The second half of the Crane version of the Brothers Grimmstories included a short story called “The Three Spinsters”. This story is an ironic telling of a girl who
refused to spin, no matter what her mother tried to do to make her. One day,
her mother was beating her for not spinning when the queen walked by and heard.
The mother lied to the queen and told her that she was beating her daughter
because she would not stop spinning and she was running out of flax, so the
queen invited her to live at her castle where there was plenty of flax. The
girl agreed to move into the castle and the queen told her that if she spun all
of the flax that they had, she could marry the prince, but the girl did not
know how to spin. One day, three ugly women walked by the window and the girl
asked them to spin the flax for her. The women agreed as long as they were able
to attend the wedding. Eventually, after all of the flax was spun by the women,
the wedding was arranged. When the prince saw the woman at the wedding, he asked
them about their appearances. The first said that she had such a broad, flat
foot from treading, the second had such a big lip from licking the thread, and
the third said her thumb had grown so large from twisting thread. The prince
saw this and ordered his new bride to never spin again. I thought this story
was ironic because the girl did not know how to spin and she was trying to
cover that up, but in the end she was forbidden from ever touching a spinning
wheel.
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| (Photo of three women spinning. Source: Pixabay) |
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