Children's Literature In Education, Vol. 28, No.

3, 1997

Michael Mendelson is
an associate professor
Michael Mendelson
of English and Rhetoric
at Iowa State University,
where he teaches
rhetorical history and
children's literature. His
publications include Forever Acting Alone:
essays in "Children's
Literature" and "Essays The Absence of Female
in Literature" as well as
a wide variety of
rhetoric journals. He is
Collaboration in Grimms'
currently working on a
manuscript in Sophistic
Fairy Tales
argument theory, a
subject that has
surprising relevance for
children's literature
courses.

There is, in Grimms' Fairy Tales, a remarkably high incidence of col-

laborative effort. We all know, for example, "The Bremen Town Musi-
cians," those over-the-hill animals who join together to scare some
dangerous robbers out of their stronghold and who live together hap-
pily ever after. Then there are the "Six Servants" whose several talents
combine to win them all fame and fortune. There are also "The
Twelve Brothers," "The Seven Ravens,'' the "Six Who Made Their
Way," "The Three Little Gnomes in the Forest," and the not-to-be-for-
gotten seven dwarfs of "Snow White." By my count there are a score
of the two-hundred tales in which collaboration figures prominently,
with another dozen or so in which there exist allies working to-
gether—if not always for the best of purposes. If we were to add to
this list related conventions and clusters—like tales with faithful ser-
vants and groups that mix animals or pair brothers and sisters—we
get about 50 tales, or 25% of the total in which collaboration between
partners is a significant feature of the tale's narrative makeup.1 What
these collaborative stories indicate is that, in many cases, characters
can do more if they work together than they can when they act alone.
Indeed, in many of these tales, accomplishment of any kind is only
possible when individuals bond together in supportive alliance.

It is disturbing, then, to realize that within the corpus of Grimms'

Tales the benefits of collective action are not extended to women.
There is, of course, the occasional wise old woman who acts in sym-
pathy toward a younger heroine, as in "The Robber Bridegroom";

111

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112 Children's Literature in Education

but beyond a handful of problematic instances, female heroines in

Grimms' are on their own, sometimes admirably independent like
Cinderella, or All Fur, or Maid Maleen, but more often isolated and
abandoned in a way similar to such tragic heroines as Medea, Dido, or
Desdemona. So, unlike their male counterparts, Grimms' women
are—in most cases—operating without the benefit of female compan-
ionship, support, understanding, or even contact.

This paper will examine this double standard for collaborative interac-
tion in Grimms' Fairy Tales. To a considerable extent, this effort is
motivated by distinct pedagogical concerns. As a teacher of children's
literature, I look out every year at several classes of 35 students,
mostly women, many of whom are studying to be teachers them-
selves; and I routinely wonder if and how the anti-collaborative bias
that conditions the Grimms' vision of womanhood is perceived by my
students. That is, I wonder if the disparity between an emphasis on
male collaboration and an absence of females in positive working alli-
ances is not influential in a most insidious way. More precisely, I am
concerned that the absence of female collaboration in Grimms' Fairy
Tales serves to substantiate the notion that there is something some-
how threatening in the very idea of women working together, an idea
which seems to be at work in Grimms' but which has no place in any
contemporary milieu.

My primary goal, then, will be to explore in some detail the differ-

ences between male and female collaboration in Grimms' Fairy Tales
and to contemplate the implications of these differences as they regis-
ter with the contemporary reader. Toward this end, I have posited
certain categories of group interaction within the Tales that should
help us to think about the collection as a whole. These categories
allow us to compare specific groups of "boy's tales" with whatever
tales of a similar type exist within the female canon of Grimms'. This
comparative method will also allow us to define the nature of collab-
oration in Grimms' as a whole and, in turn, to summarize the collec-
tion's dualistic approach to the role of personal alliances among
friends as a means of empowerment. Having mapped out and scruti-
nized the specific differences between male and female collaboration
in the Kinder und Hausmarchen, we should then be able to specu-
late about the implications of this disturbing instance of gender ineq-
uity and perhaps even offer a potential response for those, like myself,
who love these tales and would continue to present them to tomor-
row's teachers. My hope is that such an inquiry will prove of signifi-
cant interest to others as they ponder the continued relevance of a
text that remains, as librarians tell us, among the most requested of all
children's books by contemporary readers.2
Female Collaboration in Grimms' Fairy Tales 113

Males at Work Together

In an effort to establish a benchmark against which to measure the
faint efforts at female collaboration, I begin with tales of men in ac-
tion together, tales that can, as I noted, be categorized into several
types or clusters. These general categories include limited or suspect
collaborations, fraternal bonds, and true collaboration. I will, in due
course, take up analogous categories as these exist within the female
canon.

