The Annotated Frog Prince

Julie Danielson, a.k.a. Jules of the fabulous Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast duo, created a lovely annotated Frog Prince/Frog King webpage when she was in library school. These kinds of projects illustrate how useful hypertext links can be in reading material. The "Quiz" feature is no longer active (and I'm really curious now to find out what it originally entailed) but just about everything else should be in place for you to find out the intricacies of this story that often begins Grimms' fairy tale collections.

I once wrote a poem about the Frog Prince. Reading it gave my friends the feeling of claustrophobia, which was a accurate assessment of how I felt about the story. There's lots to study with layers of meaning (different layers, depending upon who's interpreting the story), but everyone except the Frog Prince's servant, Iron Henry, is pretty irritating to the point of being stifling. The princess is spoiled, the frog is pushy, and the king tells the princess that she has to keep her promise when the reader gets the feeling the princess is too young to be involved in a binding contract. Also, who started the rumor that the princess kissed the frog? At the climax of the story, what frees the frog from his enchantment is not an act of love but one of violence. This is no Beauty and the Beast.

Cajun Princess

Maddy, Disney's next princess

Finding Wonderland reviews the concerns over Disney's project to feature its first Black princess: Frogs, Rejected Suitors, and Things that Make You go "Hmmm."

I have my own issues with Disney chewing up fairy tales while shoving all of the interesting bits under its corporate napkins. Still, I have been rooting for a Black princess for a a long time. I am leery of the potential stereotypes and misrepresentations for Princess Maddy and her Cajun roots. After all, look at what happened with the historical fiction of Matoaka. I hope that The Frog Princess fares better.

Thanks to Fuse for the link.

Folklore about Folklore

1) In The Frog Prince, the princess does not kiss the frog to break the enchantment. In utter rage, the princess throws the frog against the wall. What does it mean that violence, and not love, transforms the enchanted frog? And where did we get the idea that “You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince?” However, I cannot quarrel with this beer ad that uses the “kissing the frog" motif:

There’s an early XXXX ad called “Castlemaine Princess” floating around as well. It features a naive young woman skipping through the countryside talking to the animals and birds. She finds a frog, kisses it hoping for a prince. What she gets is an Australian sheep shearer. It’s his turn for a wish. She turns into a bottle of Fourex Gold!

2) In Hansel and Gretel, Hansel leaves a trail of stones the first two times his father takes him out into the woods. The third time, Hansel’s father is watching him carefully, so Hansel surreptitiously leaves a trail of crumbs from the bread he had in his pocket. The birds eat the crumbs, and the children can’t track their way home. People will mention leaving a “trail of bread crumbs” to find their way back from a new, unfamiliar place. I rarely object aloud (because that would be annoying and idiosyncratic), but I think, “Please, go with the trail of stones instead. They’re more dependable.”

3) For years, I believed that the English versions of “Cinderella” featured glass slippers because Charles Perrault mistook the French word for “fur” (vair) as the French word for “glass” (verre) . Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s anecdote about this alleged mistranslation in his preface to Anne Sexton’s poems about Grimms’ fairy tales, Transfomations, only solidified my belief. It’s pretty cool when there is folklore about folklore, but I get grouchy when people whom I think know what they're talking about... don't. I include myself in this group of "people"-- I get sick to my stomach whenever I find out that I've passed along erroneous information and am haunted by it until I can fix it. It's not a quality, but a quirk. I irritate people when I refuse to "guess" at a statistic and qualify statements with, "I can't remember my source, so don't quote me until I verify it."

If today's topic sounds familiar to you, that may be because I've written about it before:

*Alien Abductions and Glass Slippers
*This is All a Fairy Tale

This all a fairy tale

Many life lessons can be learned from fairy tales. Here are three of the ones I have discovered:

Title: The Frog Prince, or Iron Henry

Synopsis: A princess promises to let a frog eat from her plate and sleep in her bed after the frog retrieves a golden ball from a well. The king makes sure the princess keeps her promises. After the frog gets really cheeky, the princess throws the frog against the wall. The frog turns into a prince. (Note: there is nothing about a transformative kiss in this particular tale.)

Lesson Learned: Contrary to my pacifist upbringing, violence sometimes is the short-term solution.

Title: Rapunzel

Synopsis: A witch allows a pregnant woman to eat a special salad in exchange for the woman's daughter later on. The witch keeps Rapunzel (named after the special salad) in a tower without stairs and daily climbs up the poor girl's long hair as if it were a rope ladder. In an old version, after a prince visits the tower via the long hair, Rapunzel becomes pregnant. The witch feels betrayed, cuts off Rapunzel's hair, and banishes her. The prince is blinded by briars, but has his sight restored in time to view his twin children, whom Rapunzel has raised in the desert.

Lesson Learned: A world of ills can be avoided if I keep my hair short.

Title: Spindle, Shuttle, and Needle

Synopsis: An orphan girl learns from her godmother how to sew and weave. When the godmother dies, the girl inherits her godmother's business. When a prince comes to town looking for a bride who is both "the poorest and the richest," the sewing tools spring to life and create beautiful textiles. The prince is impressed.

Lesson Learned: Take a sewing class. Learn to solder a piece of jewelry. Change a tire. Skills are handy.

From a tee-shirt on Babywit: