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1. The Petrosinella
The origins of “Rapunzel” may be found in the 1634 publication of Giambattista Basile’s “Petrosinella,” an Italian fairy tale. To be honest, I rather like Basile’s work. Petrosinella, like Rapunzel, is taken by a fictitious father and held captive in a tower; however, Petrosinella really devises and carries out her own escape.
Petrosinella comes up with a plan after overhearing the ogress imprisoning her and learning that the ogress has three magical acorns stashed away in the tower’s rafters. She requests that her royal admirer bring a piece of rope the next time he comes to visit, and she then uses the rope to drug the ogre, grab the acorns, and flee out the window. Then, Petrosinella delays the ogress by hurling acorns at her as she awakes and pursues them: In the first, a dog appears and knocks the ogress to the ground; in the second, a lion appears; and in the third, a wolf appears and gobbles the ogress up. At least liberated, Petrosinella and the prince return to his realm and be hitched there.
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While it’s true that the prince does provide a hand, Petrosinella is really the one who pulls it off; she essentially saves herself. That is awesome.
2. The Twelve Dancers
One of my all-time favorite stories is “The 12 Dancing Princesses,” which can be found in many different versions but is perhaps best remembered for its inclusion in the Brothers Grimm’s 1812 book Household Tales. This is primarily because the princesses are so delightfully impolite. Every night their father locks them in their room, so they figure out a way to get out and go out instead. Dad also keeps trying to set them up in marriages that they don’t want, so they figure out a way to sabotage those plans. They have few, if any, options for how to live their own lives, so they figure out a way to make new options and choices so they can live life according to their own rules. Sure, it’s not ideal that they effectively plan the murders of each of their unfortunate suitors, but as Mari Ness said in a 2017 article for Tor.com, “If I can’t precisely cheer having young men murdered off just so you may dance — well. I can at least commend your attempt to exert some degree of control over your life. I hear you.
3. Princess Kwan-Yin 3.
In the Chinese folktale that bears her name, Princess Kwan-Yin (or Guanyin) begins by rejecting the narrative that her father has put up for her and ultimately ends up becoming the Goddess of Mercy. She was chosen by her father out of all of her sisters to be his heir and her husband to be the next king, but she has no desire to be queen and doesn’t want to get married, so she runs away on the day her arranged marriage is supposed to take place and joins a convent in its place. Her father had made this decision without consulting her. (Have I mentioned that she reads a ton? because she is. She wants to spend her life learning; that is what she wants to do. One after my own heart, a lady.)
Even though the nuns abuse her, she does her responsibilities without complaining and helps everyone and whatever she can; her smart nature and fundamental kindness are evident at every step. Consequently, divine intervention prompted by Kwan-goodness Yin’s saves the nuns after her father raids the convent to bring her home forcibly. Later, when she is sentenced to death by her father for defying him, another instance of divine intervention saves her and changes her into the Goddess of Mercy.
There are several things in this narrative that I like: In addition to defying convention by refusing to take the throne or wed a man she doesn’t like, Kwan-Yin also makes an effort to avoid the story her father keeps attempting to force her into. In that regard, it is similar to “The 12 Dancing Princesses” with a dash of “Cinderella” tossed in for good measure.
4. Cinderella.
I’m aware that “Cinderella,” “Aschenputtel,” and all the various retellings of this specific tale are among the most contentious fairy tales ever. But you are aware of the proverb that is constantly shared on social media? “Cinderella didn’t request a prince,” it says. She requested a dress and an evening off. There is a lot of truth in that, and, in my opinion, this is where the story’s heroine truly excels.
Cinderella puts in a lot of effort. Since she’s never had a vacation, she feels she deserves a night off, so when her horrible, poisonous family and a-hole boss refuse to give it to her, she simply takes it anyhow.
In “Aschenputtel,” she has a lot more agency, hence the case for this one is stronger in the Grimms’ version than it is in Charles Perrault’s French translation: She has spent years caring for a hazel branch she planted over her mother’s grave, which has led to a bird settling in the tree. When she needs a dress for the ball, she goes to the bird and directly begs for it. No fairy godmother emerges to miraculously cure all of her issues for her. She then drives herself to and from the party alone.
Speaking as someone who has always had to persuade myself that it’s OK to even sometimes request time off, much less really take time off? That’s quite incredible.
5. Rumpelstiltskin’s The Miller’s Daughter, number five
Despite being surrounded by evil individuals, including Rumpelstiltskin himself, this lady consistently outperforms them all. Her father actually bets her life on the falsehood that she can turn straw into gold, giving him the appearance of being a Big, Important Person. She escapes the situation with a solid cash cushion. Despite the fact that her marriage to the king is based on the fact that he almost killed her due to a prank her father perpetrated, she manages to create a pleasant life for herself and make the most of her circumstances. What about Rumpelstiltskin, then? He coerces her into a bargain she doesn’t really want to make but for which she can see no other option; she then successfully solves what he believes to be an impossibly difficult puzzle, therefore canceling the arrangement.
The miller’s daughter breaking her agreement with Rumpelstiltskin is a major matter, Heidi Anne Heiner writes at Sur La Lune Fairy Tales. In fairy tales, “giving up a first kid in a transaction is not unusual,” argues Heiner. The most well-known tale with comparable circumstances, outside “Rumpelstiltskin,” is “Rapunzel.” Even “Beauty and the Beast” has the theme of a parent giving up their kid. However, the miller’s daughter succeeds in a manner that Beauty’s father and Rapunzel’s real mother do not: Rumpelstiltskin is one of the rare stories where the agreement will be breached and the birth parent will get to retain the kid, according to Heiner. Congratulations, miller’s daughter!
6. The Princess And The Goblin’s Princess Irene.
The Princess and the Goblin, a children’s book written by George MacDonald, defies the damsel in distress cliché in an unexpected way. At one point, Irene herself protects Curdie from the goblins rather than Curdie having to save Irene from them. Curdie is Irene’s companion and a mining kid. She uses a magic thread that her mystic great-great-grandmother gave her to locate him when he is captured, and once there, she frees him by digging him out. Irene, you rock!
I didn’t know there was a sequel until just now. It’s called The Princess and Curdie and, regrettably, it has slightly more typical character roles with Curdie as the primary character and the most of the plot centered around him saving the day. Funny enough, the Wiki explanation ended with these last few lines: “Curdie and Princess Irene are subsequently married and govern the country when the monarch passes away. They don’t have any kids however, and when they both pass away, the kingdom starts to decline until one day it crumbles and is never mentioned again.
Though I’m not really sure why, something about the way that’s stated strikes me as being very humorous.
I could simply be a very odd guy with a very odd sense of humor.
7. Belle/Beauty
The central family in the Disney adaptation of Beauty and the Beast was reduced to simply Belle and her father, Maurice, drastically simplifying the story. However, the family is enormous in Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s original rendition of the story: The merchant has six children—three boys and three daughters—but Mom is still absent since the businessman’s wife is deceased. As a result, the Beast and the merchant agree to quite different conditions in their transaction. The merchant is returned home with the directive that he either persuade one of his three daughters to go back in his place, or he return himself within a month, rather than Belle traveling to the castle herself and being informed upon arrival that she must remain there in order to get her father to go free.
The merchant intends to return himself, but when his children succeed in getting the full tale out of him, Beauty steps up to the plate of her own volition: “I have truly caused this grief, but who could have anticipated that to ask for a rose in the midst of summer would bring so much misery? But because I caused the trouble, it is only fair that I should pay for it,” she claims. Therefore, in order to fulfill my father’s commitment, I shall return with him. She also refuses to change her mind despite repeated appeals from her whole family to remain back home.
It counts, in my opinion, that she made the decision. She understands that if she hadn’t asked her father for a rose, he wouldn’t be in this situation, and she is prepared to make amends for the sake of her family. The decision to replace her father is entirely up to her; neither her father nor her family placed any excessive pressure on her to do so. That conveys a quality about her character that isn’t fully apparent in the Disney version of the story.