Among the most prevalent examples of collaboration in Grimms' are

a goodly number of tales in which men merely exist in groups to-
gether, with limited collaboration, as in the "Three Little Gnomes" or
the "Twelve Brothers." There are also a sizable number of tales in
which faithful helpers act in support of their masters or friends and
in the process enhance their joint fortunes through dedicated service.
In "Faithful Johannes," for example, a servant is loyal unto death to his
master, who responds in kind and so redeems his servant. If not
strictly a collaboration, both men do act for one another's benefit. In
addition, there are a number of suspect collaborations, which I will
refer to as evil men's groups. In both the "The Seven Swabians" and
the "The Robber Bridegroom," an alliance of villains works toward
evil ends, but these cohorts themselves act as a unified community.3

For our purposes, all such alliances, regardless of their tenuousness or

potential immorality, are significant. At the very least, these tales of
limited collaboration serve to display the possibility of collective en-
gagement, the grouping of men together for a unified purpose. More
importantly, most such tales also exhibit the enhanced power made
possible through collective action. Even wicked alliances can contrib-
ute to this sense of collective potency, as in the case of "The Three
Army Surgeons" who act together to extort a treasure and who then
remain together to share their spoils for "the rest of their lives" (2.60).
In sum, we see repeatedly in these tales male groups working to-
gether toward shared benefits, benefits that include both the guaran-
tee of close communal support and the promise of greater social and
economic power. We see, in a word, the motives for and benefits of
community.

The positive values of such communities are especially notable in the

twenty or so tales that I referred to above as models of male collabora-
tion. One set of tales within this primary group features what we can
call fraternal bonds, brothers or very close allies working together
either for mutual benefit or at least without rancor.4 Think, for exam-
ple, of "The Two Brothers," in which the heroes separate with "a vow
114 Children's Literature in Education

of brotherly love unto death" and come together again in support of

their joint ascendency to power and privilege (1.254); or think of the
celebrated case of Iron Hans, who acts as a father surrogate. There
are, of course, many tales of sibling rivalry in which the youngest
brother overcomes the dismissive contempt of his haughty elder
brothers.5 But these intrafraternal squabbles are fully counterpointed
within the Grimms' canon by a legion of tales that serve to sustain
and defend the possibility of solidarity between men. Evil brothers do
exist, but so do their opposite numbers: friends who work together
toward shared goals.

The aforementioned types of male collaboration (limited interaction,

faithful servants, evil men's groups, fraternal bonds) serve to keep
the image of men-in-action-together before the reader as a potentiality.
The methods of true collaboration, however, are more fully advanced
in another cluster of tales in which (mostly unrelated) men come to
one another's aid or join forces for mutual benefit. A subset of this
cluster involves two allies working in tandem. In "The Gifts of the
Little Folk," a greedy goldsmith travels with a generous tailor who
helps his companion and invites him in the end to "stay with me and
share my treasure" (2.231). In "The Grave Mound," a poor peasant
and a discharged soldier collaborate to defraud the devil. The very
same scenario is played out with three soldiers in "The Devil and his
Grandmother." And in the fabliau-like tale of "Old Hildebrand," a
neighbor helps his naive friend to recognize his wife's infidelity.6

Even more impressive in their spirit of camaraderie are those tales in

which a widely disparate group of characters come together for their
common good. For example, in "The Moon" four young friends offer
separate ideas that combine to help them capture the moon. And in
"How Six Made Their Way in the World," the eponymous heroes with
their unique skills adopt the following motto: "If we stick together,
we'll certainly make our way" (1.298). And, of course, these heroes
do make their way to wealth and status, as do their counterparts in
"The Six Servants." In a related tale, "The Four Skillful Brothers," all
four display remarkable gifts but momentarily squabble about who
has been most instrumental in saving a king's daughter. In a spirit of
true fellowship, these four renounce their claims to the princess be-
cause, as they say, "it's better this way than to be at odds with each
other" (2.100).7

