The Robber Bridegroom

A finger saves a would-be bride from death. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
This episode discusses sensitive topics. Please listen with care. My
name is Miranda Hawkins. Welcome to the Deep Dark Woods.
Today's episode is ATU nine fifty five or the Robber Bridegroom.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Once upon a time there was a miller who had
a beautiful daughter. When she came of age, he wished
that she was provided for and well married. He thought,
if a respectable suitor comes and asks for her hand
in marriage, I will give her to him. Not long afterwards,
a suitor came who appeared to be very rich. And

(01:01):
because the girl, however, did not like him as much
as a bride should like her bride, she did not
trust him, and whenever she saw him or thought about him,
she felt within her heart a sense of horror. One
time he said to her, you are engaged to marry me,
but you have never once paid me a visit. The
girl replied, I don't know where your house is. Then

(01:25):
the bridegroom said, my house is out in the dark woods.
Looking for an excuse, she said she would not be
able to find the way there. The bridegroom said, next
Sunday you must come out to me. I have already
invited guests. I will make a trail of ashes so
that you can find your way through the woods. When

(01:50):
Sunday came and it was time for the girl to
start on her way, she became frightened, although she herself
did not know exactly why. In order to mark the path,
she filled both her pockets full of peas and lentils.
At the entrance of the forest, there was a trail
of ashes, which she followed, but at every step she

(02:11):
threw a couple of peas on to the ground to
the right and to the left. She walked almost the
whole day until she came to the middle of the woods,
where it was the darkest, and there stood a solitary house.
She did not like it because it looked so dark
and sinister. She went inside, but no one was there.

(02:32):
It was totally quiet. Suddenly a voice called out, turn back,
turn back, you, young bride. You are in a murderer's house.
The girl looked up and saw that the voice came
from the bird, which was hanging in a cage on
the wall. It cried out again, turn back, turn back, you,

(02:54):
young bride, You are in a murderer's house. The beautiful
bride went from one room to another, walking through the
whole house, but it was empty, not a human soul
to be found. Finally she came to a cellar. A
very old woman was sitting there, shaking her head. Could

(03:15):
you tell me, said the girl, if my bridegroom lives here?
Oh you poor child, replied the old woman, Where did
you come from?

Speaker 4 (03:26):
You are in a murderer's den.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
You think you are a bride soon to be married,
but it is death that you will be marrying. Look,
they made me put a large kettle of water on
the fire. When they have captured you, they will chop
you to pieces without mercy, cook you and eat you,
for they are cannibals. If I do not show you
compassion and save you, you are doomed with this. The

(03:55):
old woman led her behind a large barrel where she
could not be seen. Be quiet as a mouse, she said,
do not make a sound or move, or all will
be over for you. Tonight, when the robbers are asleep,
we will escape. I have long waited for an opportunity.
This had scarcely happened. When the godless band came home,

(04:18):
they were dragging with them another maiden. They were drunk
and paid no attention to her screams and sobs. They
gave her wine to drink, three glasses full, one glass
of white, one glass of red, and one glass of yellow,
which caused her heart to break. Then they ripped off
her fine clothes, laid her on the table, chopped her

(04:39):
beautiful body in pieces, and sprinkled salt on it. The
poor bride behind the barrel trembled and shook, for she
saw well what fate the robbers had planned for her.
One of them noticed a gold ring on the murdered
girl's little finger. Because it did not come off, he
took an axe and chopped the finger off, but it

(05:02):
flew into the air and over the barrel, falling right
into bride's lap. The robber took a light and looked
for it, but could not find it. Then another one said,
did you look behind the large barrel, But the old
woman cried out, come and eat. You can continue looking
in the morning. That finger won't run away from you.

(05:23):
Then the robbers said the old woman's right. They gave
up their search and they sat down to eat. The
old woman poured a sleeping potion into their wine, so
that they soon lay down in the cellar and fell
asleep snoring. When the bride heard them snoring, she came
out from behind the barrel and had to step over

(05:44):
the sleepers, for they lay all in rows on the ground.
She was afraid that she might awaken one of them,
but God helped her and she got through safely. The
old woman went upstairs with her, opened the door, and
they hurried out of the murderers down as fast as
they could. The wind had blown away the trail of ashes,

(06:06):
but the peas and lentils had sprouted and grown up
and showed them the way in the moonlight. They walked
all night, arriving at the mill the next morning. Then
the girl told her father everything just as it had happened.
When the wedding day came, the bridegroom appeared. The miller

(06:26):
had invited all his relatives and acquaintances. As they sat
at the table, each one was asked to tell something.
The bride sat still and said nothing. Then the bridegroom
said to the bride, come, sweetheart, don't you know anything?
Tell us something like the others have done. She answered,

(06:47):
then I will tell about a dream. I was walking
alone through the woods when finally I came to a
house inside there was not a single human soul. But
on the wall there was a bird in a cage.
It cried out, turn back, turn back, you young bride,
You are in a murderer's house. Then it cried out
the same thing again, Darling, it was only a dream.

(07:12):
Then I went through all the rooms. They were all empty,
and there was something so eerie in there. Finally I
went down into the cellar, and there sat a very
old woman, shaking her head. She answered, alas, poor child,
you have gotten into a murderer's den. Your bridegroom does
live here, but he intends to chop you to pieces

(07:35):
and kill you. And then he intends to cook you
and eat you. Darling, it was only a dream. After that,
the old woman hid me behind a large barrel. I
had scarcely hidden myself there. When the robbers came home,
dragging a girl with them. They gave her three kinds
of wine to drink, white, red, and yellow, which caused

(07:59):
her heart to stop beating. Darling, it was only a dream.
After that, they took off her fine clothes and chopped
her beautiful body to pieces on a table, then sprinkled
salt on it. Darling, it was only a dream. Then
one of the robbers saw that there was still a

(08:19):
ring on her finger. Because it was hard to get
the ring off, he took an axe and chopped off
the finger. The finger flew through the air behind the
large barrel and fell into my lap. And here is
the finger with the ring. With these words, she pulled
out the finger and showed it to every one who
was there. The robber, who had during this story become

(08:42):
white as chalk, jumped up and tried to escape, but
the guests held him fast and turned him over to
the ports. Then he and his whole band were executed
for their shameful deeds.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
The Robber Bridegroom isn't as well known as the other
tales we've talked about in the show. It was never
picked up by Walt Disney or rewritten for a younger audience.
In fact, it wasn't even popular during the Grimm's time.
This story wasn't included in their eighteen twenty five collection

(09:25):
that was the year their tales began to gain popularity,
and this story hasn't been found in collections targeted at
children past nineteen sixty. Although the underlying theme is about marriage,
some folklorists don't view The Robber Bridegroom as a fairy tale,
but rather as a horror story. The Robber Bridegroom is

(09:49):
one of the most violent tales by the Grim Brothers,
which is impressive considering all of the violence we've already
encountered from Cinderella's stepsisters cutting off their feet, Rumpelstilskin splitting
in half, Little Red and her grandmother getting devoured by
a wolf.

Speaker 4 (10:07):
And if you are.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Reading this grim story in a book, it becomes even
more horrific with the illustrations.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
Fairy tales come with illustrations, and we often see that
moment where all the characters are together being chosen as
an illustrative moment, the moment to illustrate in a story.

Speaker 4 (10:27):
This is folklorist doctor Len McNeil.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
And when we think about this scene in the house
in the middle of the woods, our young heroine is
hiding behind some boxes and there is just straight up
butchery and debauchery happening in the same room as her.
A woman is being murdered, she's being chopped up. Body
parts are literally flying around the room. We can picture

(10:51):
the bloody scene and the moment they go looking and
the old woman comes in and says no, no, no, no,
Come and eat like everyone's there together, right, and we
have it all encapsulated, the violence, these bad people, the victim,
the girl hiding, the tension, woman trying to distract them.
Like that moment just brings all of these things together,
and it's really visceral.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Clearly, the robber bridegroom is incredibly violent, with a gruesome
murder and cannibalism, and doctor McNeil says there's a specific
reason why the Grims did that. It was to make
it extremely obvious that these men, including the future husband,
are evil.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Fairy tales, by definition, are understood to be fairly simplistic structurally.
These are some of the defining characteristics of these tales
is that they don't have long, ornate passages that describe
in detail various things. So if you want something to
have an impact, you have to make it pretty stark.
We need our readers or listeners to know that these

