Robber Bridegroom History

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The evolution of “The Robber Bridegroom” “The Robber Bridegroom” is more than the Grimm Brother’s tale; it is a specific type, with multiple variations identified by Aarne-Thompson-Uther’s (ATU) classification system in tale type A955. Here, the ATU system is used for ease in locating similar tales, rather than a rigid adherence to ATU’s criteria, and is supplemented by Maria Tartar’s grouping of “Bluebeard,” “Fitcher’s Bird,” and “The Robber Bridegroom” variations in The Classic Fairy Tales. ATU has located two prominent variants of the tale: the aforementioned “The Robber Bridegroom” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales and “Mr. Fox” by Joseph Jacobs in English Fairy Tales. These texts were selected due to their early circulation …show more content…
Even the early versions of the text are identified as empowering for women by famously feminist authors Tartar and Atwood, with Tartar categorizing the tale as an original version of “Bluebeard” which emphasizes a husband’s murderous violence and celebrates a wife’s heroism (rather than punishing her curiosity, as in versions from Charles Perrault onward), tackling justified fears of sex and marriage. Furthermore, she considers the tale as typified by a quote by Atwood, firmly cementing its pro-women stance: “The unexpurgated Grimm’s Fairy Tales contain a number of fairy tales in which women are not only the central characters but win by using their own intelligence.” With the early variations already considered empowering due to their brave and clever heroines, witnessing a horrifying murder and then bringing the murderer to justice, later adaptions evolve by presenting female characters as villains, a move summarized by Atwood as “Equality means equally bad as well as equally good.” The Robber Bride best exemplifies this declaration with its courageous group of female friends and the eponymous villainess coexisting in one

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