If we combine these truly collaborative tales with the other clusters

outlined above, we find that in a variety of tale-types and through
multiple variations within each category, the Brothers Grimm present
us with a sizable gallery of men at work together, of men providing
friendship when it is needed, contributing to their own common in-
Female Collaboration in Grimms' Fairy Tales 115

terests if not always to the collective good, and enjoying the benefits
to be had when they work in harmony. Given the lifelong collabora-
tion of the Brothers Grimm themselves, this emphasis on working
together is not surprising. When we turn to the female variations on
collective action, however, it is not so easy to find such positive
models in Grimms' Fairy Tales.

Analogous Women's Tales

Admittedly, some of the categories that we posited for men's groups
have representatives within the women's tales. There are, for exam-
ple, a sizable number of what we can call evil women's groups
in which, typically, older sisters and/or stepmothers collaborate to
victimize either a younger heroine or an unsuspecting male. In "One-
Eye, Two-Eyes, Three-Eyes," Two-Eyes is ostracized by her mother and
sisters and forced to flee this all-female community in order to find
sympathy.8 In "The Lettuce Donkey," a huntsman is robbed by several
women working together, one of whom is essentially good but has
been tainted by her association with the other women. As with the
evil men's groups, these tales do indeed depict women in league with
one another; but if such tales are not offset by positive instances of
cooperation, then such a league amounts to an essential inclination
toward conspiracy rather than to merely a dark version of collabora-
tion. Women together in these cases are necessarily a coven rather
than a socially useful alliance.

The fact that the sinister machinations of evil women's groups are so
routinely at work within the family is especially distressing. It may be
that the absence of strong fathers in Grimms' Tales shines an espe-
cially bright light on squabbling among female family members; none-
theless, the depth of rancor routinely displayed by both stepmothers
and envious sisters can be chilling.9 One thinks here of the older
daughters of King Lear as archetypes of the kind of animus that so
often besets sisterhood in Grimms'. And while it might well be ar-
gued that Simpleton, that loutish younger brother of so many tales, is
also victimized regularly by his family, there is, in such well-known
tales as "The Juniper Tree," "Mother Holle," and "Cinderella," a rev-
elry in persecution that serves to transform quotidian anxieties over
See Karen E. Rowe, maternal authority and sibling rivalry into the presentiment of almost
"Feminism and Fairy demonic female despotism.10
Tales"

Along with the female versions of the evil group, we can also find in
the women's canon the equivalent of the male helper, equivalents
who appear in the figures of the loyal maiden and the wise woman.11
Curiously, however, the figure of the maiden helper works primarily
in service of male companions, so that this cluster cannot be consid-
116 Children's Literature in Education

ered an instance of females cooperating with one another. The con-

vention of the wise woman and its relation to our theme of female
collaboration is more complex. In "Mother Holle," for example, there
is indeed a helpful crone who rewards the industrious heroine with
wealth, but it would be hard to call their relationship a collaborative
one since they do not act together.12 Alternatively, in "The Robber
Bridegroom," a wise woman certainly does work with the heroine,
but she is also powerless to prevent the murder of another innocent
woman. There is in this tale the hint of a more positive paradigm, but
the potential power of the female alliance is, at best, circumscribed.
In other examples, such as the "The Goose Girl at the Spring," the
wise woman does nurture her charge, but she may also transform
other young women into geese (see 2.222); and in "The Nixie of the
Mill Pond," a wise woman helps the heroine retrieve her husband
from the nixie's pond, but she also immediately separates this woman
from her spouse once he is safe. What I would suggest is that the wise
woman is routinely a helper; but her relation to other women is typ-
ically ambiguous, tempered with the kind of complexity that serves to
problematize almost all interaction between females in Grimms'.