(11:55):
bad guys are bad, like they are not oh ambiguously bad,
They're not just sort of selfish and mean. These are
the worst of the worst. That story has been being
told for literal thousands of years about whoever it is
that we want to be able to hate without nuance,
and it's really interesting to see that motif crop up,

(12:17):
so that we don't have to think, we don't have
to complicate these people, we can just hate them.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Another element that increases the suspense and horror of the
story is that the merchant's daughter has to march into
her fate, despite the feeling of an ease she has.
She has to marry this man her father found for her,
and she has to go see her future husband's house.
Similarly to how she couldn't escape without the old woman's help,

(12:47):
she can't escape the will of the men in her life.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
One of the tropes that we see here is how
powerless women are at the hands of men. So her
father encouraging her towards this marriage that she just does
not feel good about, and then her husband to be
encouraging her to make choices that her gut tells her
do not feel good. Yeah, my house is in the

(13:12):
middle of the woods. You should see it before we
get married. Walk there alone at night through the forest.
It'll be fine. All of these things are going against instinct.
I think that we know historically that men making deals
with other men about marriage is an incredibly common practice
around the world, so a woman's father and a woman's

(13:34):
future husband would often negotiate the terms of her marriage
without her involvement at all, so that's not particularly surprising.
Here we do have the fairy tale elements of come
into the woods, go against your instinct, put yourself in danger,
and clearly he has no good intent here at all.
We get sort of that tension of a woman ostensibly

(13:56):
behaving in a societally appropriate way, but knowing something is wrong.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
The Robbert Bridegroom is a disturbing indeed, and some people
even consider it a Gothic story instead of a simple
fairy tale. In the time of Mary Shelley and Edgar
Allan Poe, the word German evoked feelings of darkness and ominousness,
and that's when the Robber Bridegroom entered the world. But

(14:24):
let's look at the fairy tales. The Robber Bridegroom is
one of many stories that features a murderous husband, and
in one tale type, he's a serial killer. As with

(14:45):
their other stories. The brothers Grim heard the Robber Bridegroom
from Marie Hasenflug, one of the sisters who was a
descendant of French Huguenots.

Speaker 4 (14:55):
One tale that.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Is closely related to the Robber Bridegroom is Bluebeard. It's
a different tale type ATU three twelve, but it could
have possibly better the inspiration for the Robber Bridegroom. The
Grims wrote their own version of blue Beard and included
it in their first edition, but then they decided that
the tale was too French and not authentically German enough

(15:19):
for them to include in future editions. It was very
similar to the tale by Charles Perraut, which was published
in sixteen ninety seven. There's a rich man who is
unlucky to have a blue beard, which makes him so
ugly that.

Speaker 4 (15:36):
All the ladies run from him.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
But one of his neighbors has two beautiful daughters, and
he asks to have one of them as his bride.
The two sisters sent him back and forth between the two,
neither one wanting him for his ugliness. Another reason neither
sister wants to marry him is they know he has
been previously married several times, but no one knows what's

(16:00):
happened to those wives.

Speaker 4 (16:03):
To win their.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
Affection, Bluebeard decides to host the mother daughters and some
of their friends and other neighbors at one of his
country homes. The time is filled with parties, hunting, fishing, dancing, mirth,
and feasting.

Speaker 4 (16:18):
Everything goes so well.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
The youngest daughter decides a blue Beard isn't so bad
after all.

Speaker 4 (16:24):
And that he is quite the gentleman.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
When everyone returns home, blue Beard and the youngest daughter
are married. A month later, blue Beard announces he has
to leave for six weeks to attend to important business.
He tells her to keep herself entertained while he's gone
by inviting her friends to the country house. He hands
her a.