In fact, Beauty and the following princess on this list have some similarities as well:
8. “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” Princess
The Princess in “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” utterly fails, much like Beauty. The story’s sin is hers, and when someone else suffers as a result, she sets out on a mission to make amends. It’s true that some other people, most notably her mother, have led her a little astray.
The narrative begins, as many fairy tales do, with a father exchanging a child: “If you are not acquainted with the story (and it would be reasonable if you are not; it’s a relatively obscure Norwegian tale collected by Peter Christen Asbjrnsen and Jrgen Moe),…” In one instance, a white bear promises to give a peasant his youngest, fairest daughter in exchange for infinite wealth. Despite the daughter’s initial skepticism, the bear finally convinces her to accompany him to a magnificent castle. But at night, the bear transforms back into a man and pays her a visit in bed. But she never gets to see what he truly looks like since it’s so dark.
When she is finally permitted to return home for a visit, her mother worries that the white bear/prince is a troll and provides her some candles so she may light the chamber when the bear visits her at night as a human prince. When she returns to the palace, she does so. The prince seems to be very attractive, but seeing him in his actual form set off a curse that forces him to return to his evil stepmother, who had previously cursed him to appear as a bear, and wed her daughter, a troll princess.
He leaves to face his doom, but the girl, realizing she made the mistake in this situation, chases after him, finds him, and saves him. Together, they successfully end the spell, rescue everyone else who was held captive in the troll castle, get married, and have happy lives. That is how you accept responsibility for your actions rather than letting someone else bear the repercussions of your errors.
9. In “The Wild Swans,” Elisa
Here’s another where the princess saves the damsel in trouble rather than playing the damsel in distress: A king who has 12 children—11 boys and one daughter—remarries in “The Wild Swans,” a Hans Christian Andersen story that was originally published in 1838, only for his second wife, a deceitful queen, to quickly turn him against his offspring. Elisa (or Eliza, depending on the translation) is exiled, and the 11 lads are transformed into wild swans.
Elisa endures unbearable suffering in an effort to free her siblings and transform them back into people: She gathers stinging nettles and knits them into shirts, severely burning her skin in the process. She also takes a vow of silence, which prevents her from speaking. Despite meeting and falling in love with a king of a different country and planning to wed him, the king’s archbishop believes she is a witch and has her put on trial. She is unable to speak in defense of herself because of the vow of silence. She will be burnt at the stake as punishment.
Even as the fires are ready to be kindled, she finishes the shirts, tosses them over the swans, and breaks the curse. Despite all of this, she continues to knit her nettles, desperate to save her brothers until the very last second. Elisa and the king eventually tie the knot as the swans transform into people and the execution is postponed.
Although Andersen’s protagonists are often put through grueling endurance tests—”The Little Mermaid” likewise endures a great lot in her attempts to become human—it pays off in this instance. I can safely say that Elisa is a stronger person than I am.
10. Vasilisa The Fair
In a 2015 article for the Huffington Post, folklorist Maria Tatar compared the Russian folktale “Vasilisa The Fair”—or, alternately, “Vasilisa The Beautiful”—to a cross between “Cinderella” and “Hansel and Gretel.” The narrative has a lot of gruesome elements, including a stepmother and stepsisters who are evil, a magical doll, a time spent working as a drudge for Baba Yaga, and a skull full of coal that burns the stepmother and stepsisters to ashes. However, the ending is my favorite portion of the tale.
After Vasilisa returns home and her stepmother and stepsisters get their due, she moves in with an elderly lady and starts spinning thread and weaving to keep herself occupied. When the tsar eventually sees her in person, he falls in love with her just as passionately as he did with the garments she had previously produced. She becomes so competent that she essentially becomes the tsar’s personal clothier.
She basically advances through the ranks of monarchy by excelling in her profession. How’s that for professional development?
Oh, and just for the record, these 10 women are just touching the surface of all the ways princesses from fairy tales take names and kick butt. So what should you do the next time you see a long-haired lady alone in a tower? Don’t think she’s hoping you’ll come to her aid. She could have her own scheme up her satiny, puffy sleeves.
In Bustle’s Royally Fascinated series, we explore why it’s liberating to acknowledge our infatuation with princesses.
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