Such complexity is also a feature of those few tales in the collection

that do concentrate on women working together. I would place three
of the two-hundred tales in this quasi-collaborative category, including
"Fichter's Bird," "Snow White and Rose Red," and "The Worn-Out
Dancing Shoes."13 "Fichter's Bird" is a variant of "Bluebeard" that en-
hances the connection between the three sisters beyond Perrault's
version by depicting the youngest sister as the saviour of her foolish
siblings. And yet, the youngest sister actually acts alone here and, in
fact, it is her brother and his relatives (males?) who arrive en masse
to save the day; so real collaboration between sisters is at a minimum.
On the other hand, the sisters in "Snow White and Rose Red" are
shown not just playing together but also acting together to save first a
bear, then a dwarf. Indeed, these two children are so close that they
swear "never [to] leave each other" (2.163). Yet this very closeness
Bruno Bettelheim, The fosters a Jungian reading of the tale (similar to Bettelheim's interpreta-
Uses of Enchantment, tion of "Brother and Sister") in which Snow White is the quiet, do-
pp. 78-83
mestic half and Rose Red the more active, outgoing half of a single
being.14 The composite nature of these heroines makes it more diffi-
cult to see their interplay as truly collaborative, a difficulty enhanced
by the fact that the two share virtually the same reward (a prince and
his clone of a brother) in the end.15 Despite its interpretive uncertain-
ties, however, this tale is the most effective portrait in the canon of
females in happy, fruitful alliance. The sense of identity between
seemingly distinct individuals is also at play in "The Worn-Out Danc-
ing Shoes," a variation on the classic tale of "The Twelve Dancing
Female Collaboration in Grimms' Fairy Tales 117

See Iona and Peter Princesses." In Grimms', the twelve sisters do cooperate to both in-
Opie, The Classic Fairy dulge in and hide their late-night forays to an underground palace. But
Tales, pp. 245-252
whereas in the "Six Servants" each of the male colleagues brings a
unique skill to the adventures and operates as a distinct individual
working toward the common good, these twelve princesses remain
almost entirely undifferentiated. Moreover, the princesses are not ex-
actly a positive social force, since their collective dalliance leads to
the beheading of many suitors; though, in truth, their deviance is
forced upon them by a father who would control their lives and pas-
sions.16 Again, however, female collaboration as portrayed by the
Grimms is problematic and potentially criminal. Nonetheless, this
scant group of three tales is the epitome of female cooperation in the
Grimms' collection, an attribution that may, in the end, serve only to
highlight the scarcity of real community among the females of the
Kinder und Hausmarchen.

To this brief list of mildly collaborative tales, I would now like to add
a more extensive cluster—a group that I call problem tales because
what they say about women working together is various, confusing,
and not-a-little disconcerting. Let's begin with the well-known tale of
"The Three Spinners" in which three old women happily cooperate to
help a young girl spin flax and win a prince. And yet the helpers
themselves are all deformed by their activity, and the maiden, upon
the successful completion of her task, immediately eschews any fu-
ture involvement in the cooperative work that won her her prize. In
"Little Red Cap" (or "Red Riding Hood"), both Red Cap and her
mother cooperate in an effort to bring food to the grandmother, and
(in Grimms' version) Red Cap and grandmother cooperate to drown
the hungry wolf (1.113-14). But again this collaboration is prob-
lematized by the fact that Red Cap herself is initially the agent of her
grandmother's death: she promises to cooperate ("I'll do just what
you say", she tells her mother; 1. 111), but she doesn't fulfill that
promise. In "Snow White," there is a kind of collaboration between
Snow White and the various avatars of her dead mother (the hunts-
man and the dwarfs), but these are men; and even if we consider
them the embodiment of the dead mother's guiding hand, is there
really such a thing as posthumous collaboration? In "Sweetheart Ro-
land," the heroine is briefly befriended by "other girls" (1.234), but
only after her stepmother has tried to behead her and "another"
woman has snared her beloved.17

And the list goes on. In "The Three Feathers," the hero is aided by a
group of cooperative toads, one of whom becomes both a maiden and
the hero's wife; but all the other helpers remain toads. And in "The
Twelve Huntsmen," a jilted bride finds eleven other women who look
118 Children's Literature in Education

exactly like her and who all impersonate male hunters in hunters'
garb. Their cross-dressing, however, does not lead to any real bond-
ing, and the eleven allies are forgotten as soon as the heroine regains
her prince. In both of these last two clusters, in the distinctly collab-
orative tales and in the longer list of problematic tales, there seems
always to be something that clouds our assessment of the women's
groups, something that deters comparison of these tales with their
counterparts depicting males at work together.