Speaker 4 (16:45):
Set of keys.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
One key unlocks great wardrobes where he keeps his best furniture,
Another unlocks where he keeps his gold and silver plates,
another to his gold, silver, and jewels, and finally the
smallest key, which opens a little closet on the ground floor.
He tells her she can open anything she wants except

(17:07):
for the small closet. If she does, she should expect
his just anger. She promises to do as he says.
Then he gets into his coach and leaves.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
Her.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Neighbors and friends didn't wait for an invite to go
to the country.

Speaker 4 (17:25):
House with the new wife.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
They had been waiting for her husband to leave before
visiting because they were still.

Speaker 4 (17:31):
Frightened of his beard.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
As a new wife begins unlocking everything, everyone is beside
themselves with the treasures for each finery surpasses the one
before it, but the new bride can't wait and heads
to the little door before the rest of the party.
She thinks a moment about her husband's warning, but the
temptation is too strong. She opens the door. It takes

(17:57):
a minute because all the windows are shut, but after
a few moments she realizes the floors are covered in
clotted blood. The room is filled with the bodies of
Bluebeard's previous wives. Terrified, she drops the key. After somewhat recovering,
she picks the key back up and locks the door again.

(18:19):
The new wife notices there is blood on the key,
but no matter how much she tries to wipe it off,
the blood remains, for it's a magical key. Bluebeard returns
from his journey that same evening. He had received letters
while on the road informing him his business matters were
concluded to his advantage. His new wife does all she

(18:40):
can to convince him she's happy of his early return.
The next morning, he asks for the keys, her hands
tremble so much he already knows she didn't obey. He
asks why the small key isn't among the rest. She
replies she does not know. He then pushes her to

(19:00):
retrieve the key.

Speaker 4 (19:01):
Which she does.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
When he asks why there's blood on the key, she cries,
paler than death. I do not know, you do not know,
replies blue Beard. I very well know you went into
the closet, did you not?

Speaker 4 (19:17):
Very well? Madam?

Speaker 2 (19:19):
You shall go back and take your place among the
ladies you saw there. The new wife begs blue Beard
to spare her, but he refuses. Pirot writes, she would
have melted a rock, so beautiful and sorrowful was she,
But blue Beard had a heart harder.

Speaker 4 (19:35):
Than any rock.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
The new wife convinces blue Beard to give her time
to pray before he kills her. He concedes and gives
her half a quarter of an hour. The new wife
calls up to her sister Anne, who is still at
the country house. She asks Anne to climb to the
top of the tower to see if her brothers are coming.
They had made plans to arrive that day, and if

(19:59):
Anne does see them, to give them a sign to
make haste. Three times is Anne and see a cloud
of dust, and three times it's not her brother's. On
the fourth look, Anne sees two horsemen, but there's still a.

Speaker 4 (20:13):
Great way off.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
Blue Beard has no more patience and balls so loudly
that his distressed wife comes down and throws herself at
his feet. He uses one hand to grab her hair
and hold her head back, while the other hand holds
a sword poise to strike her head off. As he's
about to kill her, there's such a loud knocking at
the gate that Bluebeard stops. The gate opens and the

(20:38):
two horsemen enter. Blue Beard recognizes it's his wife's two brothers,
one who is a dragoon and the other a musketeer,
and so he turns to flee to safe himself. But
do two brothers catch him and run their swords through him,
leaving his body where he dies. Since blue Beard has

(21:01):
no heirs or mistress, all his fortune goes to his
new wife. She uses part of it to marry her
sister Anne to a young gentleman who has been in
love with Anne for a while now. She uses another
part to buy captain's commissions for her brothers, and the
rest she uses to marry herself to a worthy gentleman,

(21:21):
who in time makes her forget blue Beard. Perrot's morals
are a bit heavy handed in this tale. He writes, curiosity,
in spite of its appeal, often leads to deep regret,
to the displeasure of many a maiden, Its enjoyment.

Speaker 4 (21:39):
Is short lived.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
Once satisfied, it ceases to exist, and always costs dearly.
Apply logic to this grim story, and you will ascertain
that it took place many years ago. No husband of
our age would be so terrible as to demand the
impossible for his wife, nor would he be such a

(22:00):
jealous malcontent. For whatever the color of her husband's beard,
the wife of today will let.

