The Twelve Dancing Princesses - Background

Background

Some who read the tale according to a patriarchal mode of literature may find it unusual that the Princesses are often written as somewhat "sadistic" characters, showing no remorse for deceiving their father, and repeatedly giving their suitors drugged wine to ensure that they will not discover the truth, despite knowing that those who fail are put to death in some variants. However, if we examine the phenomenological gaps of the tale, we realize that almost no variants attribute a reason for why the king is so concerned about finding out where his daughters go, although one variant suggests that it is because their actions "angered their father because it was costing him a good part of his income, and furthermore some people were thinking ill of his daughters" ("The Invisible Shepherd Boy" http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0306.html). We might speculate that having twelve daughters and no male heirs mentioned, the king is in fact seeking to secure an heir for his kingdom--since women won't inherit--and simultaneously end the transgressive behavior of his daughters. We should also consider that in many variants the daughters are locked in their room with as many as nine bolts ("The Slippers of the Twelve Princesses", http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0306.html). Rather than viewing the daughters as "sadistic", we might want to consider that these daughters are repressed by a violent father who in many variants has his daughters beheaded or burned at the stake at the end of the tale ("The Invisible Shepherd Boy," "The Shoes That Were Danced to Pieces," http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0306.html). In this reading, then, the daughters are seeking to manifest their own agency in a way that directly harms no one. It is the father who sends out the decree asking for men to spy on his daughters, and it is the king who puts them to death. The suitors are tools of the father to further dominate the daughters. The daughters are not directly responsible for the deaths of those suitors, for it is the king who kills them.

The Brothers Grimm learned the tale from their friends the Hauxhausens who had heard the tale in Munster. Other versions were known in Hesse and Paderborn. In the Hesse version, only one princess is believed to be responsible for wearing out a dozen shoes every night until a young shoemaker's apprentice discovers that she is joined by eleven other princesses in the revels. The spell is broken, and the apprentice marries the princess. In the Paderborn version, it is three princesses who dance nightly. This version introduces the ruse of the soldier disposing of the drugged wine and pretending to be asleep.

Victorian editors disliked the "do or die" aspect imposed upon those willing to discover the Princessess' whereabouts, and found ways to avoid it. The candidates who failed simply vanished without explanation instead of being sent to their deaths. The garden of trees with gold, silver, and diamond leaves recalls a similar garden in the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh.