Saviours with Razors, by Penny-Anne Beaudoin, 4/6
Hair Length
But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her.
(1 Cor. 11:15)
A king is held captive in your tresses.
(Song of Songs 7:6)
Male fairy tale royalty have rather superficial standards in selecting their partners. Basically, you have to be pretty. That’s it. You don’t have to prove your suitability or your moral character in any overt action. A heroine need not slay any dragons or embark on any dangerous quests. Sleeping Beauty stayed in bed for a hundred years, and Snow White was dead for crying out loud, and they still both got their prince. And why? Because they were pretty and they had great hair.
Not only were the lovely ladies of the fairy tale kingdom almost always possessed of blonde hair, but loooong blonde hair. Until recent times, long hair was a symbol of feminine beauty and virtue in many places in the world, including China, India, and parts of Eastern Europe. The loose hair depicted in illustrations of fairy tales denoted youth; older women and married women wore their hair up in elite society, and covered in the working class.
Some of these traditions remain today—long hair is still very much valued in young women, while many young mothers cut their hair. Strict (and some not so strict, too) Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim women also cover their hair at various times in their lives.
We see hair symbolism in more modern fairy tale literature, too—Charles De Lint's Jack of Kinrowan starts with Jackie hacking off her hair, a symbolic precursor to the change we're about to see. Even the recent Disney film Enchanted shows this—throughout the film, Gisele has long, free-flowing hair—until the end. Once she's married, her hair is tied up.
According to Karen Stevenson, the cutting of a woman’s hair, save those taking the veil of a religious order, was considered “deviant,” “punitive,” and “a self-inflicted denial of sexuality” (Contested Bodies, Ruth Holliday & John Hassard eds. Routeledge Publishers, London, 2001, pp 137 - 138.). This is dramatically demonstrated in the Rapunzel story, one of the most adult of the Grimm Brothers’ tales. In the best known versions of the story, Rapunzel herself is a secondary character, much more acted upon than acting.
Taken by a witch in payment for her mother’s stolen lettuce (rampion) Rapunzel is locked away in a tower where she spends her days singing and letting her hair down — quite literally —so the witch can come and go. One day, much to her surprise, she pulls up a prince, and after introductions and some sweet talk on the prince’s part, Rapunzel “placed her hand into his.” Evidently she did a darn sight more than that, as not too long afterward the witch discovers her darling Rapunzel is pregnant.
Furious and heartbroken at this unspeakable betrayal, the witch commits an act of unspeakable violence. She cuts off Rapunzel’s hair. A sexual treachery is punished by a symbolic rape. [To the modern reader, the events leading up to the snipping of Arabella's hair in Pope's satire, The Rape of the Lock, may seem genuinely absurd and yet they are based on a true story. Considered in the context of sexual symbolism, era, and fairy tales, however, the illicit snipping of a lock is perhaps no less violent or frenzied than the witch's hacking off her stepdaughter's hair. - Ed] Rapunzel has been corrupted. She cannot wear her hair long. Only the pure have that right.
But see here! you say. Didn’t Snow White have short hair? Certainly, Snow White is above moral reproach, so, like, what gives?
Well-known fairy tale illustrations of Snow White —including all of those in the Surlalune gallery— feature her with long luxurious locks. It is the Disney version that shows her with short hair, probably a deliberate move to make her look more like the era's ideal of a typical housewife.
In the fairy tale kingdom then, long hair signifies beauty, youth, purity, and goodness, everything a charming prince could ask for in a wife.
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