Why did Rapunzel get kidnapped again?

[conuly]

Couldn't the witch just pick an orphan up somewhere else, or find an abandoned baby on a midden or something? And if she'd gone the legitimate route, she would've been the hero of the story and could've stayed in town! Could've had as many kids as she liked! So why did she do things the hard way, again?

Comments

[siderea]

The recent Disney version actually addressed that question, interestingly enough.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen the movie, but in the original Grimm fairy tale, it wasn't that the witch wanted a child. It was that when the child's mother was pregnant, she so craved the beautiful fresh rampion in the witch's kitchen-garden that she felt she would die if she couldn't have some. Therefore, instead of going to the witch and asking or bargaining with her, the husband climbed over the garden wall and stole the rampion. The third time, the witch caught him, and was going to kill him then and there, but he begged for his life, saying he only stole the rampion to save his wife's life. Therefore the witch said he could pick all the rampion he wanted from her garden, but she claimed the child as her own.

This was actually a very fair and merciful deal, and spared three lives. The witch had every right to kill a repeat sneak-thief caught inside her walls, and if she had done so, the wife and child would most likely have died too. The husband said he had only stolen the witch's rampion because his wife said - three times - that she would die if she couldn't have some. Therefore by the rules of magic, the child's life already belonged to the witch, and naming her Rapunzel was the emblem of the fact.

In the original tale, the witch brought Rapunzel up as her own daughter, and though the story doesn't emphasize the point, it seems likely that it was in much more comfort and luxury than the birth-parents would have provided, poor and dishonest as they were. The apple didn't fall far from the tree, though; the first chance Rapunzel got to be dishonest, she took it; threw her virginity away on the first man to whistle to her window - what a disappointment!

As for what the witch did to the man who'd violated her tower and had her virgin daughter, he damn-well deserved worse than what he got. Yet another sneak-thief, climbing in to steal her beautiful fresh Rapunzel! Why was this 'Prince' not sending up a letter introducing himself and asking her gracious permission to court her fair daughter? That's the way Princes do with Ladies. Peasant wenches, of course, require no such courtesies; one simply climbs in the window and has them while Mama is out, then 'takes a powder' once they're knocked up. "Oh yes, my love, come away with me; the King my father will so welcome a nameless pregnant peasant lass as my wife and future Queen."

Any proper Mama would be waiting with a silver dagger (http://youtu.be/yDuvjqO5WI4) for the creep. If some guy had sleazed his way into my innocent daughter's room in my absence, I'd have cut off his balls. So yeah, my sympathy is entirely on the side of the witch through the entire fairy-tale; she did not do one thing wrong, and she showed a lot more mercy and forebearance than she had to, every time, to people who were behaving dishonorably toward her.

*wry grin* Frau Totenkinder really is as good a person as she can be, and a less evil person than she could be, mostly.