Linnea Hendrickson the View from Rapunzel's Tower

Home , Rapunzel, Rapunzel (book), Rapunzel (Tangled), Trina Schart Hyman

Children’s Literature in Education, Vol. 31, No. 4, 2000

Linnea Hendrickson Linnea Hendrickson teaches children’s literature at the University of New Mexico and also works as an elementary school librarian. The author of numerous articles on The View from Rapunzel’s Tower children’s literature, she was a member of the 1998 Caldecott Award committee that chose Paul Zelinsky’s Ra- The fairy tale Rapunzel has captured the imagination of numerous punzel as its winner. writers and illustrators, particularly in recent years. Complex in origins and rich in possibilities, the tale has been interpreted in diverse ways that emphasize authentic issues relating to mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, love, longing, temptation, maturation, and responsibility. Poets, novelists, short-story writers, musicians, and illustrators have all found inspiration in Rapunzel. This essay concen- trates in particular on the interpretations of three picture book artists, Felix Hoffmann, Trina Schart Hyman, and Paul Zelinsky, in an attempt to better understand both the significance of the tale and the ways in which artists interpret and illuminate stories.

KEY WORDS: Rapunzel; fairy tales; Zelinsky, Paul; Hyman, Trina Schart; Hoffmann, Felix; Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm.

Grimm, Kinder und In the last decades of the twentieth century, the old tale of “Ra- Hausmarchen punzel,” best known through translations and adaptations of the ver- (Children’s and Household Tales) sion published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the 1857 edition of Kinder und Hausmarchen (Children’s and Household Tales), ap- Zelinsky, Rapunzel peared in many retellings and variants, including Paul Zelinsky’s mag- nificent picture book version that was awarded the 1998 Caldecott Medal. This article explores reasons for the tale’s popularity as the twentieth century neared its end, similarities and differences among some of ‘the recent versions, and in particular, examines the ways in which Paul Dusikova, Rapunzel Zelinksy’s illlustrations enhance the timeless and universal aspects of Vozar, Rapunzel: A the tale, while at the same time marking it as a story for our time. Happenin’ Rap Zelinsky’s was not the only picture book version of “Rapunzel” to appear in 1997. Maja Dusikova’s picture book was also published. Ra- Noble, Rapunzel punzel: A Happenin’ Rap, by David Vozar, followed in 1998. Earlier Berenzy, Rapunzel picture book versions include Marty Noble’s little Dover Sturdy Book Stanley, Petrosinella (1996), Alix Berenzy’s Rapunzel and Diane Stanley’s second adapta- Heyer, Carol, Rapunzel tion of Petrosinella (a Rapunzel variant) (both in 1995), Carol Heyer’s Ehrlich, Amy, Rapunzel (1992), Amy Ehrlich’s and Kris Waldherr’s collaboration (1989), a Cre- Hague, Rapunzel ative Education edition with illustrations by Michael Hague (1984),

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Hyman, Rapunzel and two retellings, one illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman and the Ash, Rapunzel other by Jutta Ash in 1982. A version by Bert Dodson was published Dodson, Rapunzel in 1979, and one by Bernadette Watts in 1975. Much earlier, Felix Hoffmann’s memorable lithographed version was published in Swit- Watts, Rapunzel zerland in 1949, and translated into English in 1960. Hoffmann, Rapunzel

Zipes, Fairy Tales as Not only have there been an astonishing number of traditional picture Myth book “duplications,” as Jack Zipes calls them in Fairy Tales as Myth Napoli, Zel (p. 8), but there have been numerous revisionings of “Rapunzel,” Geras, The Tower Room some for children and some for grown-ups. Among these, are two Bishop, “Rapunzel” young adult novels: Zel by Donna Jo Napoli (1996), and The Tower Donoghue, Kissing the Room by Adele Geras (1992). There have also been poems and short Witch stories, mainly for adults, many with a feminist slant, including a short Goldsworthy, “Ra- story by Anne Bishop in 1997, Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue punzel, Rapunzel” in 1997, a short story by Australian Kerryn Goldsworthy in 1984, the Hewitt, Rapunzel in poems Rapunzel in Suburbia by Australian Dorothy Hewitt and the Suburbia “Rapunzel” poem in Transformations by Anne Sexton, both in 1975. Sexton, Belonging to a somewhat earlier period is Sara Henderson Hay’s 1963 Transformations sonnet published in her Story Hour. Hay, Story Hour As with many folk and fairy tales, the story has figured in novels, Harrison, Rapunzel poems, and art works. An opera Rapunzel was composed by Lou Hawthorne, Harrison in 1966 and recorded in 1996. Critics have pointed out Ra- “Rappacini’s daughter” punzel elements in stories ranging from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rap- Hemingway, “The cat in paccini’s Daughter” (1844) to Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Cat the rain” in the Rain” (1925), A. S. Byatt’s Possession (1990), and Elizabeth Byatt, Possession Strout’s Amy and Isabelle (1999). One work deserving special mention Strout, Amy and is William Morris’s dreamlike narrative poem “Rapunzel,” first pub- Isabelle lished in 1858. Modern in many of its concerns, it forms the basis of Morris, “Rapunzel” Harrison’s opera. There have also been popular songs, at least one mys- tery story, numerous plays and videos with Rapunzel themes, and, of course, a Barbie doll Rapunzel with an accompanying interactive video.

