Chrizine wrote:
Hm, in Rapunzel I think the prince's blindness was eventually healed by her tears, no? I think maybe the lesson was something about him loving her for her inner beauty first when he couldn't see her and her love being so strong that it could overcome his injury.
Ahhhw, what a sweet idea, but I am pretty sure Grimm fairytales/lessons don't work like this.
I read it up and apparently, according to a research paper called ""Searching for Moral Lessons in “Rapunzel”" by the University of Hawaii, the idea is like this:
"Most important insights about Rapunzel is that she and her lover “act immaturely”. Bettelheim points out that the prince “spies” and “sneaks” around rather than speaking with Gothel, and that Rapunzel “also cheats” by not being forthright with Gothel . (...) Gothel may actually symbolize the need to control our sexual impulses. Cashdan also cites the importance of protecting children from “prematurely engaging in sex,”
It doesn't say anything about why in the end the eyes of the prince were healed though, but apparently after he goes blind, he wanders through the wastelands "for months" before he finds her and she heals his eyes. Maybe he was considered old enough for having sex by then?
(Though by the time he finds her, Rapunzel suddenly has two children. I don't remember that part of the story at all..)
I think this lesson was really wasted on me. I am pretty sure I did not even know how sex worked at that time.
But seeing as apparently people need to write reasearch papers to figure out the moral of grimm stories, I doubt many children really understand and learn anything from it.
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/is too lazy to read back all of it
