Bluebeard

Pictured: Not Ed
("He's no mere blockhead" (206))

I think I liked Bluebeard’s Egg the most. I mean, the ending was much less of an end than the other stories, where the villain is chopped to pieces or set on fire or anything like that, but I kind of like the mysterious end. It makes you think, certainly more than the other tales do. I also found it the funniest story of them all, mostly because of the 8 million times Sally calls Ed stupid. I guess this is not one of those marriages where you marry the other person cause they mentally stimulate you. Seriously, she calls him “Edward Bear, of little brain” (page 206, and a nice reference to Winnie-the-Pooh), mentions “his monumental and almost energetic stupidity” (206) and “Ed’s colossal and endearing thickness” (206), and straight-up says “He is just so stupid” (206). That’s just on ONE PAGE, and that’s not even all the examples on that page. I just find it hilarious that she spends several paragraphs saying “Ed is stupid” over and over again.

Then of course there’s the plot twist that maybe Ed is not so stupid after all, although maybe I should have seen that coming. You can’t be stupid if you’re a heart surgeon, after all, and it’s usually suspicious when the narrative tries to insist on something (in this case, the stupidity of Ed).

I also liked Marylynn, although I think her name is spelled weird. But, you know, she’s valid. You don’t need a man, Marylynn, your life is better without one! Having two female characters that interacted was also nice, as opposed to the other stories that sometimes included multiple female characters but who never interacted. Okay, I liked Marylynn at the beginning anyway. The end was… suspicious, for sure. But, like Sally, I wonder whether there was actually anything going on or if she was just seeing something.

I think I enjoyed Bluebeard’s Egg the best because it was the most masterfully written, purposefully crafted to be unclear and confusing. And while I often find that very frustrating, I also appreciate Margaret Atwood’s skill in writing it.

Some Thoughts

While rereading Vladimir Propp for the midterm, I began thinking about stories. Propp discusses the difference between literature and folk tales-- that "literature" is by generally a single author, and never changes, whereas folk tales are an oral tradition started by no single person and are constantly changing.
   
But there exists a type of story that is a hybrid of these two types.
  
For some reason, the first thing I thought of was some different Tumblr posts that I've seen. People will share a random story idea, or an idea for a world in which to set a story, and then other people will add on their own suggestions, and usually someone will write part of a story to go along, and then other people might add to the story. Like literature, there is an original author, and the story is written, and unchangeable. But similar to folk tales, the final result is a group effort, of people building off the thoughts of other contributors, and the story grows beyond the first person's idea.
   
I can think of one other example: pass-along stories. I have encountered this twice in my life: writing club, and Girl Scout camp. In writing club, the idea is that one person writes a story, and then each next person adds a sentence. In Girl Scout Camp, it works a similar way. Each unit of campers gets visited by the "Storytellers", and one activity we do is a pass-along story. It's like writing club, but oral: whoever has the "magical talking stick" starts the story, and then they pass the stick and the next person adds a sentence, and so on. It has the same oral side as folk tales, but like Tumblr posts or the one-sentence stories in writing club, the previous parts are unchangeable.
 
I'm unsure what to call this hybrid story type. Perhaps "folk literature"? I can understand why the book doesn't talk about it, especially since the book the passage is from was published in 1984 (so before Tumblr), and Vladimir Propp probably never went to Girl Scout Camp. I just think it's cool to think about.

Cinderella

Most versions of Cinderella have the same things: A young child, usually a girl, forced into a life of hardship. Some sort of disguise and/or fancy outfits (usually three). A magical creature, whether it’s a fish, a tree, a cow, a fairy godmother, etc.
  

There’s differences, of course. The hardship is started by different things: in “Yeh-hsien”, “Cinderella” (both the Brothers Grimm and the Disney version), “The Story of the Black Cow”, and “Lin Lan”, the father remarries to an evil woman who treats the Cinderella character unkindly. In “Donkeyskin”, “The Three Gowns” and “The Princess in the Suit of Leather”, the father tries to remarry his own daughter, forcing her to flee. In Pretty Woman, the audience doesn’t get to see Vivian’s “fall” from a good life to a worse one; she starts the movie as a poor woman struggling to make rent. *Rhodopis doesn’t have a hard life mentioned; her story is an outlier.
   