Speaker 4 (22:07):
Him know who the master is.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
On one hand, Perrot scolds women for their curiosity. On
the other hand, he warns against controlling jealous husbands. Robbers
with colorful beards aren't unusual, though, and appear in several
other tales. Switching back to at U nine fifty five,
there's a Lithuanian tale published in eighteen fifty seven titled

(22:33):
green Beard in the City. There is a wealthy merchant
with a beautiful daughter. The girl says she will only
marry a man with a green beard. In the woods
surrounding the city, twenty four robbers live together. The handsome
captain says he wants to marry this girl, so he
finds the dye to turn his beard green. After coloring

(22:56):
his beard, the captain rides into the city and courts
the merchant's daughter. She likes him so much that he
spends the night. The next day, plans are made for
her to visit him at his large mansion in the woods.
He gives her directions, which she follows on horseback. The
path becomes too narrow, so she dismounts her horse and

(23:17):
continues on foot. Soon she comes upon a small house
with two lions chained.

Speaker 4 (23:22):
Near the door. When she realizes.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
They're not doing anything, she goes inside.

Speaker 4 (23:28):
She enters her.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
Room with beds and flint locks hanging on the walls.
Flintlocks are guns that use the striking of flint to fire.
In the next room is a table with a bird
in a cage hanging from the rafter. The little bird
asks how she got in and tells her that robbers
live there. The bird also warns if she tries to

(23:50):
leave now, the lions will eat her, so she needs
to hide under the bed until the robbers get drunk
and pass out. Then as she leaves, she can throw
a piece of cake to each.

Speaker 4 (24:00):
Lion and run away.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
The girl follows the bird's advice and crawls under the bed.
When the robbers come home, one says it smells of
human flesh, but the bird makes excuses and the robbers
stop asking questions. The robbers have brought home a girl
with them. First they eat dinner, then they chop the
other girl into pieces, starting with her fingers. The finger

(24:25):
with the ring flies out of the carnage and lands
beside the girl hiding under the bed. She puts it
in her pocket. After the robbers drink themselves to sleep,
the girl comes out from under the bed, feeds the
bird some sugar, then feeds the lions the cake as
she flees. But no sooner had she started running than
the lions begin to roar, waking up the robbers. Knowing

(24:49):
it's the merchant's daughter, they take after her, but she's
already reached her horse and is riding safely home. Green
Beard cuts off his beard and devises the plan. He
orders large wagons with large barrels for his men to
hide in. He tells his men to stay they hidden
until he gives them a sign. Green Beard goes to
the merchant's house, pretending to be someone else. While the

(25:13):
two are talking, one of the servants overhears the men
whispering and the barrels and goes to tell the merchant.
The merchant then forces green Beard to sit with the
guard on each side while other men prepare to catch
the hidden robbers. The merchant's daughter calms down and shows
her father and green Beard the dead girl's finger with

(25:34):
the ring. Green Beard, knowing he's been caught, tries to run,
but the guards hold him down. He and all his
men are caught. The girl then leads people to the
robber's house. She keeps the little bird, the merchant keeps
the lions. The rest is divided among the poor, and
the house is burnt down. The robbers all die in prison,

(25:57):
and the merchant's daughter no longer has a desire to
marry a man with a green beard. One of the
morals is to warn women to not be so picky
about who they marry, But not all of these tales
are about marriage.

Speaker 4 (26:14):
One of my favorites, and.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
Perhaps the Saddest Story Ran Across from this tell type
is a Romanian story written by Moses Gastor published in
nineteen fifteen. A poor orphan girl works as a servant
for a rich man. Her dearest companions a little dog
her parents had given her before they died. One day,
the head of a robber band disguises himself as a

(26:37):
servant and asks her to marry him. Feeling something sinister
about the man, the girl refuses. The chieftain has his
fellow robbers kidnapped the girl and her dog, but although
she is trapped in his home, the girl still refuses
to marry him. Fed Up, the head of the robbers
sells her to an innkeeper. This innkeeper robs and kills

(27:01):
travelers and then serves their flesh to his other customers.
Terrorizes the girl by showing her the stolen valuables, the
room where he murders people, and the weapons he uses
for his violent crimes. Later, he brings her a little
boy who he has captured. He cuts the little boy's
head off before cutting the rest of him to pieces.