Zelinsky, Rapunzel The origins of the Rapunzel story are unusually complex. Zelinsky’s retelling includes an excellent end note on sources of the tale. For Getty, “Maidens and even more detail, Laura J. Getty draws on the work of Max Luthi¨ and their guardians” others, tracing the “hair ladder” motif to ancient Persia, and other story strands to Greece, Italy, and Malta. Apparently the tale purport- edly collected by the Grimms as a genuine folktale, was an oral retell- Force, Les Contes des ing of a German translation of an elaborate French literary tale written Contes by Mademoiselle Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force (1650– Basile, Il Pentamerone 1724). La Force, in turn, had expanded on the Italian Giambattista Basile’s “Petrosinella,” published in Il Pentamerone from 1634–1636.

Luthi,¨ Once upon a As Max Luthi¨ points out, the Grimm tale lacks the genuine folk tale’s Time traditional three-part ending and magic escape that occurs in “Pe- trosinella.” Far from viewing this as a flaw, however, Luthi¨ takes the The View from Rapunzel’s Tower 211

success of the story as evidence of the Grimms’ “storytelling genius.” He writes, “Much in the Grimm version is not genuine. And yet how captivating it is” (p. 119).

The Grimms also changed and embellished the tale between the manuscript version of 1812 and the final edition of 1857 to make it more acceptable to middle-class audiences. Interestingly, Zelinsky has drawn on the earlier Grimm version, as well as on elements from the Italian tales, in ways that add depth to the story.

We ought not look at the specific appeal of Rapunzel without first Bettelheim, The Uses of considering the general significance of fairy tales. According to Bruno Enchantment Bettelheim, fairy tales convey the message that “by courageously struggling . . . one can achieve a much better life than those who are Carter, Old Wives Fairy never beset by severe problems” (p. 199). Angela Carter finds in folk- Tale Book tales “the quality of public dream” (p. xx), while Jane Filstrup says, Filstrup, “Individuation “The M¨archen has the mythic capacity to draw the hearer or reader in ‘La chatte blanche’” out of the real world and into a network of symbols animate with some universal experience” (p. 82).

Heisig, “Bruno James Heisig writes, “Like the hard-hearted King Shahryar, charmed Bettelheim and fairy for a thousand and one nights by the fantastic tales of the young tales” Scheherazade, we may find in the end that our fairy tales contain much of the very wisdom necessary for our salvation” (p. 94). He concludes, “The fairy tale has not outlived its purpose so long as we need reassurance that there is more to life than our usual heavy words can tell. . . . You have invested enough time and imagination in wres- tling with their meaning only when you finally come to tell the stories yourself, just as they are, without embarrassment, and to allow them to sleep quietly in your heart” (p. 112). hooks, “To love justice” Feminist critic bell hooks writes:

Fairy tales were the refuge of my troubled childhood. Despite all the lessons contained in them about being a dutiful daughter, a good girl, which I internalized to some extent, I was most obsessed with the idea of justice—the insistence in most tales that the righteous would prevail. The evocation of a just world, where right would prevail over wrong, was a balm to my wounded spirits during my childhood. (p. 178)

Pipher, Reviving Therapist Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia, sees fairy tales as Ophelia capturing the essence of what happens to young girls at puberty (pp. Zipes, The Brothers 19–20). Jack Zipes in The Brothers Grimm writes, “As a literary insti- Grimm tution, the fairy tale assumes a secular religious purpose: it presents moral and political critiques of society at the same time it undermines them and reconciles the distraught protagonist with society” (p. 83). He also quotes Walter Benjamin, “‘Whenever good counsel was at a 212 Children’s Literature in Education

premium, the fairy tale had it, and where the need was the greatest, its aid was the nearest. . . . The wisest thing—so the fairy tale taught mankind in oldtimes, and teaches children to this day—is to meet the forces of the mystical world with cunning and high spirits’” (p. 87).

In Fairy Tale as Myth, Zipes again echoes Benjamin, “Myths and fairy tales seem to know something that we do not know. . . . We keep returning to them for answers.” At the same time, we use them to sell things and we dismiss them as lies by saying, “‘Oh, that’s just a fairy tale,’ or ‘that’s just a myth.’ But these lies are often the lies that govern our lives” (pp. 3–4). Perhaps Zipes’s most perceptive comment for Zipes, Breaking the the purpose of this article comes from the preface to Breaking the Magic Spell Magic Spell: Our lives are framed by folk and fairy tales, but in the framework we never fill in the meaning of the tales for ourselves. . . . They know and tell us that we want to become kings and queens, ontologically speak- ing to become masters of our own realms . . . [they] illuminate the way. They anticipate the millennium . . . for within the tales lies the hope of self transformation and a better world. (P. ix) The millennium to which Zipes refers is, of course, not chronological, but the biblical millennium, which promises a thousand years of happiness and perfection, of paradise on earth. Hope is one of the prem- ises of the fairy tale, hope that it is possible to live “happily ever after,” hope that justice will prevail, and hope that the future offers continuing possibilities for transformation and fulfillment.

