Critical essay rapunzel

A few years later, a prince is riding through the forest when he hears Rapunzel singing a beautiful song, to help her pass the time all along in her prison. He tries to find the door into the tower, but obviously has no luck, so he rides off. But Rapunzel’s sweet song is so enchanting that he keeps returning to the forest every day to hear it.

What makes the story so memorable is its embodiment of many of the motifs and features we most commonly associate with fairy tales: the damsel in distress, the wicked witch or evil stepmother, the handsome prince, the child being given up in a weird bargain.

One central feature of the story of ‘Rapunzel’ is well-known: the beautiful blonde woman, imprisoned in a tower, who lets down her long hair for her lover. But what does the story of ‘Rapunzel’ mean? And how does the meaning of the very name ‘Rapunzel’ offer a clue?

Even if we buy the Grimms’ reference to Rapunzel as the prince’s ‘wife’ in the bowdlerised version, and assume that they got married while she was still imprisoned in the tower, it probably wasn’t very wise to fall pregnant while trapped in a tower.