Rapunzel: an Expression of the Creative Process?
Jorge Pozuelo
The story of Rapunzel may well date back to a 10th-century story called Rudāba. As with most fairy or folk tales, it has many roots from its original version to today. The modern version I’ll be using for reference was written by Friedrich Schulz in 1790 and later popularized by the Brothers Grimm. I have edited the text for readability, but made no changes to the structure.
If you know the story, please feel free to skip to the pictures and analysis, but if you need to get in the mood....
Once, a man and a woman had long, in vain, wished for a child. At length, it appeared that God was about to grant their desire. These people had a little window at the back of their house from which a splendid garden could be seen, which was full of the most beautiful flowers and herbs. It was, however, surrounded by a high wall, and no one dared to go into it because it belonged to an enchantress, who had great power and was dreaded by all the world. One day the woman was standing by this window and looking down into the garden when she saw a bed that was planted with the most beautiful rapunzel, and it looked so fresh and green that she longed for it. She quite pined away and began to look pale and miserable.
Her husband was alarmed and asked: ‘What ails you, dear wife?’
‘Ah,’ she replied, ‘if I can’t eat some of the rapunzel in the garden behind our house, I shall die.’
The man, who loved her, thought: ‘Sooner than let your wife die, bring her some of the rapunzel yourself, let it cost what it will.’
At twilight, he clambered down over the wall into the garden of the enchantress, hastily clutched a handful of rapunzel and took it to his wife. She at once made herself a salad of it and devoured it. It tasted so good to her - so very good, that the next day she longed for it three times as much as before.
If he was to have any rest, her husband knew he must descend into the garden once more. In the gloom of evening, he let himself down again; but when he had clambered down the wall, he was terribly afraid, for he saw the enchantress standing before him.
‘How can you dare,’ said she with an angry look, ‘descend into my garden and steal my rapunzel like a thief? You shall suffer for it!’
‘Ah,’ answered he, ‘let mercy take the place of justice; I only made up my mind to do it out of necessity. My wife saw your rapunzel from the window and longed for it so badly she would have died if she had not got some to eat.’
The enchantress allowed her anger to be softened and said to him: ‘If the case be as you say, I will allow you to take away with you as much rapunzel as you will, only I make one condition. You must give me the child your wife will bring into the world; it shall be well treated, and I will care for it like a mother.’
The man in his terror, consented to everything.
When the woman was brought to bed, the enchantress appeared at once, gave the child the name of Rapunzel, and took it away with her.
Rapunzel grew into the most beautiful child under the sun. When she was twelve, the enchantress shut her into a tower in the middle of a forest. The tower had neither stairs nor door, but near the top was a little window. When the enchantress wanted to go in, she placed herself beneath it and cried:
'Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let down your hair to me.'
Rapunzel had magnificent long hair, fine as spun gold, and when she heard the voice of the enchantress, she unfastened her braided tresses, wound them round one of the hooks of the window above, and then the hair fell twenty ells down, and the enchantress climbed up by it.
After a year or two, it came to pass that the king’s son rode through the forest and passed by the tower. Then he heard a song, which was so charming that he stood still and listened. It was Rapunzel, who in her solitude, passed her time in letting her sweet voice resound. The king’s son wanted to climb up to her and looked for the tower door, but none could be found. He rode home, but the singing had so deeply touched his heart that he went out into the forest every day and listened to it. Once when he was thus standing behind a tree, he saw that an enchantress came there, and he heard how she cried:
'Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let down your hair to me.'
Then Rapunzel let down the braids of her hair, and the enchantress climbed up to her.
‘If that is the ladder by which one mounts, I too will try my fortune,’ said he, and the next day when it began to grow dark, he went to the tower and cried:
'Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let down your hair to me.'
Immediately the hair fell down, and the king’s son climbed up.
At first Rapunzel was terribly frightened when a man, such as her eyes had never yet beheld, came to her. The king’s son began to talk to her quite like a friend. He told her that his heart had been so stirred that it had let him have no rest, and he had been forced to see her. Then Rapunzel lost her fear, and when he asked her if she would take him for her husband, and she saw that he was young and handsome, she thought: ‘He will love me more than old Dame Gothel does’; and she said yes, and laid her hand in his.
She said: ‘I will willingly go away with you, but I do not know how to get down. Bring with you a skein of silk every time you come, and I will weave a ladder with it, and when that is ready, I will descend, and you will take me on your horse.’
They agreed that until that time, he should come to her every evening, for the old woman came by day. The enchantress remarked nothing of this until once Rapunzel said to her: ‘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.’
‘Ah! you wicked child,’ cried the enchantress. ‘What do I hear you say! I thought I had separated you from all the world, yet you have deceived me!’
In her anger, she clutched Rapunzel’s beautiful tresses, wrapped them twice around her left hand, seized a pair of scissors with the right, and snip, snap, they were cut off, and the lovely braids lay on the ground. And she was so pitiless that she took poor Rapunzel into a desert where she had to live in great grief and misery.
On the same day that she cast out Rapunzel, however, the enchantress fastened the braids of hair, which she had cut off, to the hook of the window, and when the king’s son came and cried:
'Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let down your hair to me.'
She let the hair down. The king’s son ascended, but instead of finding his dearest Rapunzel, he found the enchantress, who gazed at him with wicked and venomous looks.
‘Aha!’ she cried mockingly, ‘you would fetch your dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest; the cat has got it and will scratch out your eyes as well. Rapunzel is lost to you; you will never see her again.’
The king’s son was beside himself with pain, and in his despair, he leapt down from the tower. He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell pierced his eyes.
