By Julian Dunraven, J.D., M.P.A.
What is your favorite fairy tale? Which character do you relate to most? Is it a hero, or a villain? I am quite serious, and the answers might
surprise you. You may scoff, but fairy
tales are among our oldest and most venerable stories, many predating recorded
history. Each generation continues to
retell them to the next because they encode some fundamental life lessons—important
enough that they survive the ages.
However, not all retellings are equal.
According to my students, my own favorite tale and
character should be Rumpelstiltskin, as portrayed in the modern retelling of
old fairy tales, Once Upon a Time. They claim he is my doppelgänger in both
style and substance. It is not every day
I get compared to a faery imp, so when unrelated people started to make that
comparison weekly, I grew alarmed enough to sample the series—and I am glad I
did. Once
Upon a Time is an adorable and addictive family show that will delight Disney
fans of any age. Like the original fairy
tales it draws upon, the show tries to present moral lessons to its
audience. However, as may be emblematic
of our society in general, its portrayal of the heroic and villainous is
sometimes confused, if not entirely reversed.
For those of you who have not yet had the pleasure
of seeing it, Once Upon a Time is an
ABC television series about classic fairy tale characters (especially those
from Disney) whom have been sent into our world via a curse, and are unaware of
their fairy tale origins. Rumpelstiltskin,
played by Robert Carlyle, is a powerful sorcerer who, in our world, is a
meticulously polite attorney, always impeccably dressed in a suit, sporting
long hair, a walking stick, flashy jewelry, and ever willing to offer his considerable
services—both legal and magical—with the understanding that everything comes at
a price. After seeing his character, I
decided that I quite liked such an apt comparison.
What began to disturb me, though, was that the show
portrayed him as a villain. Yet, in virtually every episode, he ends up saving whichever
hapless characters manage to get themselves into trouble, usually due to their
own ineptitude or foolish attempts to hide unpleasant truths from one another. That would normally warrant heroic
laurels. However, it seems real heroes
fly to the rescue with no expectation or thought of reward; they dedicate their
power and efforts to the good of others simply because other people need
them. Rumpelstiltskin, on the other hand,
has the temerity to demand payment for his aid.
The other characters inevitably run to him at the first sign of
difficulty, each claiming that they have such deep needs and he has such enormous
power, that it is his moral duty to help them.
He invariably refuses, and offers instead an exchange of value: a favor
for a favor. Although they usually
accept, the other characters hate this, and spend most of their time attempting
to weasel out of their side of the bargains, and vilifying him for expecting payment
in the first place. Perhaps even more
offensive to the other characters is the fact that the few people Rumpelstiltskin
does help without demanding payment are those few dear to his own heart—not those
deemed most important to the greater good of the community.
It seems strange that the ideas of individual
liberty and free market exchanges, once the very foundations of the United
States, would today find themselves representing villainy, whereas utilitarianism
and communitarian obligation now stand for heroics. Is this really the lesson the old fairy tales
have to teach us? I returned to the original
source material to find out.
There are many versions of the “Rumpelstiltskin,” story
in just as many cultures. It is widely
thought to predate recorded history, with origins back in the oral
tradition. Like all such ancient and
enduring cultural stories, it is meant to convey a few fundamental life lessons,
as well as a few warnings.
In most versions of the story, an arrogant miller
boasts that his daughter is better than all others, as she can spin straw into
gold. The king or chief, hearing this,
calls the miller’s bluff. He seizes the
girl, imprisons her in a room full of straw, and tells her that she shall
either spin it into gold by the next day to prove her father’s boasts, or face
execution. Devastated, she falls to weeping
at her impending demise. It is at this
point some impish creature out of Faery enters the room and inquires at the
cause of such distress. It then offers
to help, and promptly spins all the straw into gold, then leaves before dawn. The next day, the flummoxed chieftain insists
upon another demonstration with yet more straw.
The imp once more returns, and repeats its earlier miraculous
performance. Now thoroughly impressed,
the king offers to marry the girl and make her his queen if she can but repeat
her feat once more. Again, the fay
appears and, this time, offers a deal: he will gladly repeat his transmutation
of straw into gold provided she consents to let him raise her first born
child. Giddy at her imminent status elevation,
she quickly agrees. When the new queen
gives birth, though, and the fae creature comes to collect, she balks, and asks
to be freed from her contract obligations.
