Spinning Tales, Women's Productivity, and Rumpelstiltskin

Several months ago, L asked me what I thought the story of Rumpelstiltskin was really about.   If you're not familiar with the tale, this version by the Grimm Brothers (1810's) is the most well known.  There is a boasting miller, his daughter, a king, rooms filled of straw, a strange magical little man, some questionable contracts, and an ambiguous moral.  A quick Google search reveals just how baffling this strange little story is for most modern readers.

I too was baffled, but with some research skills and access to university library databases I found an amazing article:

Zipes, Jack. (1993). "Spinning with Fate: Rumpelstiltskin and the Decline of Female Productivity." Western Folklore. 52 (1) Perspectives on the Innocent Persecuted Heroine in Fairy Tales: 43-60

The author begins his discussion by noting the long and rich tradition of spinning-related folktales across many cultures, with the spindle symbolizing female productivity and a cultural or community center.  Mothers and grandmothers would tell these tales to their daughters and granddaughters as they spun, making essential products for sewing and weaving for their communities.  As the industrial revolution took hold in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries however, women's economic roles changed.  Essential spinning and weaving tasks that once happened at home were outsourced to the new mechanized economy.  Spinning tales once rooted in the community became un-moored.  Zipes argues that the Grimm Brothers folk tale collection coincides with this transformation.  As a result, their strange Rumpelstilkskin tale is a story caught between women's traditionally productive spinning roles and their more ambiguous roles in Europe's industrializing economy.

To support this theory, the author cites an earlier version of the tale where a hapless maiden can only spin flax into gold (no boasting miller).  In her world, gold thread is pretty but essentially useless.  In short, she's absurdly inept at an essential task.  A little man comes by and promises to help and in doing so, make her an appealing choice for a discerning gentleman.   In return, he demands her first child.  In other words, I have skills you desperately need/want, I'll teach you, but you'll have to pay me.   She says yes and a prince marries her (no more spinning anything into gold).  Once she has her first child, the little man comes back to test her by demanding his payment.  She resists and he offers his name-guessing test.  After two days of failure, she rallies her ladies community who go in search of the answer.  They find it and the little man flies out on a ladle (a women's implement).

Moral of this earlier story: learn to spin so you'll be a valuable asset to your husband and your community; use your ladies network and control your fate.

While this isn't a fantastic moral by modern standards, it's far better than the Grimm version.  In hindsight its easy to see why the version we know is so baffling: it does not reflect a stable, immutable oral tradition.  Instead, it reflects a man's interpretation of a woman's tale amidst women's changing economic roles.  As women lost their economic value, their role in stories also transformed: they became passive, helpless bystanders as men and magical spinning machines determined their destinies.

Makes so much more sense than most modern interpretations!

Gender Roles & Children's Toys: An Intractable Challenge

We've discussed gender roles and children's toys here at this blog (see our Lammily and GoldieBlox posts for example), and it is heartening to hear that major retailers like Target are moving away from gender-based labeling/shelving for their toy offerings.  When considering this gender-toy arena, my response has typically been, "Yes! More gender-neutral toys!  How hard could it be!?"

Well . . .

Over the past few months I've been teaching myself how to sew.  With a sewing machine from the 1960's and fabric from a few of my spouse's old work shirts, I've practiced the basics with a series of simple projects.  For one project, an adorable stuffed robot, my result was less robot and more baby, but I loved it so much I made three.

My plush progeny

One of my cousins has a two-year-old, so I decided to send at least one of the toys to her.  Then my feminist blogger mind thought, "I should make sure this toy imparts no gender expectations to the little female recipient."  This seeming laudable and straightforward task immediately presented two problems.

Problem 1:  What do I call these things?

Trying to describe these toys in a gender-neutral way, I immediately ran into language hell.  While "stuffed toy" is accurate and gender neutral, it is just too generic to be meaningful.  I tried "doll," which is also accurate, but as I wrote in an earlier post, technologies (including dolls) are social constructions as much as they are physical objects.  Girls get "dolls" and kitchen play sets, boys get "action figures" and Erector Sets.  This dynamic goes back decades, if not centuries.  If "doll" carries too much baggage, what to call them?   After I told my spouse how the dolls' weighting reminded me of a baby sitting in a diaper, he started calling them "diaper babies."  That's the best I've come up with so far.

Problem 2: How do I ensure this toy is gender-neutral but also engaging?

I originally planned to send the toys off as they are, but then feminist blogger brain got started again.

While I will go to my grave believing that the soft, squishy, cuddly nature of these toys makes them instantly engaging, I will also admit that toys offer children a medium to role play and explore their worlds.  A doll without any features or clothes whatsoever offers unlimited possibilities, but it also fails to reflect reality.  This seems like a major shortcoming.

My first solution was to give them clothes.  My sewing skills aren't there yet, but hey, I'm willing to learn.  However, on further reflection, the clothes solution just adds new problems.  What kind of clothes would be neutral?  Then I considered adding hair, but same problem. Are pig/pony tails gender-neutral?  If I have two dolls in overalls, one with "boy" hair and one with "girl" hair, am I perpetuating a stereotype?  What about neutral hair on two toys, one with a boy face and one with a girl face?  Wait, that just plays into the bow, boobs, and eye-lashes trope (see Ms. Male Character).

Now as I write, I'm wondering whether the blue color (associated with boys) is a problem.  The "make engaging gender-neutral toys" thing is taking a toll on my sanity.  How do we help children learn about their world through play without also teaching them our society's preconceived notions about gender and gender roles?  Needless to say, these unbelievably complex, innocent-looking little bastards are still sitting in my house taunting me.