Defining and Summarizing Collaboration in

Grimms' Fairy Tales
The general thrust of my comparative analysis should by now be ob-
vious: within the male canon, there is a good deal of camaraderie and
cooperation; within the female canon, there is both a scarcity of simi-
lar interaction and an unparalleled complexity in the relationships
that do exist. With some threat of repetition, let me now suggest a
general definition of collaboration that should allow us to make a
brief summary evaluation of this inequity. For our purposes, collabora-
tion in the Kinder und Hausmdrchen is at work in tales that display
joint effort by two or more characters toward a common goal. This
emphasis on combined effort allows us to eliminate those tales in
which characters come together but without any significant action
toward a mutually shared benefit.

Given this standard for evaluation, a cluster of tales such as those with
faithful servants are collaborative because the fortunes of the ser-
vants are so closely tied to those of their masters. The counterparts of
these tales on the female side are not so much those dealing with
loyal maidens (who, as noted, serve mainly men) but rather the wise
woman stories. And yet, it is much harder to apply the standard of
"joint effort toward shared benefit" to these tales since a character
like Mother Holle stands above the struggles of the heroine, dispens-
ing rewards and benefits but not actually working with her female
dependents (see n. 12). With regard to the evil men's and evil
women's groups, there is no significant difference in their collective
behavior; both qualify as collaborators since their goals, while disrep-
utable, are held in common with other group members. But if the
covens of women are not offset by positive models—as is the case in
the men's canon—then collaboration is tantamount to corruption, de-
voutly to be feared as an agent of destruction rather than praised as a
means of support and empowerment.

Other clusters, like fraternal groups and two-friends-in-tandem,

clearly qualify as collaborations. But once again, the comparable tales
on the female side reveal the imbalance between the two canons.
Female Collaboration in Grimms' Fairy Tales 119

While "The Golden Brothers" may be much like "Snow White and
Rose Red" in the virtual identity of the two principals, there are other
tales, such as "The Two Brothers" or "The Boots of Buffalo Leather,"
for which I can find no equivalent in the female tales. Instead, we
have the problem tales, such as the "Three Spinners" or "Little Red
Cap," in which joint action does exist, but it does so under the onus
of some ambiguous detraction, like the spinners' deformity or Red
Cap's disobedience.

Finally, as we turn to the tales of true collaboration by larger groups,

such as "The Six Servants," "The Crystal Ball," or "The Four Skillful
Brothers," we arrive at that cluster that occupies pride of place in the
tales of men-at-work-together. In the "Six Who Made Their Way," all
six contribute their individual talents to a series of adventures that
none could undertake alone. In the end, the king whom they subdue
acknowledges that there is "something extraordinary about them,"
something that is only possible when they pool their talents (1.302).
The result of this collaboration is both personal support and collec-
tive accomplishment. As I noted at the outset, there is a score of such
collaborations in Grimms', with another dozen or so that involve
other kinds of male groupings, so that joint effort on the part of allied
males toward a shared goal is relatively common in the collection as a
whole.

It is not, however, common within the women's tales. "The Worn-Out

Dancing Shoes" and "The Twelve Huntsmen" stand as dominant cases,
but neither displays the collective effort or the mutual benefits of
their counterparts within the male canon. In the former tale, the em-
phasis is really on the valiant soldier who outwits the twelve women.
There is almost no differentiation among these twelve sisters, they
don't ever work together as a group, and there is no shared accom-
plishment. In the latter, the situation is the same: the identical her-
oines never act independently and there is no shared benefit. Indeed
the eleven look-a-like huntresses are simply forgotten in the end.