Look at how in love they are!!

Crazy Rich Asians is a very recent example of a rise tale. Certainly, Rachel Chu’s situation is not quite as bad as most Cinderella’s; she may not come from a wealthy family, but she’s not dressed in rags or enslaved by evil relatives. In fact, her mother is still very much alive and very supportive. But Rachel, like Cinderella (and Rhodopis, and Yeh-hsien, and Donkeyskin, Rosa, Catskin, the Brahmin’s son, Beauty, Juleidah, and Vivian) winds up marrying rich through some combination of luck and happy accident. Rachel wasn’t trying to marry into a rich family, unlike Vivian from Pretty Woman who specifically goes after Edward cause he looks rich and she wants to squeeze money out of him. In fact, kind of like Disney’s Cinderella, who doesn’t realize she’s danced with the prince, Rachel doesn’t know Nick’s family is rich until they’re on the plane to Singapore. And even then, it’s not because Nick tells her but because they’re in super luxury seats that Rachel would never be able to afford. Crazy Rich Asians may not exactly qualify as a Cinderella story, between Rachel’s alive mom and the fact that she and Nick are already in a relationship at the start of the movie, but it is somewhat of a rags-to-riches story and shares some similarities with the Cinderella stories, and so feels worth mentioning.

***

At least both Crazy Rich Asians and Pretty Woman have a better-developed romance than Cinderella and most of the stories we read, where the prince (or scholar) and the Cinderella character meet, and Cinderella/Donkeyskin/Rosa/Catskin is just SO hot that the prince (or scholar) has to marry her. (And in Rhodopis's case, it's her shoe that's so amazing the king must marry her. I don't understand "Rhodopis".) It’s not like lasting relationships are built on the relationship you have with the other person, or anything, everyone knows the only thing you need for a successful marriage is an attraction to the other person.
   

While the relationship in Pretty Woman develops relatively fast (since the whole movie takes place over a single week), they don’t get married or even engaged at the end, so it’s not that unreasonable.

***

But the question I’m supposed to be answering is not, “How realistic is it for two people to get married after they’ve known each other for three days, maximum?”. It’s “Can someone reach success or riches with magic, marriage, charm, etc.? How realistic is that?”
   

Well, I think it’s very unrealistic for someone to reach success or riches with magic, because most people hold the not-unreasonable belief that magic isn’t real. So, anyone hoping for a fairy godmother to save them might want to come up with a Plan B. I suppose it depends on your definition of “success”, but in terms of riches, it is very realistic to become rich through marriage, if you’re marrying a rich person. From what I understand, most non-rich people who marry rich people get the benefits of the money of the family they marry into; like Rachel Chu. Although it wouldn’t work like that if the rich person you were marrying was only formerly rich, or if they were the child of rich parents who cut them off from the family wealth (like Prince Naveen from Disney’s The Princess and the Frog). Charm might be the reason you reach riches through marriage; as in, you can charm them into liking you. Charm can mean either charisma or good-looks, and depending on the person they’re probably equally likely to land you a date. Although good looks are more likely to attract a stranger’s attention (like in pretty much every Cinderella story we read, and Disney’s Cinderella, and Pretty Woman), but charisma might be why your best friend falls in love with you.
   

So in conclusion: magic is not likely to get you wealth or success. It is realistic that marriage will get you riches if the person you are marrying is rich, and charm might be the reason that marriage is happening. However, in general, it is not realistic that most people will be able to achieve success and riches, by any means, because it’s really hard to become successful (ie: famous), and you can’t marry rich if you don’t know any rich people. I know exactly zero rich people, and I’m pretty sure that’s the case for most people. If you’re marrying rich, it is very realistic to expect you will therefore become rich. But it’s unrealistic to expect you will be able to marry rich.
   

