The Girl in the Tower #
In a rather interesting essay, Allison Laurie examines the meanings of all the variations that have been made of Rapunzal story through history.
But though long, thick hair was often referred to as “woman’s glory,” it was also her burden. Washing it, drying it, combing out the tangles, brushing it (fifty to a hundred strokes a day were recommended in ladies’ magazines), plaiting it, pinning it up, and taking it down took a lot of effort. The gifted children’s writer E. Nesbit dramatized this problem in a 1908 fairy tale called “Melisande: or, Long and Short Division,” where the princess’s golden hair grows so fast that she is almost immobilized. The date is significant, since in the early twentieth century many women could and did decide to wear their hair short. This choice, which now seems more or less inconsequential, was seen at the time as a serious, even dangerous sign of sexual freedom and independence— and often criticized as unattractive and unfeminine. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920 story “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” is a famous exploration of these issues.
In several modern versions of “Rapunzel” the heroine is oppressed by her magically elongated braid, which is so heavy and bulky that she can hardly move about her tower room. In the young-adult novel Golden by Cameron Dokey (2006), she exclaims, “You think this is beautiful?… You try living with it for a while. I trip over it when I walk. Get tangled up in it when I sleep. I can’t cut it.”