Rapunzel

Rapunzel, fairy tale about a young woman who is locked away in a tower and falls in love with a prince who visits her by climbing up her extremely long hair. The story appears in Grimm’s Fairy Tales, a collection of German folk stories published by the Brothers Grimm in the 19th century. Many other versions of the tale exist, including some that predate the Grimms’ story.

Rubadeh in Ferdowsī’s epic poetry

One of the earliest known appearances of a Rapunzel-like figure dates to the 10th and 11th centuries ce in Iran. The Shāh-nāmeh (“Book of Kings”; completed in 1010) by Ferdowsī is considered the Persian national epic and includes the story of Rudabeh, a princess who awaits her lover, the prince Zal, on the roof of her father’s palace. She suggests to her lover that he climb up to her using her hair as a ladder. Zal declines Rudabeh’s offer as improper, instead kissing her locks and using a lasso to pull himself up to her.

Rapunzel in the Brothers Grimm

The Grimms’ version appeared in the first volume of Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1812–15; “Children’s and Household Tales,” also called Grimm’s Fairy Tales). A revised version of the story is found in the 1857 edition. The name of the story’s titular heroine comes from the German word for rampion, a lettuce-like plant whose roots and leaves are sometimes eaten in salads.

In the story, when a pregnant woman craves the lettuce she sees in a neighbor’s garden, saying that she will die if she does not have it, her husband sets out to steal it for her. He is confronted by the garden’s owner, Frau Gothel, who demands the couple’s unborn child in exchange for the plant. Desperate to sate his wife’s desire, the man agrees. Frau Gothel names the child Rapunzel and locks her in a high tower with no door or staircase when the girl turns 12 years old. The tower is accessible only by climbing up the girl’s long hair to reach a tiny window at the very top. Whenever Frau Gothel wishes to enter, she calls out, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair to me.”

One day a prince comes along and hears Rapunzel’s sweet voice singing from the tower window. He immediately falls in love with her and devises a way to reach her after witnessing Frau Gothel’s method of calling out to Rapunzel and climbing up her hair. Although frightened when the prince first comes through her window, Rapunzel soon responds in kind to his love.

At this point, the two iterations of the Grimms’ story diverge. In the 1812 version Frau Gothel (described as a fairy) discovers that the heroine is pregnant and cuts off Rapunzel’s hair, then casts her out of the tower into the wilderness. Frau Gothel keeps the long locks to let down when the prince returns. Upon discovering that his lover has been banished, the prince throws himself from the tower, blinding himself in the fall. He then wanders the forest until he hears the voice of Rapunzel, who has been living “miserably” with their twin children. As they embrace, Rapunzel’s tears of joy cure the prince’s blindness.

In the 1857 revision Rapunzel accidentally betrays her relationship with the prince to Frau Gothel (now described as a sorceress) by remarking, “Tell me why it is that you are more difficult to pull up than is the young prince, who will be arriving any moment now?” When Rapunzel and the prince reunite, not only is the prince’s sight restored in the same manner but also the couple and their twins return to the prince’s kingdom to live “happily and satisfied.”

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Other European variants and legends

The Grimms’ story was likely taken from an earlier German tale, published by Friedrich Schultz in 1790, that evolved from oral tradition and may have been influenced by earlier variants. These include a well-known variant in Italian tradition. In “Petrosinella,” first published in 1634 in Giambattista Basile’s Lo cunto de li cunti (“The Story of Stories,” also called The Pentamerone), the long-haired titular heroine’s name means “little parsley” in the Neapolitan dialect. Petrosinella’s kidnapper is neither a fairy nor a sorceress but an “ogress” who is eventually eaten by a wolf. The French fairy tale “Persinette” offers another spin on the story. In Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force’s version of “Persinette” (c. 1698), after the prince is reunited with the princess and their children in the forest, the fairy who cast them out further torments them by changing their food into stones and their water into crystal, among other supernatural cruelties. In the end, the family is saved when the fairy, suddenly moved by their devotion to one another, materializes a chariot to take them to the prince’s palace.

In itself, the trope of a young woman locked in a tower may have originated with the story of the 3rd-century virgin martyr St. Barbara. According to legend, Barbara’s pagan father kept her in a tower to protect her from unwanted suitors. She rejected his selection of a potential husband. When Barbara professed her Christianity—and her desire to abstain from marriage altogether—her father took her to the local prefect, who ordered her to be tortured and beheaded.

Rapunzel in film and theater

Disney adapted the Rapunzel story into an animated feature with 2010’s Tangled, featuring the voices of Mandy Moore (Rapunzel), Donna Murphy (Mother Gothel), and Zachary Levi (Flynn Rider, an original character who helps Rapunzel escape the isolation of tower life). The story of Rapunzel also inspired the plight of Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) in the 2001 animated comedy Shrek, in which Fiona is locked in a tower to conceal her nightly transformation into an ogre. Rapunzel appears as a character in her own right in Shrek the Third (2007), in which she is voiced by Maya Rudolph.

In Stephen Sondheim’s 1986 musical Into the Woods, Rapunzel is crushed to death by the giant from the folktale “Jack and the Beanstalk.” The musical was adapted into a film in 2014.