Moved to pity, the imp gives her three days in which to guess its name in
order to be freed from the bargain. Just
before the third day, a woodsman overhears the creature boasting of its own
strange name, one the queen will never guess, and kindly makes haste to inform
the queen. When the queen thus guesses
correctly on the third and final day, the creature disappears, never to be seen
again.
The tale is meant to be cautionary. It warns against the dire consequences of
arrogant boasting. It also warns that
nothing comes free, and that one must be careful and very clever in
negotiations—or else dependent upon luck and the kindness of others. While the faery is certainly the adversary in
these tales, it is by no means villainous.
Rather, it is actually rather generous. First, it offered miraculous help no one else
could have provided. It offered its
services for a fair and honest bargain, to which the girl agreed. Even when she tried to wriggle out of her
obligations, rather than simply enforce the contract it had, it generously
granted her a new bargain—and it always remained true to its own word. The warning in this tale is not aimed at the
wily fay, but at the arrogance and impulsiveness of humans—an enduring truth
that may explain the story’s universalism and longevity.
Rumpelstiltskin is not the only ancient faery with
lessons to teach humanity, but his behavior is emblematic of most faery
interactions. In all the old fairytales,
whenever the fae enter, they represent idealized concepts of either good or
evil, but always an aspirational step above mortal humans. Through their divine blessings, curses, and
contests, we frame our own struggles for perfection and illustrate important
concepts of ethics, morality, and sometimes just practical advice. This might be clearest in stories from the
Celtic tradition, in which the faeries are nothing short of old deities finding
new form in a Christian culture—but still teaching important lessons.
In Celtic tradition, the fae all seem to follow a
few universal rules, to which Rumpelstiltskin, and his more Celtic incarnations
of Tom Tit Tot or Whippitie Stourie,
are no exceptions. It is easy to
dismiss these rules as mere cultural fantasy.
However, if one keeps in mind that the fae represent an idealized divine
aspect to our cultural stories, the rules that govern such divine beings take
on new importance: they represent a culturally enshrined vision of the divine. How we think the gods interact tells us a lot
about how we think our own societies should behave—and indeed, there is much to
admire.
Perhaps the first, and most easily recited rule of
Faery is that faeries never lie. Given
that they are all practically immortal, this makes sense. In such a society of eternal beings, anyone
dealing dishonestly would quickly find themselves permanently distrusted. This is not to say the fae are completely
honest; they are quite selective with how much truth they reveal in order to
gain advantage, and thus favor cunning and cleverness. Certainly, this is borne out in the tale of Rumpelstiltskin.
Both the human miller and his daughter
lie about her abilities, and she lies again in making her contract for aid—but the
fae never lies. His mistake is one of
arrogance, in thinking he would not be overheard in his gloating—another important
lesson.
The second rule of Faery is an absolute respect for individual
sovereignty. Despite their incredible
power, the fae never use force in their mortal dealing unless directly attacked
or trespassed upon. To fall under fae
power, one must either enter into their territory or consent to it in
negotiation—either way as a result of one’s own will. The fae might use glamour and clever language
to influence that choice, but it remains free all the same. As in the case of Rumpelstiltskin, a fae may
appear with an offer in a time of desperate need, but as they do not create the
circumstances of that need, the bargains they offer remain freely chosen
opportunities, not forced impositions. Even
in attempting to regain their own property, such as the seal-skins of a selkie,
the comb, mirror, or hat or a merrow, or any number of other enchanted items
from an endless variety of fae creatures, despite the clear ability to smite a
human with their power, the fae are inclined to negotiate rather than use
force.
Even so, the concept of property, and negotiations
over it, is integral to all fae interactions and fundamentally connected to
their idea of sovereignty. Indeed, even
the monarchs of Faery exercise such authority only within the bounds of their
own sidhe or hill. Go but a little
further on and some solitary fae crone in her hut will negotiate as shrewdly and
exercise all the same authority as a king in his court. The lands of Faery have
no discernable government or overarching authority. Rather, each exercises sovereignty over his
own property and labor. As a semi-divine
and immortal bunch that, in various tales, has the power to transmute gold,
create bountiful foods, or spawns any number of other objects out of sheer
will, money holds no great value for them.
Rather, their currency is in their property, time, and service. Hence, the ubiquitous favor for a favor that
all fae creatures seem to delight in negotiating.
