Fairy Tales 2010

Thursday, February 4, 2010

The Boys Who would be Birds and Women who Love Them

Tale type 451 - The brothers that were turned into birds.

From a value standpoint, the role of the sister in these narratives seems most revealing. While in most of the stories we've seen with male protagonist, the male vanquishes his foe or overcomes his obstacle withe the use of ingenuity, hard work, and/or verbal wit, the sister must overcome her obstacle with self-sacrifice and domesticity. The sister, whom in only tangential ways was responsible for the brothers' plight in any of the stories that we had to read for class, must sacrifice her voice, going silent for years at a tilt, while also performing a typical act of domesticity, like sowing clothes. The sister, in these cases at least, suffers these indignities willingly, even so far as it would mean sacrificing her own life. The king which finds the sister hiding in the tree takes her as his bride, despite never hearing her talk. It is in a sense the ultimate misogynist gesture, loving the women based strictly on personal appearance with no regard for her identity. If these ills aren't enough, the sister must also find herself in such great peril by the end of the story that only the miraculous arrival of her bird brothers can save the day. She is not even given the satisfaction of existing as principle heroine, once again relying on the interference of male saviors. The sister's suffering finds her no benefit but a restoration of the status quo, and a new husband.

It's interesting that the bird was seen as existing somewhere between the world and the heavens, their flight supposedly granting them some connection with ethereal forces. The brothers show that they retain some vestige of their consciousness at the end, when they come to save their sister, so their departure at the time of their transportation could be read as voluntary. Granted this new "enlightened" perspective, the brothers take the sky, reveling in their new position as pseudo-heavenly body. It is only when their sister becomes endangered that they return to the Earth, themselves sacrificing their divine aspect to be man again.

1 comment:

  1. I think your comment about how the sister "suffers these indignities willingly" is interesting - although she does offer to face these challenges, is it really of her own volition? Does she have a choice but to free her brothers, morally, since it was her fault they were turned to birds? What does that say about the role of the sister - that it is her obligation to be her brother's keeper or to get her brother out of messes he cannot resolve himself? Also, your comment about the "ultimate misogynist gesture" - loving a woman based strictly on her appearance without ever having heard her speak is not specific to these tales, even in modern Disney movies, such as The Little Mermaid, those mysogenistic 'gestures' proliferate- and in movies with whores etc. in many/most cases the girls are portrayed without voices/ don't speak at all, perhaps this role was created from these stories.

    ReplyDelete