Rapunzel(Continued)

by Terri Windling

Rapunzel's story has become part of our folk tradition because its themes are universal and timeless. We've all hungered for things with too high a price; we've all felt imprisoned by another's demands; we've all been carried away by love, only to end up blinded and broken; we all hope for grace at the end of our suffering and a happy ending. The story has additional resonance, of course, for those of us who were given up by one or both of our birth parents, as it does for those raised by parents who are over–protective or over–controlling. In the end, the story tells us, we have to leave the tower one way or another, weave a ladder or leap into the thorns. We can't stay in childhood forever. The adult world, with all its terrors and wonders, waits for us just beyond the forest.

Further Reading:

Short Stories:
"Rapunzel" by Anne Bishop (from Black Swan, White Raven, Avon, 1997)
"The Tale of the Hair" by Emma Donoghue (from Kissing the Witch, HarperCollins, 1997)
"Big Hair" by Esther Friesner (from Black Heart, Ivory Bones, Avon, 2000)
"The Root of the Matter" by Gregory Frost (from Snow White, Blood Red, Avon, 1995)
"The Golden Rope" by Tanith Lee, from Red As Blood (DAW, 1983)
"Rapunzel" by Tanith Lee, from Black Heart, Ivory Bones (Avon, 2000) "Rapunzel Dreams of Knives" by Beth Adele Long, from Strange Horizons (October 17, 2005 issue; read it online here)
"The Princess in the Tower" by Elizabeth Lynn (from Snow White, Blood Red, Avon, 1995)
"Touk's House" by Robin McKinley (from A Knot in the Grain, Greenwillow, 1994)
"The Girl in the Attic" by Lois Metzger, from Swan Sister (Simon & Schuster, 2003)
"Melisande" by E. Nesbit, from Nine Unlikely Tales (Fisher Unwin, 1901; read it online here)
"Thy Golden Stair" by Richard Parks, from Twice Upon a Time (DAW 1999)
"Rapunzel's Exile" by Lisa Russ Spaar (from Ploughshares, Vol. 22, No. 4, and The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, Vol. 10, St. Martin's Press,1997)
"Maiden in a Tower" by Wallace Earl Stegner, from The City of the Living and Other Stories (Houghton Mifflin, 1956)

Children's Novels:
Golden by Cameron Dokey (Simon Pulse, 2006)
The Stone Cage by Nicholas Stuart Gray (Dennis Dobson, 1963)
Letters from Rapunzel by Sara Holmes (Harper Collins, 2007)
Zel by Donna Jo Napoli

Picture Books:
Rapunzel by Alix Berenzky (Henry Holt, 1995)
Rapunzel by Barbara Rogazy, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman (Holiday House, 1982)
Petrosinella by Diane Stanley (Puffin Reprint, 1997)
Rapunzel by Paul O. Zelinsky (Dutton, 1995)

Poetry:
The Poets' Grimm: 20th Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales edited by Jeanne Marie Beaumont and Claudia Carlson, containing fourteen Rapunzel poems (Story Line Press, 2003)
Rapunzel Rapunzel by Janet Charman, containing a cycle of Rapunzel poems (Auckland University Press, 1999)
"Rapunzel" by Faye Kicknosway, from American Poetry Since 1970: Up Late (Four Walls, Eight Windows, 1989)
Disenchantments: An Anthology of Fairy Tale Poetry, edited by Wolfgang Mieder, containing seven Rapunzel poems (University Press of New England, 1985)
"Rapunzel" by William Morris, from The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (Ellis & White, 1858; available online here)
Rapunzel's Hair by Judy A. Rypma, chapbook (All Nations Press, 2005)
Glass Town by Lisa Russ Spaar, containing a cycle of Rapunzel poems (Red Hen Press, 1999)
"The Golden Stair" by Jane Yolen, from The Faery Flag (Orchard, 1989)

Nonfiction:
Out of the Woods: The Origins of the Literary Fairy Tale in Italy and France, edited by Nancy L. Canepa (Wayne State University Press, 1997)
Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales by Valerie Paradiz (Basic Books, 2004)
The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales by Maria Tatar (W.W. Norton & Co., 2002)
Rapunzel's Daughters: What Women's Hair Tells Us About Women's Lives by Rose Weitz (FSG, 2005)
The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm by Jack Zipes (W.W. Norton & Co., 2001)

Music:
"Rapunzel: What the Prince Saw at the Top of the Hair" by Jennifer A. Conner and Tom Trenney, from Organa Americana (Pro Organo, 2005)
Rapunzel: An Opera in Six Acts by Lou Harrison (New Albion Records, 1952)
"Rapunzel" by The Dave Matthews Band, from Before These Crowded Streets (RCA, 1998)

On the Web:
Rapunzel on D. L. Ashliman's "Folktexts" site
Rapunzel on Heidi Anne Heiner's "Surlalune Fairy Tales" site
Rapunzel art installation by Jennifer Steinkamp, 2005
Rapunzel art exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, 2001–2002
Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm, prints by David Hockney, 1969

About the author:
Terri Windling is a writer, artist, and editor, and the founder of the Endicott Studio. For more information, please visit her Endicott website.

Copyright © 2007 by Terri Windling. This article may not be reproduced in any form without the author's express written permission.