International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Volume 11 Article 5 6-20-2019 “We’ll Cook Him Up in a Stew”: Stepmothers and Primogeniture in the Brothers Grimm’s The uniJ per Tree Kymberlin Bush Pacific nU iversity, [email protected] Recommended Citation Bush, Kymberlin (2019) "“We’ll Cook Him Up in a Stew”: Stepmothers and Primogeniture in the Brothers Grimm’s The unipeJ r Tree," International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities: Vol. 11, Article 5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7710/2168-0620.1118 “We’ll Cook Him Up in a Stew”: Stepmothers and Primogeniture in the Brothers Grimm’s The uniJ per Tree Peer Review This work has undergone a double-blind review by a minimum of two faculty members from institutions of higher learning from around the world. The faculty reviewers have expertise in disciplines closely related to those represented by this work. If possible, the work was also reviewed by undergraduates in collaboration with the faculty reviewers. Abstract What larger social concern could the continued popularity of the nineteenth-century cannibal stepmother narrative in twenty-first century crime and news reporting be indicating? In this paper, I compare a fictional episode of cannibalism in the non-canonical Brothers Grimms’ tale, “The unipeJ r Tree,” with the true story of the 2010 murder and subsequent dismemberment of Zahra Baker in Hickory, North Carolina to consider the larger cultural implications of cannibalistic stepmothers. In doing so I argue that, despite the half-hearted attempt by mainstream animation studios to try to create semi-Feminist adaptations of the canonical fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and Charles Perrault, narratives similar to “The unipeJ r Tree” in fact reinforce a pro-male model of inheritance at the sacrifice of both wives and their girl children. These adaptations also communicate modern social anxieties surrounding blended families, especially regarding heteronormative visions of childhood, savior narratives around adoption, and easy answers about inheritance. Keywords Brothers Grimm, cannibalism, The unipeJ r Tree, Feminism, gender, adaptation Acknowledgements For their comments and suggestions on this essay I wish to thank Kathlene Postma, Elizabeth E. Tavares, and the attendees at the 2018 Northwest Undergraduate Conference in the Humanities held at North Idaho College in Couer d'Alene, Idaho. Bush: We'll cook him up in a stew On October 11, 2010, Australian native The stepchild’s death was ruled an Adam Baker appeared on Good Morning “undetermined violent homicide.” Zahra’s America to make a plea for information on stepmother was indicted for second-degree his daughter, Zahra Baker, who he said had murder on February 21, 2011. She would vanished almost a week earlier. Three days have been charged with first-degree murder before this public appeal, on October 9, at if she had not agreed to lead police to Zahra’s five-thirty in the morning in Hickory, North remains. Elisa had secreted the child from her Carolina, Zahra’s stepmother, Elisa family, both before and after the crime. She Fairchild, called 9-1-1 to report a small grass desecrated Zahra’s body to hinder the murder fire in the Baker family backyard. When investigation and prosecution. Elisa Baker emergency services arrived on the scene in took advantage of a position of trust. Hickory, North Carolina, they found a Eventually, on February 21, 2013, the ransom note on the windshield of Adam’s Hickory Police Department confirmed that a company Chevy Tahoe. A second 9-1-1 call skull found the previous April belonged to was placed at two o’clock in the afternoon on Zahra Baker. The ten-year-old girl was just the same day. Adam reported that the inside one of Elisa Baker’s multiple biological and of his Tahoe was soaked in gasoline and he step sons and daughters from her many believed his daughter had been mistakenly marriages. kidnapped instead of his boss’ daughter; the Stories of stepmothers like Elisa Baker’s rented their home from Adam’s boss. Baker bring to mind well-worn stereotypes Zahra Baker was reported missing that day about stepmothers, often functioning as but police believe she was killed more than proverbial witches, which are the particular two weeks earlier. purview of fairy tales. It might be surprising The Caldwell County and Catawba to see the “wicked stepmother” trope pop-up County Child Protective Services had visited in a true crime story such as this, and yet it the different residences of the Baker family does—over and over again. West European several times before the murder; Elisa had a fairy tales are particularly associated with the history of physical, verbal, and psychological trope. These stories, thought to have been abuse of her stepchild and the other children originally shared orally, have become she had with different ex-husbands. Elisa