He 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. He roamed about in misery for some years and, at length, came to the desert where Rapunzel, with the twins to which she had given birth, a boy and a girl, lived in wretchedness. He heard a voice that seemed so familiar to him that he went towards it, and when he approached, Rapunzel knew him and fell on his neck and wept. Two of her tears wetted his eyes, and they grew clear again, and he could see with them as before. He led her to his kingdom, where he was joyfully received, and they lived happily and contented for a long time afterwards.
Finding Wisdom In The Myth
The story begins with a pregnant woman, hormonal cravings, and an accommodating husband. Symbolically speaking, pregnancy is the gestation of human creation. The story of Rapunzel may be an expression of one of the many ways the whole creative process can manifest because there’s a description within the story of an actual creative process. This does not mean that all creative processes follow this same mythic path; it is just one of many possibilities.
The enchantress is around Rapunzel before birth, so this is an issue we were born with; it isn’t created by circumstance or anything else. Initially, I saw the witch as a bitch, but then I started to question why the husband didn’t just go and ask for the lettuce instead of stealing it. The enchantress could be seen to be justified in demanding the creation for herself when it was something she had grown that made it possible for the child to exist in the first place. She promised the husband that she would raise the child as her own and be a mother. She didn’t want to destroy Rapunzel but take her as her own.
The child is coming of age before the myth gets interesting. It may be worth a mention that an earlier version of the story has a variation on how Rapunzel gets caught out. She doesn’t slip up verbally; the enchantress notices that Rapunzel is pregnant. Either way, the enchantress cuts her hair, and the prince finds the old woman instead of Rapunzel. Interestingly, she says, “the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest; the cat has got it, and will scratch out your eyes as well”. The bird is often symbolic of freedom, and Rapunzel was free when she chose to be with the prince. More often than not, a cat is the intuitive aspect of our soul. They represent something wild that does not always respond well to domesticity. In a symbolic sense, this cat who got the bird can be a part of us, a part that doesn’t want to be controlled yet doesn’t want other aspects of the self to be free, either.
Part of this myth could be saying that when we create something, we may have to battle with our instincts (the cat) to be free (Rapunzel as the bird) if we want the best possible outcome. There is clearly a considerable amount of time that passes between Rapunzel’s birth and her being able to live with her prince. Long enough to give birth to her own children and be left to wander in the forest for a few years. All in all, this myth probably refers to a period of twenty years or more. When she comes across him in the forest, she recognizes him, and those tears, expressions of genuine emotion, help restore his sight. As the wannabe hero, he had a mission to fulfil, but his blindness says he lost the ability to see where he was going when facing the cat (his instincts clouded his vision).
Symbolically, the angry cat is an instinct out of control. A secret hostility we hold towards having to let something we’ve nurtured mature in its own right. And creations do just that; they take on a life of their own, whether it’s a child, a work of art, or a scientific discovery. As an external reminder, the cat may show up in the form of a bitchy distant relative or a colleague or a long-term friend. Rapunzel’s story is more likely to suggest this begins as an aspect of nature, which is then nurtured.
There is a slight demonization (portraying the old woman as a witch) of whoever sustains the new creation, but why do they get demonized? Is it because whilst she provides sustenance to bring the creation into existence, she also locks it away and doesn’t want to share it with the rest of the world? She wants to keep it childlike and isolated. Demonization may be the voice of society that says, If you’re not going to share that with the rest of us, then you must be evil, and we don’t want you in the group. Now we’re afraid of you because you rejected being a part of us. This could be why some artists feel ostracized and have significant issues with society and fitting in. I’m not saying this is the only reason people feel rejected by society (because they secretly hold back their creations): I’m saying this could be a part of the reason in some instances. Many artists, from painters to philosophers, have reported this very struggle. The intense desire to create, and at the same time, the resistance to sharing that very creation and wanting to hide away.
The hair (strength) offers a means to allow others to come close, but it doesn’t help Rapunzel to escape. She has been cast out and discarded. She is finally free of the inner hostility (represented by the old enchantress), but what allows a resolution to take place is the genuine emotion felt when she is reunited with her beloved. The tears helped the hero remember the original purpose: to be at home feeling a sense of completion (the coming together of two complementary forces) and living among his own people.
In the story’s beginning, we have a man and a woman coming together and creating; this all begins with them. This changes the dynamic ever-so-slightly and tells us that having made something new, an aspect of our inner self demands payment. I’m talking about self-sabotage here, and my honesty requires that I tell you it took me a while to figure that out despite questioning why there was no mention of the biological mother of Rapunzel having a meltdown over the loss of her child. If you find yourself creating something and feel justified in not sharing it outwards, you might want to ask yourself which of your inner aspects feel justified in keeping it hidden.
What I’m saying is, if you get caught up in this dilemma, and you really listen to what the other voices are saying, you’ll probably find there isn’t a dilemma. It’s just an aspect of your instinctual self that is being selfish. And what’s more, it’s entirely natural, although not necessarily emotionally healthy nor financially productive. Emotion doesn’t get expressed until very late in the story, and this could give us a clue into how we can resolve this internal battle that we may engage in from time to time.
The desired food source lay outside the couple’s garden, which could be representative of taking inspiration from outside ourselves. Of course, this often happens when we are prompted to create something new. We may indeed get a call from within, but we don’t exist in a vacuum, and it can be impossible to switch off from what is happening around us. Although, there could be a hidden message here that says this whole issue of the witch-as-bitch rearing her head is more likely to occur if we’ve taken sustenance from outside our established boundaries. What I mean is, if we rely on the ‘food stuff’ of others, at some level, we could attack ourselves for it. Although we may have no choice, we crave what we crave, and if we don’t get it, we begin to feel like we’re dying, just like the original mother in this story. There is also the idea already out there that we only create something of value when we step outside our comfort zone, but it’ll always come at a price.