What is remarkable about this is that, unlike human
reality, the fae never break their contracts.
Indeed, doing so would amount to dealing in bad currency, a dishonesty
that would be ruinous in such a society. Neither, though, do they resort to theft or
force when they cannot get what they want through negotiation. They seem to recognize that all value must be
exchanged for value. Even in the
occasional story of the fae making off with some household item, unless they
are recovering what belongs to them in the first place, they always leave
something of equal or greater value in exchange.
For Rumpelstiltskin, a being able to appear and disappear at will, taking a child to raise would be no great feat. Yet, rather than force his way, he negotiated a miraculous service for the miller’s daughter in exchange for her parental rights. When she then met his further terms for dissolution of the contract, he departed in peace. This reverence to individual sovereignty, property interests, and free negotiation is truly astonishing in an entity portrayed with such terrifying power—and something I fear few humans equally equipped would emulate.
Perhaps the strangest and most foreign idea out of
Faery is its treatment of gifts. In
almost all stories, the fae give and accept gifts with great caution. Unlike a contract, whose terms are well
defined and finite, a gift caries unspecified and open obligations to the
giver. It imposes a debt burden that
must be repaid similarly. As a result,
simply thanking the fae for a gift is a great insult, which frequently results
in their abrupt departure and withdrawal of all favors. It diminishes and dismisses the effort of the
gift with mere words. Instead, the fae
demonstrate gratitude by repaying something of value in kind. Thus, a gift, far from being free, stands as
an invitation to an open and ongoing exchange of debt obligations—the fae
expression of a relationship, and perhaps more honestly expressed than our own.
All of this should be encouraging to any lover of
liberty. It means that deep within our
cultural psyche is a libertarian (and maybe libertine) paradise called Faery. Many of these ideas could have as easily come
from Immanuel Kant, or Adam Smith. As we
discern the shadows of law and economics the old stories reveal about such a
place, we can also perceive the outlines of the free society the Western World
has attempted create to since the Enlightenment. Apparently, we have been planting the seeds
of it into the minds of our children for many centuries—through the faeries of fairytales.
All in all, Faery seems to be a vibrantly free land, full of anarcho-capitalists who all govern themselves according to Kant’s categorical imperative in a state humans have always aspired to but have never quite achieved. Yet the fae exist in our tales to remind us of that ideal. Rumpelstiltskin, certainly represents this, both in his fairy tale and in Once Upon a Time, but the show vilifies him for it.
Contrary to the principles of the old stories, ABC
presents the wild freedom represented by the fae as exactly why such beings
should be feared. For the characters of Once Upon a Time, any power and ability exercised
for one’s own benefit is evil. Instead, all
such ability should be limited to serving only the needs of others—freely. Concepts of sovereignty, property, and
compensation are selfish obstacles to the greater good of the many—and should
be set aside to meet their needs.
To this end, the heroes it casts display an
unrelenting and ruthless tendency to break any bargain, take anything they
need, violate any sovereignty, and even sacrifice any life--so long as they
think it serves the greater good—as defined by them. After witnessing the callous disregard of all
rights practiced by heroes such as Prince Charming and Princess Snow White, one
can easily see the dangers of monarchs and dictators of all stripes. Yet their incessant justifications for such
vile deeds do not draw upon royal right, but rather sound remarkably close to
the old communist creed: from each according to his ability to each according
to his need. If anyone gets hurt along
the way, well, the needs of the many outweigh the injuries to the few. The intent is good, and for that, sacrifices
must be made.
That particular story was told by the USSR and its satellite
states. Although they lasted for less
than a century, they used it to justify mass murder and bloodshed on a scale
never before seen in human history. It is not a tale that should be told again as
anything but a dire warning. For ABC,
however, it still seems to hold some appeal.
Consequently, Once Upon a Time frequently
suffers from an inability to make any clear principled distinction between good
and evil at all. As the final song warns
in another modern retelling of old fairytales, Into the Woods, “Careful the things you say, children will listen.” Despite my initial aversion to being compared
to the fay imp, Rumpelstiltskin, I now take it as a great honor. It seems these strange creatures of our
cultural psyche have been trying to teach us about liberty for millennia. I would much rather children hear
that tale than the one of dreary sacrifice and subjugation to the neediest
offered by the modern retellings.
“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can
understand.”
—William Butler Yeats