and childhood favorites with their Disney Adam met through an online dating site. The treatments. Elisa’s story provides a clear first time the pair saw each other in person example of the thin line between twenty-first was in the airport when Elisa visited the man century portrayals of second wives and and his daughter in Queensland, Australia, nineteenth-century cannibal stepmother before becoming engaged to him just a few narratives. In this way, Elisa Baker takes the weeks later. Adam would be her seventh place of the proverbial witch. As Sheldon husband. They moved to the United States Cashdan argues, no matter what form the shortly after Zahra’s cancer went into witch comes in, “she is easily identified by remission. Having previously battled both the lethal threat she poses to the hero or bone and lung cancer, the lower part of one heroine” (Cashdan 17). This threat derives of her legs had been amputated and she had from the fact that these stepmothers, who to wear hearing aids. Her prosthetic leg was take the place of the witch, are effectively a found on October 27 and was matched with third, alien force that steps into the family the serial number from her medical records. after an assumed tragedy. Elisa would eventually lead police to find The actual term we use to name these several of Zahra’s bones, but not her skull. proceeding wives carries the social 1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.7710/2168-0620.1118 International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities, Vol. 11 [2019], Art. 5 connotation of the time. Step in its combined Cashdan suggests that there might not be two form comes from the Old English ástíeped for different women in the stories. The “bereaved” or Old High German stiufen, “to stepmother and the dead mother might be bereave.” Combining these etymological symbols for the two different “mommies” a origins, a stepmother would be one who young child creates. becomes a mother to an orphan (OED). Due In this essay, I aim to expand on the to higher maternal mortality rates in the pre- critical conversation concerning the role of modern period, stepmothers could be the stepmothers in fairy tales by considering understood as constant reminders of the the embodied implications when cannibalism mother and wife the original family had is introduced into this trope. Sometimes the already lost. From the stepmother’s position, voracious need for power leads to a necessary any children preceding her arrival would be a meal of human flesh. The presence of constant reminder of the woman she has cannibalism in the earlier versions of come to fully replace. The stepmother’s canonical stories such as “Sleeping Beauty” characteristics are described only in and “Snow White,” as well as those outside comparison to the first wife. This split can be “Fairy Tale Canon,” like “The Juniper Tree,” seen in stories like Cinderella. suggests a prominent cultural preoccupation: In some of the earlier tales that that cannibalism is a direct response to either inspired the now-famous Disney film, there a physical or physiological hunger, blurring is no fairy godmother; it is the ghost of the the distinction between the needs of a mother who brings the girl her dress for the mother’s body and her psyche. Assuming ball and secures a future for her. In order to that, as Marina Warner suggests, pre-modern provide tension, the fairy tale genre employs European women depended on their the convention of missing mothers—women husbands and children to determine their who are often dead before the story has even social and economic place in the world, the begun. Employing psychoanalysis, Cashdan husbands, the fathers of the children being theorizes that eaten, are crucial—their indifference actively shapes the extreme actions stepmothers take the way young children deal with this to satisfy complex desires (Warner 238). In distressing state of affairs is by other words, despite its veneer—and mentally “splitting” the mother into subsequent marketing as a form—of female two psychic entities: a gratifying empowerment, the cannibalistic stepmother “good mother” and a frustrating “bad narrative is in actuality a cautionary tale for mother.” The child then responds to men. each image as if it were a separate and distinct entity so as to inject some BEAUTIFUL, PIOUS, AND SICK semblance of order into what Cannibalism is featured prominently in a otherwise would be a highly lesser-known German fairy tale, “The unpredictable world. This allows Juniper Tree,” as published in 1857 by Jacob children to respond internally to their and Wilhelm Grimm and translated by Maria maternal caretakers as “good Tatar in 1999 for The Classic Fairy Tales: A mommies” one moment and as Norton Critical Edition. In the opening of “horrible mommies” the next without this tale, a rich man has “a beautiful and pious having to deal with the inherent wife.