Rapunzel’s Tight Dress

The story as it is told

The familiar Rapunzel begins with a craving. A woman looks down from her window into a walled garden belonging to an enchantress and sees a bed of rampion, rapunzel, so fresh and green that she pines for it and grows pale and miserable. Her husband clambers over the wall at twilight and clutches a handful, and the next day she wants three times as much. The second time, the enchantress is waiting. She will let him take all he likes on one condition: the child his wife will bring into the world. When the baby is born the enchantress appears at once, names her Rapunzel, and takes her away.

At twelve, Rapunzel is shut in a tower in the forest with no stairs and no door, only a little window at the very top. When the enchantress wants to come up, she stands beneath it and calls, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair to me." Rapunzel unfastens her braided tresses, winds them round a hook, and her magnificent hair, fine as spun gold, falls twenty ells to the ground.

A prince riding through the forest hears her singing and learns the call. He climbs her hair, and they fall in love. The witch discovers them because Rapunzel slips and mentions the prince. She cuts off Rapunzel's hair and banishes her to a desert, and she lets the same hair down for the prince, who climbs up and finds the witch instead. He leaps from the tower and is blinded by the thorns below. For years he wanders, until at last he hears her voice, and her tears heal his eyes. Many retellings stop at a kiss or a wedding, with no children.

What we can confirm

Rapunzel was tale no. 12 in the first volume of the Grimms' Kinder- und Hausmärchen, published in Berlin on December 20, 1812 (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin). In that text the woman who owns the garden is a "Fee" (fairy). She shuts twelve-year-old Rapunzel in a tower with no door or stairs. The prince climbs up, and "so lebten sie lustig und in Freuden eine geraume Zeit" (so they lived merrily and joyfully for quite a while). The fairy notices nothing until Rapunzel says to her: "sag' sie mir doch Frau Gothel, meine Kleiderchen werden mir so eng und wollen nicht mehr passen" (tell me, Mother Gothel, my little clothes are getting so tight and won't fit any more). The fairy calls her a godless child, cuts off her hair and sends her into a wilderness, where after some time she gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl. The prince leaps from the tower, loses his sight, and wanders for years until he finds her. Two of her tears restore his eyes.

The second edition of 1819 changed that line. The couple "hatten sich herzlich lieb, wie Mann und Frau" (loved each other dearly, like man and wife), and Rapunzel now gives herself away by asking why Gothel "wird mir viel schwerer heraufzuziehen als der junge König" (is much heavier for me to pull up than the young king). The fairy became a "Zauberin" (sorceress). The twins stayed. In the 1857 edition the prince asks Rapunzel to take him as her husband, and she "legte ihre Hand in seine Hand" (laid her hand in his). The Detmold library's exhibit sums up the sequence: Rapunzel is pregnant (1812), dumb (1819), and marries the prince (1857). It ties the 1819 change to the brothers' preface of that year, which says they had carefully deleted every expression unsuited to childhood.

The tale was not purely oral. The Grimms' own 1812 notes cite Friedrich Schulz's "Kleine Romane", volume 5 (Leipzig, 1790), pages 269 to 88, which they say tells it too long-windedly, "wiewohl ohne Zweifel aus mündlicher Sage" (though no doubt from oral tradition). They also point to Basile's "Petrosinella" in the Pentamerone. The University of Nottingham's Manuscripts and Special Collections exhibit says the plant became "Rapunzel" in Schulz's eighteenth-century German translation, and that Basile's and Mademoiselle de La Force's seventeenth-century tales name the plant and the heroine Parsley.

La Force's "Persinette" appeared in "Les Contes des Contes" (Paris, S. Bénard, 1698), according to the Utpictura18 database entry for the BnF copy. Its text has a detail the Grimms dropped. When the prince first reaches Persinette, he proposes to marry her on the spot, she consents, and they complete "toute la cérémonie" (the whole ceremony). Only after that does she find herself "grosse" (pregnant). The fairy spots it at once.