However, filling in the framework of meaning of the tales for ourselves, contrary to Zipes, is exactly what perceptive readers and interpreters do with fairy tales. In the recent picture book interpretations of “Rapunzel,” and also in the poems, novels, and short stories in- spired by it, authors and artists have filled in and elaborated on the spare framework of the tale, supplying their own meanings and en- couraging their readers to do the same.

“Rapunzel,” a story about family, motherhood, love, longing, about holding on and letting go, provides an especially suitable framework upon which to build stories that speak to mothers, fathers, and daughters, especially during a time when young women face both enormous opportunities and enormous dangers, and their parents, particularly their mothers, are faced with what Mary Pipher (1994) describes as the dilemma of how to “encourage our daughters to be independent and autonomous and still keep them safe” (p. 12).

Zelinsky, “Artist’s notes” Zelinsky writes in his “Artist’s Notes” that he has “taken the liberty of pulling together strands from the tellings described here in hopes of expressing the logical and emotional sense I prefer to see in the tale” The View from Rapunzel’s Tower 213

(n.p.). The Italian setting and Renaissance style of art revealed from the outset in the designs of the cover, end papers, and title pages suggest that this story will have biblical and classical overtones. The rich and lavish formality of the style and the spaciousness of the layout give the story seriousness, importance, and a sensuous beauty that suggest spiritual dimensions.

Windows, as well as doors, mirrors, and images of looking feature prominently. The end papers show a house with shuttered windows, arched doorways, a high wall, a bridge with eye-like reflections in the water, and a many-eyed peacock, the thousand-eyed watchful Argus of Greek mythology. The man with the donkey seems to be setting out on a journey, while the rest of the village is sleeping. The title page again features the peacock, and a high curved window with a view of the sky filled with free-flying birds. A window allows the wife to look into the garden of the sorceress; the window in Rapunzel’s tower will allow her to look and to be seen and heard, but not to enter the world. In both cases, the window is the opening to temptation, while it separates the viewer from what she desires.

Zelinsky’s opening illustration emphasizes the love between husband and wife and their longing for a child, in contrast to the versions in which the wife is portrayed as empty-headed (Napoli, Goldsworthy), as a selfish shrew (Bishop), or where she hardly figures at all (Geras, Sexton). According to Zelinsky’s “Artist’s Notes,” his couple was in- spired by Rembrandt’s painting The Jewish Bride:

There could hardly be a finer, deeper portrayal of a couple’s love and tender concern than in this painting. Sketching Rapunzel’s parents, I tried many poses of my own invention before taking Rembrandt’s, which was conveniently adaptable; the husband’s right hand could be moved only slightly into a natural gesture of bellypatting, feeling for an unborn child.” (n.p.)

By placing the husband and wife beside a small window he continues the window motif begun in the end papers and on the title page. The husband looks at his wife, but it is possible that she is already looking toward the window and the forbidden garden. The pose is ambig- uous, but the apple placed on the Greek-key-patterned plate suggests temptation.

The text here also prepares the reader for the parallel scene later in the book when Rapunzel finds her own dress growing tight, signaling her pregnancy just as it did her mother’s. The colors are warm gold, orange, and green, the colors of harvest. The gentle light provides an aura of peace and contentment in contrast to the events that will follow. 214 Children’s Literature in Education

In the view of the forbidden garden on the following pages, we glimpse the wife pining for the forbidden rapunzel from her small and distant window. The ever-watchful peacock also guards this garden, but we have to look carefully to see him at the bottom of the page. Of more interest, and more noticeable, is the bee-eater in the lower left foreground, sitting in an odd shrub that looks somewhat like an Aus- tralian banksia or possibly (since Australia was not yet discovered in 1550), a related South African plant. A pangolin explores the path between the flower beds, and a marsupial Zelinsky has identified as a Zelinsky, cuscus from New Guinea hides in the shrub behind the statue of Correspondence mother and child. The forbidden garden, unnatural in its perfection and its exotic flora and fauna, calls to mind the lush, unnatural, poi- sonous, forbidden garden of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s eerie tale of possession, “Rappaccini’s Daughter.”

Despite the uncanny perfection of her garden, Zelinsky emphasizes the humanity of the sorceress. She is powerful and fearsome, but also deeply human, longing for a child of her own. In a pivotal scene, one of only two wordless two-page spreads, the sorceress tenderly carries the baby, gazing into her face, as she moves toward the warmly lighted doorway in the upper right, leaving the shocked and hapless parents in darkness, cut off from the empty cradle at the lower right by the slash of light that surrounds their child. Felix Hoffmann, in contrast, shows the totally unsympathetic sorceress carrying the cry- ing baby under her arm like a sack of potatoes, moving down the stairs and to the left, leaving the grief-stricken parents, backs bowed in defeat and despair in the upper right. Trina Schart Hyman, in contrast to both Zelinsky and Hoffman, chooses not to show this emotional scene at all, as though it is too much to bear. Instead, she shows, in a small picture, the young mother weeping over an empty cradle in which only a small doll remains. Like Zelinsky, however, Hyman also depicts a warmly human witch. The young Rapunzel and the grandmotherly witch look fondly at each other as they wind yarn together in an idyllic orchard. Zelinsky similarly shows the sorceress fondly watching the growing young child, and then gently leading her to the tower in the forest. Zelinsky’s sorceress no longer dwells in the perfect garden, however, but in a fallen world punctuated with classical ruins.