So, regardless of where we look within this extensive collection for

examples of females collaborating, we find only compromised por-
traits that do little to declare the value of females at work together. We
may, indeed, find covens of women joined together for darker pur-
poses; we may find an occasional old crone who helps another young
woman without really interacting with her; we may find groups with
indistinguishable members or groups who do not actively cooperate;
but we don't find the female equivalent of the two-friends-in-tandem
or the larger groups that support each other's efforts and share in the
mutual gains. Instead, we have a collective portrait in which women
are only seen together when they are acting as a threat. Such is the
120 Children's Literature in Education

image created by the Grimms; and yet, there are, of course, many
traditional fairy tales in which women can cooperate as effectively as
their male counterparts.

There is, for example, a Chinese variant of "Red Riding Hood" in

In Rosemary Minard, which three sisters first escape from the bed of the wolf-turned-
Womenfolk and Fairy grandma, then collaborate to entice the imposter up a tree from
Tales, pp. 14-19
which he can be dropped and killed. They need no huntsman, only
their own cooperative efforts to escape their rapacious enemy. And
Rosemary Minard, in the well-known Japanese tale of "The Three Strong Women," a
Womenfolk and Fairy wrestler is humbled by the strength of the three heroines who all
Tales, pp. 93-105
work together to coach him in the fine points of physical power.
There is simply nothing of this kind in Grimms'. So we might well ask
if Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, in their collecting, selection, and revi-
sion of tales, actively sought to diminish any role for female groups;
or, alternatively, did 19C German culture simply distrust women in
groups?18

Responding to Grimms'
Unfortunately, the critical literature is not much help when we turn to
such questions. There has been, of course, a good deal of critical
Vladimir Propp, commentary on the Grimms' Tales that is of related interest. Vladimir
Morphology of the Propp, in his groundbreaking study of the structure of folktales, insists
Folktale
on the hero-centric nature of fairy tales: i.e., these tales focus on the
Marie-Louise von Franz, exploits of victim heroes (mainly women) and seeker heroes (mainly
Interpretation of Fairy men). Such a focus obviously tends to ignore the role of groups. Sim-
Tales, pp. 1-2
Marie-Louise von Franz, ilarly, the Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz theorizes that all
Problems of the fairy tales "endeavor to describe one and the same psychic fact,"
Feminine in Fairy namely, the coming into selfhood. In this singular process of psycho-
Tales
logical individuation, the solitary figure takes center stage. Max Luthi
Max Luthi, The Fairy also recognizes isolation as an important fairy tale convention; and
Tale as Art Form and isolation, as the obverse of collaboration, is of some relevance to our
Portrait of Man, pp.
135ff inquiry. But Luthi does not acknowledge the gender-specific nature of
Max Luthi, The the convention he identifies and so does not see the inequity between
European folktale: male and female groups.
Nature and Form

More recently, fairy tale scholarship has been both more insistent on
gender difference and more alert to social and cultural traces within
Maria Tatar, The Hard the tales. Maria Tatar makes clear distinctions between what she calls
Facts of the Grimms' the "spear side" and the "distaff side" of the collection and writes
Fairy Tales, p. 116
(italics mine) that, "If male protagonists must routinely submit to character tests
and demonstrate compassion, their female counterparts are subjected
to tests of their competence in the domestic arena—tests that turn
into tasks usually carried out without the aid of helpers." Perhaps
Female Collaboration in Grimms' Fairy Tales 121

Ruth B. Bottigheimer, most helpful to my own study has been the work of Ruth Bot-
Grimm's Bad Girls and tigheimer, who has confronted the numerous instances of gender-spe-
Bold Boys, p. 19; cf.
168 cific roles and exposed the "generally punitive stance towards girls
and women." More specifically, Bottigheimer has identified a pattern
Karen E. Rowe, of silenced and abandoned heroines who are in no position to seek
"Feminism and Fairy collaborators. Other critics, especially those with feminist concerns
Tales"
Kay F. Stone, "Feminist such as Karen Rowe and Kay Stone, have soundly criticized the ste-
Approaches to the reotypical female image in fairy tales, and a growing number of
Interpretation of Fairy writers and editors have helped create a substantial new corpus of
Tales"
active fairy-tale heroines. Despite the gendering of many issues con-
Alison Lurie, Clever nected with fairy tales, however, the absence of female community in
Gretchen and Other Grimms' Tales themselves has gone largely unnoticed. One recent
Forgotten Folktales
Rosemary Minard, apologist for the Grimms even claims that their collection is "rig-
Womenfolk and Fairy orously complementary"; i.e., if women are objects in tales with ac-
Tales tive heroes, men are mere objects in tales like "Sleeping Beauty" and
Jack Zipes, Don't Bet
on the Prince "The Worn-Out Dancing Shoes." My study indicates that such comple-
mentarity is not at work in the realm of collaboration. Men are rou-
Marie Maclean, tinely seen acting in solidarity with other men, while for women
"Oppositional Practices there is a scarcity of sisterly affection and an absence of anything akin
in Women's Traditional
Narrative," p. 46 to real community.