Schulz's own 1790 text, opened on the University and City Library of Cologne's scans, sits between the two. On page 280 the prince grows "so dreist, daß er Heirathens vorgab" (so bold that he spoke of marrying) and wanted to take her at once. "Sie sagte ja, ohne zu wissen, wozu" (she said yes, without knowing to what). Soon "so paßte ihr kein Kleid mehr" (no dress fit her any more), and when the fairy came back Rapunzel complained "daß ihr alle Kleider zu enge würden" (that all her clothes were getting too tight). On page 282 she gives birth to "einem kleinen Prinzen und einer kleinen Prinzessin" (a little prince and a little princess). The tight-clothes giveaway the Grimms printed in 1812 is already in Schulz's book.

So the earliest printed source in this chain married the couple before the pregnancy. Schulz reduced the wedding to a hasty promise and introduced the tight clothes. The Grimms' 1812 text kept the pregnancy and the clothes and left out the wedding. In 1819 they removed the pregnancy clue but kept the twins. In 1857 they added the proposal back.

The facts

• 1812 KHM 12: garden owner is a "Fee"; Rapunzel locked up at twelve; "meine Kleiderchen werden mir so eng und wollen nicht mehr passen"; twins "einen Knaben und ein Mädchen"; prince blinded falling from the tower; two tears heal him. Wikisource Rapunzel (1812), pp. 38-43.
• 1812 notes cite Schulz, Kleine Romane Bd. 5, Leipzig 1790, S. 269-88, "nur zu weitläuftig erzählt, wiewohl ohne Zweifel aus mündlicher Sage", and Basile's Petrosinella (Pentamerone II, 1). same page.
• 1819: "hatten sich herzlich lieb, wie Mann und Frau"; "sie wird mir viel schwerer heraufzuziehen als der junge König"; "Zauberin"; twins kept. Wikisource Rapunzel (1819).
• 1857: proposal; "legte ihre Hand in seine Hand"; he mourns "seiner liebsten Frau"; twins kept. Wikisource Rapunzel (1857).
• 1819 preface: "jeden für das Kinderalter nicht passenden Ausdruck in dieser neuen Auflage sorgfältig gelöscht". Wikisource KHM Band 1 (1819).
• Detmold exhibit: "Rapunzel ist schwanger (1812), dumm (1819), sie heiratet den Prinzen (1857)". LLB Detmold.
• Ashliman (Pitt) names Schulz's 1790 tale as the Grimms' source and lists La Force's Persinette among related tales. sites.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm012.html.
• Persinette: Paris, S. Bénard, 1698; BnF Réserve Y2-8799 copy has a copper engraving. Utpictura18 (Aix-Marseille Univ.).
• Persinette text: prince "luy proposa de l'épouser sur l'heure; elle y consenti... elle acheva de même toute la cérémonie"; "peu de temps aprés elle se trouva grosse". French Wikisource "Persinette", transcribed from the 1711 Amsterdam (Pierre Mortier) reprint, pp. 42-57.
• Schulz 1790, Kleine Romane Bd. 5 (Leipzig, Göschen), "III. Rapunzel" begins p. 269; p. 280: "so dreist, daß er Heirathens vorgab"; "Sie sagte ja, ohne zu wissen, wozu"; "so paßte ihr kein Kleid mehr"; "daß ihr alle Kleider zu enge würden"; garden owner is a "Fee". USB Köln digital copy, images 279 and 290.
• Schulz 1790 p. 282: "kam sie mit einem kleinen Prinzen und einer kleinen Prinzessin nieder". USB Köln, image 292.
• Hunt's translation was published 1884: title page reads "Grimm's Household Tales... Translated from the German and edited by Margaret Hunt... London: George Bell and Sons... 1884". Internet Archive, Boston Public Library copy.
• Hunt 1884 English follows the later text: "how it happens that you are so much heavier for me to draw up than the young King's son"; twins kept. Gutenberg #5314.

Related: What enters the public domain in 2027

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