The Honest Trailer for Cinderella is mostly humor but does actually bring up a few good points. Most notably, the parody of “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes”, which reinforces my point. Their version contains the lines: “This song is about deception/most dreams just don’t come true. /But I am the rare exception/I’m skinny and pretty and cute.”
   

Certainly gaining success and riches is not impossible. But the odds of it happening to you? Sorry to say it, but they’re pretty slim.

These are probably my favorite parody lyrics from the Honest Trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Pt1_VvVZVY

Snow White

Characters: Both “Snow White” and “Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs” feature a pretty young girl named Snow White as the main and titular character, an evil stepmother queen, a huntsman, seven dwarves and a prince. “The Young Slave” still features a pretty young girl as the main and titular character, but this time her name is Lisa. The story also includes her mother Lilla, some fairies, and her aunt and uncle the Baron and Baroness. “Snow, Glass, Apples” features a queen as its protagonist, but also includes a king, a princess (Snow White, though she is never named), some dwarves, and a prince; although a monk, the King of the Fair and his page, a handmaiden, and merchants and the forest folk are also mentioned. “Sonne” has the smallest cast of all—the only people in the song are the seven dwarves and Snow White, and this time, the seven dwarves are the main characters, instead of Snow White.

While the Brothers Grimm’s “Snow White” is closest to the most well-known version of the tale, Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, “Snow, Glass, Apples” is perhaps the version of the tale that “Sonne” comes closest to. This is simply because Snow White is no longer the protagonist, but instead the antagonist, unlike all the other versions we read.

Symbols: “Sonne” contains some of the same recognizable objects featured in “Snow White”: specifically, a bright red apple and a glass coffin. The music video also features one of the dwarfs brushing Snow White’s hair, although it is not a poison comb like in “Snow White”. However, the music video does not contain a magic mirror, the lung and liver of a boar, or a staylace.

Other differences: In “Sonne”, Snow White first enters the dwarves’ home while they’re eating dinner, unlike in “Snow White”, when she finds an empty cottage and eats some of the dwarves’ meal and falls asleep in one of their beds. There is no jealous queen who tries to kill Snow White; in “Sonne”, Snow White is the vain and violent one. She snatches a diamond from the dwarf who offers it to her, then punches him, and she spanks the dwarves. Also, Snow White does not die because the Queen poisons her, and she is not revived because the chunk of poison apple is dislodged from her throat; she dies accidentally by her own hand, and awakens when an apple falls from the tree above her coffin, shattering the glass and bringing her back to life.

I'm honestly not sure which version I like most. "Snow, Glass, Apples" is interesting because it switches things up a bit (i.e. Snow White is the evil one), but it's a bit too disturbing for my tastes. I find the prince especially creepy. I like "Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs" because it tells the same story as the Brothers Grimm, but in a more easy-to-read form; I also think the poem is well-written. But I think my favorite is "The Young Slave"; I find it interesting because it's so different than the story I'm used to (without the extra violence that comes from a vampire story); the characters have names and Lilla becomes pregnant by eating a rose leaf-- that's not something I've encountered before. The addition of fairies (along with the rose) kind of reminds me of Sleeping Beauty, although the fairies in Sleeping Beauty (the Disney version, at least) don't curse the child out of malice. I also like Lisa talking to the doll, although the fact that she threatens to kill it is a bit disturbing. Another unique thing about this version of the tale is that Lisa appears to be magic, because she tells the Baron he won't be able to cross a river if he doesn't buy her presents, and he forgets and then he can't cross the river. It's at least a little refreshing that Lisa is not saved by a prince who thinks she's pretty, but because the Baron hears her pitiful tale and realizes she isn't a slave, and kicks his wife out and improves her life. She still gets a husband in the end, but it happens differently than the other versions.

It's also interesting to note that both Snow White and the seven dwarves in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" are very colorful; the whole movie is colorful. In "Sonne", however, the dwarves have a very dark and dreary appearance; Snow White and the apples are the only colorful points in the entire video.