(27:23):
The innkeeper then forces the girl to cook the boy's
flesh and serve it to the guests. Sometime later, an old, wrinkled,
ugly woman shows up. She's nothing but skin and bones,
maybe wanting to fatten her up to eat, The innkeeper
locks her in the room with the girl. Turns out
it's the innkeeper's mother who has come to punish him

(27:45):
for his wickedness. She tells a girl that to escape,
she has to eat a piece of her dog's heart,
which the girl does. Then the woman rubs ointment all
over the girl's body, which transforms her into a duck.
A little later, when the man opens the door, the
girl flies out to safety. The innkeeper runs from room

(28:06):
to room looking for the girl. Meanwhile, his mother mutters
a magic curse that causes the end to collapse, killing
the man at once. The girl turns around and sees
the ruins. She's free, but since the witch never told
her how to become human again, the story says, she
remains a duck to this very day. While each story

(28:28):
has commonalities, there are different levels of violence to them.
But what about the brother's grim story? As it turns out,
they didn't shy away from the darkness. The version of

(28:50):
the robber bridegroom you heard at the beginning of the
episode was from eighteen nineteen, but that's not the first
time they published the story. The first one, published in
eighteen twelve, is very different, and while most of the
time the Grim Brothers sanitize their stories to be more
appropriate for children, they didn't do that for the robber

(29:11):
bridegroom in the eighteen twelve version. Instead of a merchant's daughter,
there's a princess and she is set to marry a prince.
The prince tells her to visit him in the castle
in the woods. The princess says she was afraid of
losing her way, but the prince says he would tie
a ribbon to the trees to help her find her way.

(29:31):
When she runs out of excuses, the princess agrees. The
princess comes upon a large house the evening. She goes
to visit the prince and an old woman sits outside.
The woman says it is a good thing the princess
has arrived while no one else is home, because the
prince and his robber gang are planning on eating her.

(29:52):
The old woman tells the princess to go hide behind
the large barrel in the cellar. Just then, the prince
and robbers arrive with another old woman. This woman is
the princess's grandmother. The murder her. After the grandmother is dead,
they take off her rings, but the ring on her
ring finger refuses to come off, so they take a

(30:15):
knife and hack it off. The finger flies behind the
barrel into the princess's lap. The prince and robbers decide
to look for it. The next morning, after everyone falls asleep,
the princess sneaks out of the prince's castle and uses
the ribbons to find her way home in the dark.

(30:35):
She then tells her father everything. He immediately orders an
entire regiment to surround the castle. The prince comes to
visit the next day to ask the princess why she
didn't come to visit like she promised. Like the eighteen
nineteen version, she tells him about her bad dream, reveals
a finger, and then he and his band of.

Speaker 4 (30:56):
Robbers are put to death.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Unlike other stories such as Little Red, Riding Hood and
Sleeping Beauty, the Brother's Graham did something a bit different
with this tale. They actually leaned into the elements that
made the robber bridegroom more horrific. That's according to a
paper written by a late German Studies professor in folklorist
Linda Krause Warley. For example, Warley argued, it's awful to

(31:23):
see your own flesh and blood be murdered, like when
the bride's grandmother was killed in the earlier version of
the story. But then when the young woman sees another
young woman, it's worse in the sense that it's like
looking into a mirror. She's seeing her own fate. Another
argument would be the omens of death, like the suitor
using ash to mark the path through the woods, and

(31:46):
even another argument is that the change from princess to
Miller's daughter is significant because in folk tales, Miller's were
usually perceived as devious and distrustful. The Robber Bridegroom has
been adapted numerous times since the brother's grum. Two of
the most well known versions are a novella by e
Dora Wealthy and a novel by Margaret Atwood. Eudora Welty's

(32:10):
novella The Robber Bridegroom was also adapted into a Broadway play,
which was staged for the first time in nineteen seventy five.
Margaret Atwood's nineteen ninety three novel The Robber Bride turns
the tail on its head. She asks the question, is
a bad marriage better than not being married? Doctor McNeil

(32:31):
says this theme has carried its way through time.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
A woman has been intentionally luring three other women's husbands
away from them, and the implication is that she's motivated
by thinking maybe she's sparing them from bad marriages. The
fact that these men could be lured away shows that
their bad husbands are bad partners, and she's doing these
women a favor by dispatching these men from their lives.

