Blog no. 4, group 25, The Robber Bridegroom

[Clay Alspaugh]

I this blog I will propose that the bride is subject to the patriarchal rule and is incapable of mediating this issue within the context of the household. I will also propose that the female’s true volition will only be recognized if it is ingenious and in the context of the community. Furthermore, I believe the aspect of storytelling is essential for the tale as it allows the bride to exhibit her feminine ingenuity, and subsequently releases her from the paternalistic stalwart.

            The bride in the tale is completely subject to the will of her father.  Her father promised her to a suitor who only appeared to be rich. However, the maiden could find no love in her heart or trust in her soul for this man. Despite her emotional discrepancies, she was to follow the order of her father and marry this strange and apparently rich man.

            Although her father’s will puts the bride in danger, his word continues to be insurmountable, and the bride is left to fight the battle against paternalism on her own. Upon arriving at the suitor’s house, the bride hears voices telling her to leave. While in the house she witnesses the robbers kill a young woman, chop her apart, put salt on her body, and chop off her finger for a gold ring. The bride escapes this imminent danger, returns home and tells her dad everything. He disregards her account and proceeds with the wedding. It is evident that the young woman’s opinion is disregarded in the context of the household, and she must somehow escape the robber herself.

            The resourcefulness and ingenuity of the bride, as exhibited in her narrative, ultimately grant her release from the confines of paternalism. At her wedding, the bride participates in story-time in front of a large crowd. She recounts her trip to the suitor’s house and poses it as a dream. Upon finishing the story she reveals the finger with the ring, and her suitor (the robber) is exposed. Earlier in the story her father ignored similar words, but the ingenuity of the story and the fact that it was told in front of a community made the bride capable of exposing the suitor. It is also possible that the larger audience has a larger morality than does the paternalist father who simply wants to marry his daughter away for money. The bride only escaped the paternal stalwart because she exhibited resourceful and wise character traits.

-Clay Alspaugh 

[lucas.s.kunsman]

It is my personal opinion that the storytelling in The Robber Bridegroom is superfluous.  Of much more importance is the finger with the ring.  The fairy tale states explicitly that the girl told her father everything that happened, and yet the wedding still occurred.  At the beginning of the tale, the father promised his daughter to the bridegroom because he could find no fault with him; the story of the murderer's den was not fault enough to change this opinion.  What would have been fault enough would have been the ringed finger.  Showing her father the ring would have corroborated her story, taking it from a plead from a girl uncomfortable with the arranged marriage trying to flee to proof of treachery in the presumed bridegroom.

That being said, her narration of the story is masterful.  Her story is posed toward the bridegroom himself, carefully crafted to give away distinct details that he would recognize while continually jumping back behind the veil of a dream that never occurred.  The bridegroom is left to wonder whether her dream really was so accurate, to hope that this be the case rather than an exposure of his true nature.  He should flee as these secrets are told, but the constant refrain of "darling, it was only a dream" keeps him frozen in place with hope that this in fact the actuality of the matter.  All the while, the guests are being drawn in by this fantastical tale of a dangerous dream, impressed by the mind of the bride that could not only project herself into this dangerous situation, but to not be so terrified that she could recount it in such vivid detail.

And in the moment when the tension was highest, she broke the audience's pre-conceived idea of fiction, shattered the bridegroom's hope that it was truly a dream.  How?  By simply producing the ringed finger.  The bridegroom runs, the guests figure out that it was he that the tale was about, and he is apprehended.  The story itself is a build-up to the power of that ringed finger; to leave no doubt that this man is guilty.  She played the bridegroom and the guests beautifully with her storytelling, but I do believe that the narration itself could have been avoided if the bride had simply shown her father the powerful evidence that the ringed finger proved to be in the end.

[shoaib.a.rashid]

I think both Clay and Lucas are missing a crucial point in this story. The text says that the miller “wished that she [his daughter] was provided for and well married.” This sounds like a father who cared about his daughter, not one who wanted to use her for his own monetary gain. The text also says “the girl told her father everything, just as it had happened.” This would obviously include showing him the one piece of physical evidence she had. Now, would this caring father really try to marry his daughter off to a thieving, murderous, cannibal? Much more likely would be that the father and daughter hatched a scheme to lure the suitor and his band of cronies to a “wedding” where the bride’s entire family would also be present. Once the cannibals were trapped and likely sedated from a large meal typically served at weddings the family would forcibly take the cannibals to the courts and have them executed.

I agree with Clay that the storytelling is essential for the tale because it is the main time the girl is given her own voice. For most of the story she is responding to her father, her suitor, or the bird and old woman. Despite her wishes, she is forced first to be engaged to the suitor, then she is forced to visit his home. She is so compelled to do as she is commanded that she continues into the home despite hearing a bird warn her that she is in a murderer’s house. However she finally gets her voice when she tells her father what happened at the suitor’s house. It is very likely that the girl herself came up with the plan to trap the suitor. And the girl uses her voice to tell the public about the things her suitor had done. Without her storytelling she would have simply been a pawn in a story where she was the main character. She would have simply sat by as events unfolded and the story would have been told from her view but she would not have really played a role in deciding what happened.  The storytelling is the vehicle of the girl’s independence.

[madison.m.miller]

I would propose a new twist on the fairy tale -- that the meaning isn't about the daughter or the thievery but the storytelling itself. At the start, the father refuses to believe the story of the daughter because she tells it unconvincingly. All she has is a "feeling" and "voices" to back up her claim that the bridegroom has indeed butchered a woman and stolen the ring off of her finger. However, when she finally can tell the story and have an artifact that puts it in reality -- the finger itself -- then everyone believes her. 

I think the more important question to ask in regards to this story is is the finger she produces the actual artifact? Or is it one she has found in order to give validity to the story? If indeed it is, then the story does not make sense. Why would she have not shown her father this when she first told him of the bridegrooms evil? If not, then where did she get this finger? Whose is it? And did she wrongly accuse a man because she did not want to marry him? 

Either way, the emphasis is on storytelling and how anyone will believe a story if there is some sort of "proof" or truth to the back up the story. It is funny to think that maybe the Grimm brothers are poking fun at even themselves and what they are doing with their stories in terms of creating an identity for Germany. This thought process would bring a level of humor to the story that is quite delightful and very clever. 

On Tuesday, March 26, 2013 9:09:47 PM UTC-5, Clay Alspaugh wrote: