Nathan A's Blog Reflection

Pictured: Me while reading Nathan's posts

I quite enjoyed reading Nathan's blog posts, and I liked their insightfulness. I feel kinda bad, though, my Cinderella post was looong. Also now I wanna go read everyone's blogs. But I'll do that later.
 
He makes a very good point in his Child as a Hero post that the children in those tales are heroic, and good role models, because they are able to save themselves or even someone else, despite being small children, who society often views as weak and helpless. But these tales show that you don't have to be a big strong knight in order to do heroic things, and you don't need to wait around for a big strong knight to come save you-- you can save the day just using your wits and your own two hands, even if you're a kid.

We both decided that "Bluebeard's Egg" was our favorite tale, although we mentioned different things about it. He felt Sally was dissatisfied with her dumb husband, while I just found it amusing how often she called him stupid. I think Nathan has a much better point, though, that Sally feels Ed "isn't romantic, sweet, and charming husband to complement her "princess" status". I never really thought about it like that but it makes a lot of sense, and I agree. Nathan also pointed out that there wasn't any gore or violence in "Bluebeard's Egg", something readers would expect given that it's a Bluebeard story, but don't get. We both pointed out and liked the ambiguity of whether something is actually happening between Marylynn and Ed or not. This blog post is really funny: Nathan says "this tale reminds me of an old soap opera episode", which I LOVE (and totally agree with).

Nathan talked about Pretty Woman in his Cinderella blog post, and he pointed out something I hadn't noticed before. He said that Vivian puts on the appearance of someone better than herself-- by telling Edward that her rate is $100/hour, like Kit suggested, he would assume that was her rate for everyone, not just him cause he's rich, and therefore also assume she's really good at her job. Nathan points out how that this is a common Cinderella trope-- Cinderella dresses up in her fancy clothes for the ball and so when the prince sees her, he believes she's a princess or someone rich, even though she definitely isn't. I never made that connection before, although I think it's a really good connection to make.


In short, I enjoyed reading Nathan's posts, and they made me think about certain things that I hadn't before. Good job Nathan!

A CHILD (or two)

Both “Hansel and Gretel” and “Little Thumbling” feature the children of two poor families who are sent into the forest because their parents are no longer able to feed them. There are slight differences, as there are in most tales—in Hansel and Gretel there are only two children, whereas the parents in the Little Thumbling have seven all male children, although only one is the main character. In “Hansel and Gretel”, the stepmother is the “evil” one, but it’s Little Thumbling’s father who drives him and his brothers away. The supernatural villain of the story also changes, from a witch who is alone in her house to an ogre, who’s married with seven daughters.

Little Thumbling’s brother do nothing to rescue themselves, while Hansel and Gretel save each other and can rely on each other. This is because the lesson from Hansel and Gretel is about children maturing, and becoming less dependent on their parents, while Little Thumbling is about (at least according to Perrault) not underestimating someone for their small size or quietness.

 

Hansel and Gretel try to eat the witch’s house, which is made of bread and cake and sugar, while Little Thumbling actually knocks on the door and asks the ogre’s wife for a place to stay the night. Here is when “Little Thumbling” becomes more like “Jack and the Beanstalk” rather than “Hansel and Gretel”, where the child (or children) is taken in by the kind wife of a monster instead of the monster themselves. Jack goes back several times to steal from the ogre, while Little Thumbling ransoms it from his ogre’s wife. Hansel and Gretel, on the other hand, don’t actively try to get any treasures, they just get it from the house once they kill the witch. Here, the children’s crimes differ. Hansel and Gretel experience oral greed (although narratively it makes sense they would be hungry and start eating the first food they see, and not think about “hey we might be eating someone’s house”), but Little Thumbling and his brothers do not come across a house made of food. The lessons from the two stories differ, and so the oral greed of Hansel and Gretel is very important to the story, even though it wouldn’t make sense in “Little Thumbling”. This also means Little Thumbling seems more mature than Hansel and Gretel, because there are no obvious psychosexual issues in his story. Little Thumbling, however, can be seen as materialistically greedy—he steals the shoes from the ogre and bribes all the ogre’s money from his wife. But again, it makes sense narratively that he would want to find money and use it to save his family from the starvation they were experiencing.

 

Both stories contain also murder: Hansel and Gretel actively murder the witch by pushing her into the oven, and Little Thumbling causes the death of the (presumably) innocent ogre daughters by changing their headgear. Both these actions are excused, however, because the children did not have malicious intentions and were merely doing it to survive.

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