Speaker 4 (33:00):
And so we.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
Start to get fairly deep questions that really do stem
from this original tail type nine fifty five. What is
the value of a bad marriage in a time when
women could not own property? Widows could, but women unmarried can't.
So I don't know. Maybe a bad marriage where you
managed to work some poisonous mushrooms into a soup, maybe

(33:23):
that's better. I don't know. I'm not advocating that as
a plan of action in any way. But the ways
that we see women extracting power from these systems that
disempower them are often in the background, with the help
of other women, and sometimes with the help of the supernatural, which,
of course was often an accusation turned against women in turn.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
When I talked to doctor McNeil about this tale, another
way to look at the change from princess to merchant's
daughter is perhaps less significant.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Sometimes it's a merchant's daughter, which maybe changes the class
nature of this, because sometimes it's a princess, and a
princess who might be clever and able to save herself,
still has more resources than a merchant's daughter. But a
merchant's daughter still has more resources than someone living in poverty.
And this seems to be a story that we tell

(34:17):
about people above the poverty line. And that's somewhat interesting
that the majority of the versions would set it in
those two settings, either among royalty or among the merchant class,
because it's getting at a particular type of womanhood where
it's not just hey, take what you can get. You

(34:39):
are at the mercy of everyone. There is this sense
of choice, there is this sense of agency, there is
this sense of negotiation. Right there's her father wants to
make her a good match. He believes that this guy,
whether he's a prince or a bandit or another merchant
or whatever, is going to be a good match. And
then suddenly we get the battle between culture and personal emotion,

(35:04):
gut instinct, all of that stuff. So we're really hearing
something about a level of society that has the luxury
of making this negotiation. If this woman were slightly lower
on the socioeconomic scale, the bandits would have done to
her what they did to their first victim, whose finger

(35:24):
flies off with the ring on it.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
What is also different about the Robert bridegroom story from
other Graham tales is that it shows women looking out
for other women. We talked about a safety net and
little red riding hood when the brothers Grim added the huntsmen.
I think the old woman could also be viewed as
that same societal safety net.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
What I love about this story is that we have
an equally strong theme of clever and intelligent women looking
out for women. The old woman in the house who
encourages the young girl to hide, helps her stay hidden.
When the men go looking for the body part that
flies off, she calls them back to the table and
is like, but don't worry about it, you can get

(36:08):
it later. Come eat dinners ready, And we see them
believing her, and we see the way that works out.
Sometimes that old woman's role is filled by a bird,
which I think is also really interesting. We see a
strong tie between women and birds as messengers of goodness
and things like that. And the young woman succeeds her,
they allow her to tell the story of her dream,

(36:30):
dismissing whatever she might be saying as meaningless until it's
too late for it to be meaningless. So we have
two opposing messages about the power of women in the story,
and I think that's one of the things that has
made it stick around so long despite being so bizarre.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
The Robber Bridegroom a horror story or a fairy tale
in the end, maybe it's a little bit of both.
Next time, the end is in sight as we visit
the absolute darkest tale of the Brother's grim in the
final The Deep Dark Woods is a production of School

(37:10):
of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It was created, written, and
hosted by me Miranda Hawkins. This episode was produced by
mikeyl June with senior producer Gabby Watts. Executive producers are
Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, el C Crowley, and Maya Howard.
Stories were voiced by Julia Christgau. Theme song was composed

(37:33):
by Jesse Niswanger, This episode was sound designed and mixed.

Speaker 4 (37:37):
By Chris Childs.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
You can follow the show on Instagram at School of
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