Rumpelstiltskin

• What can the names that are guessed for Rumpelstiltskin tell us about motherhood? (They’re guesses by a mother.)
  • All these names were invented by Wilhelm, so it’s kinda a peak into what Wilhelm thinks motherhood should be.
  • The themes of the names (included by Wilhelm): women are particularly well-suited as wives and mothers, because they care about human life more than political power, etc.
• Wilhelm edits the story to make a man (Rumpelstiltskin) do some spinning (how strange! for the time, at least).
  • If a man can spin better than a woman, all that women are left to be is a bearer of life.
• Is Rumpelstiltskin a microbe or a virus?
  • Terrorizing the mother and baby.
  • Being able to name it is a way to start to treat it.

Spinning

• Spinning is a bummer, so society made it “women’s work.”
• Then, in Britain, spinning moved to factories. This just industrialized how bad it was, and moved the work to women and younger children.
  • Children developed deformaties and could no longer spin after they passed their “productive prime.”
    • Mostly hip and lower spine deformaties. People had to hunch over.
• The Grimm brothers were kinda fans of spinning as a metaphor for industriousness.
  • The women (who told the Grimms these stories) were not a fan.
    • So there are two voices in a lot of these stories.