The depiction of Rapunzel’s tower is always of interest. Most illustrators, including Hyman and Hoffmann, depict rather shabby circular stone towers with boarded up doors and windows surrounded by grim northern European forests. Zelinsky’s tower, in contrast, is a lavish Italian campanile embellished with columns, carved rapunzel flowers and intricate patterns, even mysterious writing on one side, created in many-colored polished stones. Zelinsky’s text describes the The View from Rapunzel’s Tower 215

tower as “narrow on the outside” but on the inside, “large, with many elegant rooms.” But lavish and luxurious as it is, it is still a prison.

Rapunzel’s clothes are also lavish, in contrast to plain interiors and more ordinary clothes of Hoffmann’s and Hyman’s barefoot, wild, and bedraggled young women. All of the picture book Rapunzels, and most of the poems and stories other than Zelinsky’s (possibly excepting the Jutta Ash Rapunzel, who lives in Arabian Nights-like splendor), live simply, even meagerly, in towers furnished, if they are furnished at all, in a simple folk style. Almost all of the Rapunzels are depicted with birds, whether the text mentions them or not. Zelinsky, whose text describes Rapunzel as “singing to the forest birds” has birds throughout the illustrations, ranging from the previously mentioned peacock and bee-eater, to the hoopoe “with an erectile fan-like crest” that shows up to the left of the tower when the prince appears. Swallows surround Zelinsky’s tower, and one perches on the shutter of Hyman’s tower window. Hoffmann also has a hoopoe perched outside the tower window while Rapunzel and the prince embrace.

Zelinsky’s young woman is innocent, passive, and repressed, as re- mote and unapproachable as the tower in which she is locked. The haunting cover illustration shows her looking out from her prison window with an unfocused, inward-looking gaze that Zelinsky (“Ar- tist’s Notes”) says he has borrowed from Rembrandt’s painting Agatha Bas:

I can’t look at the painting without feeling the woman’s presence, and responding to the uncertain gesture of her hand, raised to the edge of the window that separates her from us. This sense of separation, and the knowing, feeling gaze, are exactly what I would expect to see in Ra- punzel, framed by the window of her tower, and separated from the world by an over-protective sorceress. (n.p.)

Her lavender-blue dress, with its tight bodice and bell-like skirt, signi- fies that she is a Rapunzel flower, a flower that needs care and cultiva- tion, an object of desire, but like a flower, unconscious of her charm and beauty. Throughout the story, Rapunzel, in all its forms is an object of desire. The Rapunzel plant and child are both desired by the birth mother, and the sorceress and the prince each desire the young woman. Everyone wants to possess Rapunzel, a passive flower and a caged bird that longs to be free.

Zelinsky’s sorceress, looking like an energetic Martha Graham active into old age, robes swirling in a Renaissance flourish, climbs the tower on the unbound hair and throws her leg up over the win- dowsill. The indifferent Rapunzel stares impassively straight ahead, as calm and unperturbed as the perfectly smooth sky behind her tower. 216 Children’s Literature in Education

Hyman, after developing the affectionate relationship between the sorceress and Rapunzel, never shows the two together again in a close-up illustration, perhaps because the complex and conflicted mother-daughter relationship is so emotion-laden and painful. Hoff- mann, whose witch is not burdened with any redeeming motherly qualities, brilliantly captures the essence of the triangle of witch- Rapunzel-prince in two pictures on successive pages. The first picture shows the witch and Rapunzel face-to-face, the witch hunched and glowering, framed by the deep window (a ship, perhaps hinting of a rescue to come, in the distance), and Rapunzel, her shoulders rounded, head held dispiritedly down in an attitude somewhat between indifference and despair. A turn of the page announces the arrival of the prince, in exactly the same window frame as the witch. Outlined in light, the colors now golden green and orange instead of dark gray-green, the prince is bold and erect with, in case there might be any mistake about his identity, a golden crown emblazoned on his tunic. He towers above the arch of the window behind him. Rapunzel looks up, raising her previously slack arm to her face in astonishment. Suddenly, where there was passivity and despair, the space is trans- formed with energy and hope. While Zelinsky emphasizes the contrast in energy level between the sorceress and Rapunzel, Hoffmann has contrasted the witch and the prince.

