The Juniper Tree

Cherchez la belle-mère méchante.

A rich man and his wife love each other very much and hope for a child, but are unable to conceive. One day during the winter, the wife is outside under the juniper tree peeling an apple when she cuts herself. Her blood drips onto the snow and she wishes for a child as red as blood and as white as snow.[1] Having said this, her mood improves, and nine months later she gives birth to a little boy who has the very characteristics she hoped for. But in giving birth, the woman dies and is buried under the juniper tree.

Her husband mourns for a time before marrying again. With his new wife, he has a daughter called Marlene. Her mother loves her daughter very much, but loathes the son from the previous marriage and contrives to decapitate him using the lid of a chest. Aghast at what she’s done, the wicked stepmother sets the head back on the body and covers the wound with a handkerchief.

When Marlene gets home, she tells her mother how her brother said nothing when she asked for the apple he had in his hand. The woman tells her daughter to ask again, but if he says nothing, then Marlene is to box him round the ears. Yeah, you know what’s going to happen. The girl knocks her half-brother’s head off.[2] What are they going to do?

Actually, they’re going to cook the corpse and feed it to the boy’s father who greedily eats his son all up, throwing the bones under the table.

As the book wonders at this point, does any of this have anything to do with ethics? Well, killing people, having others assume the blame, and feeding their remains to others might be a little unethical. As for the “meaning” of the story, the first wife would, it appears, be a pre-pubescent girl, which is why she’s initially unable to conceive. (It’s either that or too much praying and not enough sex.) Her subsequent death in childbirth was probably a common enough occurrence among malnourished European peasants. The stepmother is, of course, then in competition with the boy for resources.

The ethics are, I suppose, the abuse of the boy for a utilitarian reason – the survival of the stepmother and, perhaps more importantly, her offspring in a time when resources might be limited. (I don’t buy that whole there-was-a-rich-man opening.) The book talks about what fairy tales reveal about our values and inner selves, and how narratives in general have their philosophical aspects. On the other hand, Western philosophy has tended to be objective and reasoned.

Marlene gathers up the bones in a handkerchief and takes them out to the juniper tree where they are burnt away and from the fire flies a beautiful bird. It gathers various gifts from the locals – a gold chain from a goldsmith; a pair of red shoes from a shoemaker; and a millstone from a miller. The bird then flies back to the house with these things.

The father suddenly feels happy and wants to go outside to listen to the bird while his wife fears that some catastrophe is coming and Marlene weeps. When the father goes outside, the bird drops the chain around his neck. When Marlene goes out, the bird gives her the shoes and she cheers up. Then stepmother, thinking she might feel better if she goes outside, steps out of the house only for the bird to drop the millstone on her head and crush her to death. Then there is a loud crash accompanied by smoke and flames, and when Marlene and her father get outside, they find the little boy is back again. And what do they do when they go back inside happily together? Eat.

As the book says, “And the moral is?” The moral is, I think, a hope which often seems in vain: the punishment of some malefactor. I would guess that the wicked stepmother won the contest for resources more often than she lost it and since this character is common in a lot of fairy tales, the abuse and neglect of stepchildren was quite common. The retributive ending appears to be wish fulfilment on the part of the tormented child. About the only chance of survival children might have would be for the death of the stepmother perhaps, like her predecessor, giving birth.

I would note in conclusion that morals depend on the circumstances in which societies find themselves. When food is scarce, morality is different from times when food is abundant. Even in such times, infanticide was probably regarded as immoral, but the excuses tacitly accepted in a world in which life was nasty, brutish and short.

Tomorrow’s fairy tale gets into Roald Dahl territory with a cautionary tale about playing with matches.

Notes
1. This has parallels elsewhere (e.g. Snow White), but usually there’s a black component. In one Irish myth (although I forget which exactly; some tale about Ethniu, I think), that’s a raven’s feather; in Snow White, it’s ebony. Would I be right in guessing that the blood represents the girl reaching puberty and thus becoming fertile; the snow is semen; and the black component symbolises the body (?)?
2. Hang on a mo’. Didn’t Marlene’s mother love her very much? Surely she wouldn’t let her daughter take the fall for her own crime. Would she? Of course she would. She’s a wicked stepmother. If she doesn’t deceive her own daughter, she’s not doing her job.