How then do we explain the absence of female collaboration in

Grimms', and why has it received so little critical attention? One pos-
sible reason for the gap in the critical record is that it is much easier
to confront presence, or that which asserts itself within the text, than
absence, that which does not or only slenderly exists. And in thinking
about female collaboration in Grimms' Fairy Tales, we are called
upon to contemplate the absence of a motif (collaboration) which,
conversely, has a very substantial presence in the male canon. Ac-
counting for this inequity is another, considerably more complex mat-
ter. Is it possible that the presence of women's groups in other, tradi-
tional fairy tales has been erased by the Grimms or by their sources?
And if so, what might be the forces, personal and cultural, which
would prompt this erasure? As a student of children's literature rather
than a scholar of folk tale, I am certainly not in a position to offer
much help on this or other intriguing questions related to transforma-
tion and motive, though critics with biographical interests and histori-
cal orientations might well be able to contribute to this provocative
topic.

As a teacher, however, I would like to assert, in closing, the value of

collaboration as a subject for inquiry by classes of students who are
studying Grimms' either in detail or as a representative of the power-
ful fairy-tale current that flows into the history of children's literature.
Once alert to the issue of collaboration, students will naturally begin
122 Children's Literature in Education

to follow certain lines of inquiry. Does the portrait of collaborative

difference reflect the world as we know it? What forces are there
that would constrain collaborative interaction among women, or any
group? What are the effects of such constraint? What conceptions
about gender traits does the collaborative difference in Grimms' foster
or reinforce? Such questions move any discussion from interpretation
to criticism, from an analysis of what is in the text itself to a critique
of the values on display in that text. And naturally, every class will
approach such matters differently. But if my own experience is any
indication, the topic in general can be counted upon to promote a
lively, engaged discussion, a discussion in which diverse viewpoints
surface, interact, and, in the process, stimulate that privileged educa-
tional commodity: new insights articulated in the forum of sponta-
neous exchange.

I would further suggest that we ignore the dual standard of Grimms'

at some risk. For in doing so, we threaten to reenact the misguided,
even misogynistic response of the prince in "The Three Spinners." In
that tale, the prince is so disgusted by the group of female workers
that he banishes them from the kingdom forever, despite the fact that
their collective action had rescued and benefltted his bride. If we—as
readers and teachers—refuse to confront the barriers to collective
action by women assumed by the Grimms', we acquiesce without
comment to a world in which women are not only denied the com-
fort of relations that sustain and nurture, we also withhold from them
their right to alliances that empower in a way that only collective
action makes possible. In the process, and like the prince, we tacitly
endorse a world in which women, strong as they may be in some of
the tales, are forever condemned to acting alone. Such a position is
not one that I think many teachers would knowingly accept.

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the many students in "Myth, Legend, and Fairy
Tale" at Iowa State who, over the years, have contributed to my un-
derstanding of this subject. In particular, my appreciation goes out to
Jill Bodine for her illuminating comments on women's groups in
Grimms', I would also like to thank Lois Kuznets whose impromptu
commentary at a presentation of this paper (at the Children's Liter-
ature Association Conference in Springfield, Missouri; June 1994)
added some new dimensions to this essay.

