Narrating names

Folklore, April, 2002 by W.F.H. Nicolaisen

While they are thus outwardly disguised and thoroughly misunderstood, and therefore not recognisable as the persons they really are, they are indeed their fraudulent names and are engaged in menial tasks suitable for females of the bizarre and slatternly appearance which they have chosen to present to the world. At the same time, however, they not only cling to their own identity but, in the face of their often unbearable humiliation, grow in stature. The "hairy animal," "nasty thing," "ugly creature," "real cure for love," according to the taunts of their co-workers in scullery, pigsty, and turkey yard, secretly in their own rooms, or once a week openly in church on Sunday, dress according to their true status and, since outward appearance means identity in traditional tales, are not recognised in their temporarily restored beautiful persona, in which they inevitably attract suitors compatible with their own true position in life. We may find it difficult to understand why, in several variants of the tale type, persecuted princesses desire to have as their husbands men who have treated them cruelly as kitchen drabs and scullery maids but they, too, like the men smitten, seem to be incapable of reconciling their two major identities, the true and the false, and do not regard as incongruous the pain and shame of one treatment (which they have met with patience and amazing good humour) and the pleasure and adoration of the other. Our first impression needs correction, however, for during the time of their humiliation, which, we must remember, is also a time of safety from persecution, the Tattercoats, Donkeyskins, Caps o' Rushes have acquired the knack of taking their fates into their own hands and of shaping their own destinies by their own exertions and ruses. Though the prince thinks he is going to marry her, in reality, being completely outwitted, he is going to be married by her. Persecuted the princess may be, meek and resourceless she is no more, and thus these tales, despite their unpromising beginnings, turn out to be painfully glorious celebrations of the indomitable power and spirit of womanhood. According to Jack Zipes, you cannot bet on the prince (Zipes 1986) but, I would add, in the end you can always bet on the princess.

It is, however, also worth remembering that, in addition to the personal triumph of the Mossycoats, Katie Woodencloak, All-kinds-of-fur, and the like, their delivery meets or averts the perturbing threat to the accepted and acceptable social order in general because what is at stake in these stories is much more than innocence about to be violated or cruel persecution leading to personal displacement; what is in danger is the comforting, comfortable, indeed traditional, order of things that keeps a structured society from slipping into chaos or being put out of joint.

At the outset of all the variants of AT 510B taken into account for this article, or just before they begin, the social order of the times, with its implicit, expected, nameless, generic hierarchical gradations is intact before first being endangered morally or violently, or both, then turned upside down--the named phase--and finally restored, though not automatically and without a struggle, or without the heroine's willingness to endure hardship on the way--to be Rashie Coats, Donkeyskin, or Wooden Maria, unpleasant accompaniments to the successful negotiation of a rite of passage--an initiation from girlhood and daughterhood into womanhood and wifehood. Thus, a disturbed social world is made whole again, in addition to a motherless, unprotected, pre-nubile girl being driven out of her rightful place in the world and restored to it elsewhere, mainly through her own initiative--the princess turned Catskin becomes a queen.