Zelinsky, like the other picture book illustrators, but unlike some of the poets, novelists, and short story writers, emphasizes the attrac- tiveness and trustworthiness of the prince. “I knew that I was not the first to twist/ Her heartstrings to a rope for him to climb./ I might have known I would not be the last,” wrote Hay. Goldsworthy’s Ra- punzel marries the prince, but she does not find happiness, and ends up in another tower in a castle by the sea. Her story concludes, “I will watch from the window, and sing loud enough to be heard, and resist the temptation to cut off my hair” (p. 572). Donoghue’s cross- gendered Rapunzel longs for a prince; the witch disguised as a man fulfills her desire, while leaving her with troubling questions and a sense of betrayal. In the the Geras novel, the trustworthiness and mo- tivation of Simon Findlay (find lay?) is an open question, even at the end of the book.

Although most of the picture book versions closely follow the Grimms’ wording in their accounts of the meeting between Rapunzel and the prince, both Stanley, in her 1995 adaptation, and Zelinsky give more weight to Rapunzel’s thoughts and feelings. In all the versions Ra- punzel is at first frightened because “she had never laid eyes on a man before.” But the prince wins her over with his gentle speech and his account of being moved by her song. Those acquainted with “Chan- ticleer and the Fox” might well be wary at this. The Zipes translation The View from Rapunzel’s Tower 217

reads, “When he asked her whether she would have him for her husband, and she saw that he was young and handsome, she thought, ‘He’ll certainly love me better than old Mother Gothel’” (p. 52), hardly the most promising basis for a marriage.

Stanley’s Petrosinella has more depth of feeling and feminine intuition. “Petrosinella knew nothing of the world. Since childhood she had seen the face of no living soul except her dreadful captor. Yet she had a wise heart, and she knew that this young man, who looked upon her with such tenderness, was the one she would love forever.” (n.p.)

Zelinsky, more economically, but with a similar intent, writes, “Ra- punzel saw that he was young and handsome; in her own heart she felt a happiness she had never known.” The accompanying illustration shows the couple holding hands, the prince kneeling, both with eyes downcast. The sexual tension between them and their newness to each other is palpable. The cat, seeing all, looks over the prince’s shoulder. Stanley’s illustration, however, shows the couple snuggled together and holding hands, no longer strangers to each other, and Hyman, characteristically, depicts the couple kissing passionately across the window frame.

The natural reticence and good character of Zelinsky’s prince is also indicated by the words that “the prince, grown bold” proposed to marry her then and there. That he “had grown bold” suggests his character is steady, and that he is not a fickle Don Juan who habitually climbs towers and makes love to innocent young women.

Of all the picture book illustrators, Zelinsky devotes the most space to the sorceress’s discovery of Rapunzel’s pregnancy and the subsequent hair-cutting scene. Her response to what she sees as Rapunzel’s betrayal, “I thought I had kept you safe, away from the whole world, but you have betrayed me!” conveys both disappointment and anger. Zelinsky’s pictures communicate not so much the image of an out- raged monster, but the shock and disbelief of a caring mother. Hyman does not show this confrontation at all, but only the end of the braid of hair with scissors lying beside. Hoffmann shows Rapunzel and the witch facing away from each other—there apparently never have been mother-daughter feelings between them. Hoffmann’s witch is, like the ogress in Stanley’s Petrosinella, more monster than human. Napoli’s novel, however, emphasizes, as does Zelinsky, the complexity of the sorceress’s character and the mother-love she feels for her child, as well as the rivalry between the stepmother and the prince for Rapunzel. Geras conveys more of the rivalry between Rapunzel and the stepmother for the love of the prince, a theme that also appears in many of the adult stories based on the tale. 218 Children’s Literature in Education

Zelinsky, more than most of the illustrators, emphasizes the sojourn of both Rapunzel and the prince in the wilderness. His picture of the blind prince stumbling off into the woods, devastated by the loss of Rapunzel, is based, according to Zelinsky’s “Artist’s Notes,” on the picture of Adam in Masaccio’s fresco, The Expulsion from Paradise. “Every part of this figure, from the covered eyes to the heavy footfall shows what it is like for Adam to face the loss of his perfect life in Eden. So it is, too, with the prince; his life with Rapunzel, somehow artificial and untenable, seeming to be gone forever” (n.p.). In Hoff- mann there is no separation or wandering. Rapunzel jumps out of the window after the prince and takes him into her arms. Her tears falling on his wounded eyes heal him, and they go off together to the prince’s kingdom where they live happily every after.

Many readers ask what happened to the witch afterwards. In Hoff- mann’s version the witch is trapped in the tower until she shrinks to the size of a shriveled apple and is carried away by a huge bird to feed her young. “And didn’t that serve her right?” Hoffmann concludes. Napoli also, at the end of her tale returns to the sorceress, now living alone, still longing for her “daughter.” Stanley’s Petrosinella is perhaps alone in telling what happens to the birth mother, who is reunited with her daughter and invited to the wedding. Neither Hyman nor Zelinsky have anything to say about what happens to either the birth parents or the sorceress, although the last spread in Hyman’s book shows the witch walking alone in the woods with her cane, and the back cover shows the witch walking in her garden, and, if possible, looking older than before. Rapunzel and the prince walk with their babies out through an opening in the forest and into the sunset.

There are similarities in the reconciliation scenes portrayed by Hyman and Zelinsky. Both of them feature the couple coming together in the wilderness, showing the ravages of their experiences. Both of them show the twins Rapunzel has borne and even the rocks lean with the prince toward Rapunzel as he stumbles forward to embrace her. The reconciliation occupies the second and last of the two-page, wordless spreads in Zelinsky’s book, providing a counterpoint to the first, the moment of separation in which the sorceress takes the baby. In between has come a fall from grace, followed by trials in the wilderness for both Rapunzel and the prince.

While Hyman’s reconciliation is followed immediately by the final walk into the sunset, Zelinsky prolongs the ending, emphasizing the biblical parallels, and also making for a more satisfying, hopeful ending. In the next-to-the-last scene in the book, Rapunzel and the prince, with their twins in their arms, make their way along a stony path lined with thistles, out of the wilderness and toward the prince’s The View from Rapunzel’s Tower 219

kingdom. The kingdom looks much like the biblical shining city on the hill, the new Jerusalem. Meeting them on the path are two pil- grims setting out toward the wilderness.

The final scene, based on Raphael’s painting Madonna and Child with the Young St. John, is, as Zelinsky writes in his “Artist’s Notes,” a “compelling expression of maternal love.” According to Zelinsky correspondence, the flower held by Rapunzel’s daughter is not the cam- panula or rapunzel flower, but a lily of the valley, signifying “the re- turn of happiness,” and a hope that “Rapunzel’s children would not repeat her history.” To the Raphael configuration, Zelinsky has added the figure of the prince. Thus the story comes full circle, in the classic home-away-home pattern. The family, at last, in a second generation, is complete.

There is much more that could be said about Zelinsky’s book (the details of braided hair on the book’s spine, the presence of the Siamese cat in many of the pictures, the clothing, architecture, and furnishings, the perfect layout and design and attention to detail as well as to emotional tone throughout the book), and about all of the other picture books and other stories and novels about Rapunzel as well. Each of these interpreters has “filled in the blanks” in the story to make it the story they each feel compelled to tell, some with more care, skill, and intelligence than others.

One of the most perceptive commentators on the art of the picture Schwarcz, Ways of the books was Joseph Schwarcz, who in Ways of the Illustrator (1982) Illustrator deplored the many “run-of-the-mill pictures, superficial glamour girls and cliched´ compositions” in illustrations of fairy tales (p. 118). He claimed that the hero in the fairy tale “represents some aspects of that spiritual perfection all of us should strive to attain” and that “the artist who illustrates a fairy tale should have a measure of understanding of its underlying significance, either by way of conscious knowledge or intuitive grasp . . . he will then, if his talent permits reveal elements of this significance to the child” (p. 118).

Schwarcz conludes:

If we realize that today, even more than in past times, the child needs the reassurance offered by the image of isolated man, capable neverthe- less of achieving meaningful and rewarding relations with the world around him, we will understand how powerful the superior illustration can be, how much joy the illustrator has to offer, and how he may call up profound humanistic values by his work. (p. 118)

Zelinsky, to an extent even greater than Hyman and Hoffmann, meets Schwarcz’s standards for illustration of the highest level. Through his 220 Children’s Literature in Education

choice of color and design, his use of symbol and allusion, and his sensitivity to the underlying significance of the story of “Rapunzel,” Zelinsky communicates to the perceptive viewer many of the same nuances and implications in the tale that have been picked up by short story writers, novelists, and poets over the years, implications that on various levels speak to both children and adult readers.

Themes of love and longing, of temptation, a fall and redemption, of maturation, and the successive roles of virgin, mother, and crone, have all been illuminated and interpreted in varying ways by Zelinsky and other illustrators and writers. Each one has filled in the meaning of the tale, some more successfully and richly than others. In so doing they have helped their readers to find meanings of their own in this old, but timeless tale. Beautiful Rapunzel with hair like spun gold, locked away from the world in a tower in the woods, continues to look both inward and outward, to the past and to the future.

Primary Sources: Picture Books, Collections, Poems, Novels, and Stories Aal, Katharyn, Rapunzel, Rapunzel: Poems, Prose, and Photographs by Women on the Subject of Hair. Ithaca, NY: McBooks Press, 1980. Ash, Jutta, Rapunzel. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982. Barbie as Rapunzel. El Segundo, CA: Mattel Media, 1996. Basile, Giambattista, The Pentameron, Sir Richard Burton (trans.), Michael Ayrton (illus.). London: W. Kimber, 0195. Berenzy, Alix, Rapunzel. New York: Holt, 1995. Bishop, Anne, “Rapunzel,” in Black Swan, White Raven, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, eds., pp. 123–141. New York: Avon, 1997. Byatt, A.S., Possession. New York: Random House, 1990. d’Aulnoy, Madame de (1650–1705). “La chatte blanche.” Contes des Fees, Paris: Mercure de France, 1956. (Originally published 1669) Donoghue, Emma, Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Ehrlich, Amy, Rapunzel, Kris Waldherr (illus.). New York: Dial, 1989. Fleet Street Fairies, “Rapunzel’s revenge.” Rapunzel’s Revenge: Fairy Tales for Feminists, Anne Claffey, Linda Kavanagh, Sue Russell, eds., pp. 36–41. Dub- lin: Attic Press, 1985. Force, Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la, Les Contes des Contes. Paris: Ber- nard, 1697. Garner, James Finn, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories. Accord, MA: Wheeler, 1994. Geras, Adele, The Tower Room. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992. Gill, B. M., The Fifth Rapunzel: An Inspector Muybridge Novel. Toronto/New York: Worldwide, 1993. Goldsworthy, Kerryn, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel,” Meanjin, 43 (4), December 1984; 563–572. Grimm, Jacob, and Grimm, Wilhelm, Grimm’s Fairy Tales. New York: Pan- theon, 1944. With 212 illustrations by Josef Scharl. Based on the translation by Margaret Hunt. Revised, corrected and completed by James Stern. The View from Rapunzel’s Tower 221

Grimm, Jacob, and Grimm, Wilhelm, The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, Jack Zipes (trans.), Johnny Gruelle (illus.). New York: Bantam, 1988. Grimm, Jacob, and Grimm, Wilhelm, Rapunzel, Mankato, MN: Creative Edu- cation, 1984. Illustrated by Michael Hague. Grimm, Jacob, and Grimm, Wilhelm, Rapunzel: A Fairy Tale, New York: North-South Books, 1997. Harrison, Lou, “Rapunzel. My mother taught me many prayers,” air from the opera Rapunzel. Words by William Morris. New York: Peer International, 1966. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, “Rappaccini’s daughter,” in Hawthorne: Selected Tales and Sketches, Hyatt H. Waggoner, ed., pp. 329–360. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970. (Story first published in The Democratic Re- view, December 1844.) Hay, Sara Henderson, “Rapunzel,” Story Hour, p. 18. New York: Doubleday, 1963. Hemingway, Ernest. “The cat in the rain.” In Our Time: Stories. New York: Horace Liveright, 1925. Hewitt, Dorothy, Rapunzel in Suburbia. Sydney: Prism, 1975. Hoffmann, Felix, Rapunzel. New York: Harcourt, 1961. (Originally published in Switzerland by Amerbach-Verlag, 1949. First English translation, Oxford University Press, 1960.) Killion, Bette, Rapunzel. Lincolnwood, IL: Publications International, Little Rainbow Books, 1994. Morris, William, “Rapunzel,” in Collected Works, introduction by May Morris, pp. 62–74. New York: Russell and Russell, 1966, 1910–15. (Originally published 1858 in The Defense of Guenevere and Other Poems.) Napoli, Donna Jo, Zel. New York: Dutton, 1996. Noble, Marty, Rapunzel: Full-Color Sturdy Book. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1996. Rapunzel, Bert Dodson (illus.). Mahwah, NJ: Troll Associates, 1979. Rapunzel, Carol Heyer (illus.). Nashville: Ideals Children’s Books, 1992. Rapunzel, Grand Rapids, MI: Denison, 1995. (13 punch-out pictures on two posters with teachers’ guide.) Rhys, Jean, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel.” Sleep It Off Lady: Stories by Jean Rhys, pp. 137–144. London: Andre Deutsch, 1976. Rogasky, Barbara, Rapunzel, Trina Schart Hyman (illus.). New York: Holiday House, 1982. Sexton, Anne, “Rapunzel,” Transformations, pp. 35–42. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975. Stanley, Diane, Petrosinella: A Neapolitan Rapunzel. New York: Dial, 1995. (Retelling of story by Giambattista Basile, 1637. This is a reworking of an earlier book by Stanley with the same illustrations and slightly different wording (adapted from the translation by John Edward Taylor) of the stories published by Frederic Warne in 1981.) Strout, Elizabeth, Amy and Isabelle. New York: Random House, 1999. Thomas, Audrey, “Rapunzel.” Ladies and Escorts, pp. 71–80. Canada: Oberon Press, 1977. Vozar, D., Rapunzel: A Happenin’ Rap. Betsy Lewin (illus.). New York: Dou- bleday, 1998. 222 Children’s Literature in Education

Watts, Bernadette, Rapunzel. London/New York: Dobson/Thomas Y. Crowell, 1975. Zelinsky, Paul, Rapunzel. New York: Dutton, 1997.

Selected References Bacchilega, Cristina, Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strate- gies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. Bettelheim, Bruno, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Random House/Vintage Books, 1975. Birkhauser-Oeri, Sibylle, “The imprisoning sorceress,” The Mother: Archetypal Image in Fairy Tales, pp. 82–94. Toronto: Inner City Books, 1988. Brooks, Donna, “Paul O. Zelinsky,” Horn Book 74 (4), July 1998, 442–449. Burns, Mary M, “Review of Rapunzel,” Horn Book 74 (1), January 1998, 85. Carter, Angela, Old Wives Fairy Tale Book. New York: Pantheon, 1990. (Origi- nally published in Britain as the Virago Book of Fairy Tales by Virago Press, 1990.) Cervo, Nathan, “Morris’s ‘Rapunzel.’” Explicator, 51 (3), March 1993, 167– 169. Coleman, Hildy, “‘Cat’ and ‘Hills’: Two Hemingway fairy tales,” Hemingway Review, 12 (1), September 1992, 67–73. Anne Commire, ed., “Paul O. Zelinsky,” in Something about the Author, vol. 49, pp. 218–224. Detroit: Gale. Cooper, Ilene, “The Booklist interview: Paul Zelinsky,” Booklist, 94 (19/20), 1 June 1915; 1776–1777. Crago, Hugh, and Crago, Maureen, “The untrained eye?: A preschool child explores Felix Hoffmann’s Rapunzel,” Children’s Literature in Education, o.s. (22), Autumn 1976, 135–151. Cummins, Julie, “Paul O. Zelinsky,” Children’s Book Illustration and Design, pp. 225–227. New York: Library of Applied Design, 1992. Edwards, Carol A, “Libraries for youth: Lighthouses or ivory towers?” School Library Journal, 44 (3), March 1998, 116–119. Filstrup, Jane Merrill, “Individuation in ‘La chatte blanche,’” Children’s Litera- ture, 6, 1977, 77–92. Getty, Laura, “Maidens and their guardians: Reinterpreting the ‘Rapunzel’ tale,” Mosaic, 30 (2), June 1997, 37–52. Giles, Jeff, “Love at first sight,” Newsweek, 11 January 1999, 66. Heisig, James W., “Bruno Bettelheim and the fairy tales,” Children’s Litera- ture, 6, 1977, 93–114. hooks, bell, “To love justice,” in Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales, Kate Bernheimer, ed., pp. 178–185. New York: Anchor, 1998. Kapacinskas, T. J., and Robert Judith A., “‘Rapunzel’: Barrenness and Bounty, Differentiation and Reconciliation,” in Psyche’s Stories: Modern Jungian Interpretations of Fairy Tales, vol. II, eds. Murray Stein and Lionel Corbett, pp. 58–78. Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications, 1992. Lavin, Maud, “Letting her hair down.” New York Times Book Review 94 (6), 16 November 1997, 54. Reviews Dusikova and Zelinsky’s Rapunzels. Luthi,¨ Max, Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales, introduction by Francis Lee Utley. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976. The View from Rapunzel’s Tower 223

Marantz, Sylvia, and Marantz, Kenneth, “Rapunzel: How does she let down her hair?” Book Links, 8 (2), November 1998), 26–29. May, Jill P., “Illustration as interpretation: Trina Hyman’s folk tales,” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 10 (3), September 1985, 127–131. Mink, Kelly, “Overcoming the family script,” Afterimage, 25 (4), January 1998, 21–22. Review of a motion picture. Nodelman, Perry, “How picture books work,” in Festschrift: A Ten Year Retro- spective, Perry Nodelman and Jill May, eds., pp. 20–25. West Lafayette, IN: Children’s Literature Association, 1983. Nodelman, Perry, “How picture books work,” in Image and Maker, Harold Darling and Peter Neumeyer, eds., pp. 1–12. La Jolla, CA: Green Tiger Press, 1984. Nodelman, Perry, Words about Pictures. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988. Pipher, Mary, Reviving Ophelia. New York: Grosset/Putnam, 1994. Porter, Connie, “Rapunzel across time and space,” in Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales, Kate Bernheimer, ed., pp. 273–282. New York: Anchor, 1998. Sadoff, Dianne F. “Imaginative transformation in William Morris’s ‘Rapunzel,’” Victorian Poetry, 12, 2, June 1974, 153–164. Schwarcz, Joseph, Ways of the Illustrator. Chicago: American Library Associa- tion, 1982. Stallman, Robert L, “‘Rapunzel’ unravelled,” Victorian Poetry 7 (3), 1969, 221–32. Thomas, Joyce, Inside the Wolf’s Belly: Aspects of Fairy Tales. Sheffield, En- gland: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989. Wilton, Shirley, “Review.” School Library Journal, 43 (11), November 1997, 113. Zelinsky, Paul, “Artist’s notes on the creation of Rapunzel,” JOYS 11 (4), 1997, 214–217. Zelinsky, Paul O., “Caldecott Medal Acceptance,” Horn Book, 74 (4), July 1998, 433–441. Zelinsky, Paul O., Correspondence, January–February 1998. Zipes, Jack, Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales. London: Heinemann, 1979. Zipes, Jack, The Brothers Grimm. New York: Routledge, 1988. Zipes, Jack, “Fairy tale as myth/myth as fairy tale,” in Cross-Culturalism in Children’s Literature: Selected Papers from the 1987 International Confer- ence of the Children’s Literature Association, Susan Gannon and Ruth Anne Thompson, eds., pp. 107–110. Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, 14 May 1987. New York: Pace University, 1987. Zipes, Jack, Fairy Tale as Myth: Myth as Fairy Tale. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994.