Notes
1. Among the distinctly "collaborative tales" are numbers 6, 9, 27, 36, 60,
71, 81, 85, 93, 95, 129, 134, 136, 138, 161, 175, 182, 195, 197, 199.
Those additional tales in which acting together figures prominently in-
Female Collaboration in Grimms' Fairy Tales 123

elude numbers 5, 9, 13, 25, 40, 53, 118, 119, 120, 124, 144. Faithful
servants can be seen in numbers 1, 6, 8, 100, 106, 144, while various
kinds of mixed groups appear in numbers 10, 11, 18, 23, 27, 41, 47, 48,
51, 57, 58, 87, 163. I make no claim that these lists are exhaustive; and
there are, as you might imagine, many tales that do not fit neatly into my
admittedly artificial categories. I have left off these lists many tales about
which I could not make up my mind (including numbers 21, 24, 29, 31,
49, 56, 64, 97, 122, 166, 179). My source throughout is Jack Zipes's trans-
lation of The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, v. 1 & 2.
Quotations from the text are by volume and page number (e.g., 2.60).
The numbering of the tales themselves is, of course, standard.
2. Ravi Sharfa, Children's Librarian at the District of Columbia's Free Public
Library, on National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation"; July 1, 1993.
3. In response to a request from one of Children's Literature in Education's
readers, I have eliminated all lists of tales within the text. I will, however,
periodically include such lists in notes for the reader who would examine
my categories for themselves. Among the tales of limited interaction, I
would include numbers 1,6, 8, 9,13, 100,144; evil men's groups include
numbers 29, 40, 118, 119.
4. See numbers 36, 60, 85, 124, 129, 136, 197.
5. See numbers 57, 62, 63, 64, 70, 91, 97.
6. See numbers 182, 195, 125, 195, respectively.
7. See numbers 175, 71, 134, 129, 138, respectively.
8. See numbers 13, 21, 24, 96, 122, 130, 135, 137. There is also a related
cluster of tales in Grimms' that presents individual (rather than groups
of) women conspiring against other women. Some of these tales include
numbers 2, 3, 43, 66, 69, 88, 89, 91. There is, of course, a cognate group
of men's tales, but the incidence of such tales in the women's canon does
seem to me to be higher.
9. See numbers 2, 3, 12, 13, 15, 21, 24, 43, 47, 56, 66, 69, 88, 89, 91, 96,
122, 130, 135, 141.
10. For Simpleton tales, see numbers 33, 64, 97, 142, 165.
11. See numbers 11, 15, 24, 25, 29, 31, 40, 49, 50, 179, 181. For female
helpers working for male companions, see numbers 11, 15, 25, 29, 49.
12. If we compare "Mother Holle" to a tale like "The Boots of Buffalo
Leather" (199), the paucity of real collaboration in the former becomes
apparent. In the latter tale, a king and a soldier work together toward a
single goal: the arrest of a band of robbers; Mother Holle simply com-
mands and rewards her charges.
13. See numbers 46, 161, 131, respectively.
14. Cf. numbers 11,60,85.
15. One of my students, Elizabeth Warner, points out that the two sisters are
never separated and that when the bear chides the two for teasing and
horseplay, he refers to them as if they were one person: "Snow White,
Rose Red, would you beat your suitor dead" (2.165).
16. My own students, many of whom have been exposed to Freud, routinely
find it significant that the princesses escape to their lovers by descending
in a bed to an underground realm in which they travel by two-person
boats to a nocturnal dance where they indulge themselves to the point of
frenzy (hence, the worn-out shoes). To many of my female students, the
124 Children's Literature in Education

authoritarian control over their desires that their father, the king, would
exercise by handing them out in marriage is clearly the motivation for
their nocturnal adventures. As such, the princesses are often appreciated
as bold heroines flouting convention; but they are seldom seen as a cohe-
sive group acting together in behalf of the collective good.
17. See numbers 14, 26, 53, 56, respectively. The next paragraph refers to
numbers 63 and 67, respectively.
18. We do know that the Grimms printed versions of familiar tales that pre-
sented women as less capable than they appear in other fairy-tale vari-
ants. For example, there is a Scottish version of "The Worn-Out Dancing
Shoes" called "Kate Crakernuts" in which the heroine saves a mesmerized
prince who seeks an enchanted castle. See Opies 245-6, and Lurie 60-
73.

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