins to orient itself towards eros.

However, the arrival of the prince does not result in Rapunzel's immediate release from her anonymizing prison, because the conflict between eros and thanatos is ongoing and not a zero-sum game; that is, Rapunzel exists on a continuum, and may only move in either direction (relatively) gradually, and not immediately switch from one to the other. Thus, Rapunzel and the prince's relationship develops over time, so that the prince must bring "a skein of silk every time" he visits. Before continuing on with this analysis of the prince, however, it will be useful to briefly examine Rapunzel's reaction to him, because it complicates the story and provides some insight into the later scene of the prince's (possible) attempted suicide.

Rapunzel decides to marry the prince because she thinks "he will love me more than old Dame Gothel [the enchantress] does," somewhat unaware that the enchantress is incapable of love in any usual sense (Grimm & Grimm 1857). (The inclusion of the enchantress' name for the first time may be seen as the side-effect of eros' influence; with the arrival of the prince, even the enchantress is forced to lose some of her anonymity.) However, Rapunzel fails to realize this, and this failure is what causes her to stumble just before escaping, thus precluding the fulfillment of eros' goals in the story and prolonging her time spent entrapped by the influence of thanatos. As "her eyes had never yet beheld" a man, and mistakenly believing she has felt the influence of eros in her time with the enchantress, Rapunzel is unprepared for its effects, one of which is to precipitate such curiosity and overconfidence that she ends up revealing her secret trysts to the enchantress, asking "tell me, Dame Gothel, how it happens that you are so much heavier for me to draw up than the young king's son -- he is with me in a moment." In turn, the enchantress squirrels her away to desert and then remains to confront the prince. This may further be explained by what some post-Freudian theorists have called "the process of 'binding'," by which they mean that "binding is the central task of Thanatos" because it represents the reductive drive to bind and fix meaning and attention over the course of development (Kristiansen & Opdal 495). In this case, thanatos' effects have bound Rapunzel to the enchantress in opposition to her erotic drive to flee to be with the prince.

At this point in the text a kind of rupture occurs, because the story continues in its present location even though Rapunzel has been taken elsewhere. One may interpret this momentary lag as the ultimate confrontation between eros and thanatos, necessarily conducted at the site of their initial conflict but without the generative psyche (Rapunzel's) around which they have been circling throughout the story. Here the key difference between eros and thanatos is revealed, because the prince, without Rapunzel, is rendered impotent. Essentially, for its enactment, eros requires at least two people, not only for its most base realization in the act of sex but for any interpretation of the word.

Put another way, eros represents the relationship between two terms, whereas thanatos can be considered as both one term and no terms, because at least for human psychology and meaning-making, they might as well be the same. If meaning, or eros, is the relationship between two terms (for instance, the meaning of the sound "word" is actually the connection and interplay between the sound "word" and the idea it represents), then eros without the second term must necessarily succumb to thanatos; thus the prince without Rapunzel loses the vitality arisen in him by Rapunzel's song, and so "in his despair he leapt down from the tower," escaping "with his life, but the thorns into which he fell pierced his eyes" (Grimm & Grimm 1857).

One may suppose that the prince escapes with his life because as the representative of eros within the story he cannot never fully succumbs to thanatos, but his leap from the tower demonstrates how thanatos represents a lack of something rather than strictly a thing itself (thus, the enchantress' appearance at Rapunzel's birth brings with it a lack of a child for her parents as well as the lack of the parents in the rest of the story). Even the aftereffects of the prince's encounter with the enchantress represents a lack, as does the enchantress' actions against Rapunzel; his vision is taken away by the thorns, and Rapunzel's hair is cut off, so that it may be used in a cruel imitation of eros in order to ensnare the prince. Thus the enchantress is seen to embody another aspect of thanatos, as it has been described as "the drive to sever connection" (Cranwell 271).

Thus, the story continues on to the third segment by following the course of the prince, who "wandered quite blind about the forest, ate nothing but roots and berries, and did naught but lament and weep over the loss of his dearest wife," roaming "about in misery for some years," until he "came to the desert where Rapunzel, with the twins to which she had given birth, a boy and a girl, lived in wretchedness" (Grimm & Grimm 1857). Stripped of the second term which gives him meaning, the prince wanders, lacking both Rapunzel and his sight, until once again he hears her voice and is reunited. Upon reuniting, everything is restored and "they lived for a long time afterwards, happy and contented." That everything is restored to happiness and the fact that the enchantress simply disappears requires further investigation, in the same way that Rapunzel's parents simply disappear after the first segment.