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Unit Journal Entry #3 – The Three Spinners

In an excerpt from “The Three Spinners” (pp. 892-894) by Brothers Grimm, the author narrates of a lazy girl named Sarah who hated spinning. According to the fairy tale, Sarah was a beautiful girl, but she disgusted her mother because she could not spin, and this prompted her mother to beat her. One day as her mother was beating her, a queen passed by and overheard Sarah cry. On asking the reason for the punishment, her mother was ashamed that her daughter was lazy and she had to lie to protect the image of her beautiful daughter. Her mother replied, “I cannot make her stop spinning. She wants to spin on and on forever, and I am poor, and cannot get the flax.” By this, Sarah’s mother puts her at risk as the queen has plenty of resources at her disposal, and therefore, by taking Sarah with her, she will not exhaust the materials unlike in her mother’s house.

The Brothers Grimm depicts the need for hard work in women especially young girls, to prevent them from putting their families into shame. The concept of hard work has also been supported by the Italian variant of the “The Three Spinners,” named “The Seven Little Pork Rinds.” In this tale, a mother finds herself in the same situation as Sarah’s mother, punishing her daughter. However, in this tale, the daughter is gluttonous and eats all the seven pieces of bacon, leaving her mother nothing. This angers her mother and punishes her. A passing merchant overhears her cry and asks the reason for punishing her. Ashamed of her gluttonous daughter, the mother decides to lie, claiming that her daughter is ruining her health by working too hard. By doing this, she puts her daughter on the line as the merchant decides to marry her because she is an industrious girl. In both tales, the authors emphasize the need for hard work as they are the desirable qualities for a good woman.

Works Cited

Basile, Giambattista, and Nancy L. Canepa. Giambattista Basile’s The Tale of Tales, Or, Entertainment for Little Ones. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2007. Internet resource.

Grimm, Jacob, Wilhelm Grimm, Jack Zipes, and Andrea Dezsö. The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition., 2016. Print.