Despite abundant cultural myths to the contrary, many, if not most fairy tales do not feature a passive heroine, waiting for hero prince to rescue her. "The Nixy" is one such tale. It seems to fall into the "girl saves boy or hero" classification, according to the Aarne-Thompson-Uther system.
What makes the version I've linked to here special for me is that the hero and heroine are torn apart, rebuild separate lives, but ultimately come together. This variant, once again, from The Yellow Fairy Book, seems strangely modern in its willingness to make both the hero and the heroine work as shepherds at one point in the story. The details just seem to plumb the reality of marital devotion, risk, even estrangement -- making the happy ending seem justified and realistic.
The illustration here is by HJ Ford.
19 comments:
Interesting...very interesting... I guess this is an aspect of Literature that I'll have to research. With Literature, there is so much you can learn. Thanks for sharing.
I saw many parts of different fairy tales within this fairy tale. The child as the sacrifice has been seen in many fairy tales such as “Rumpelstiltskin.” I was reminded of “The Little Mermaid,” when the wife went to the witch for help, and left her with a handsome gift, such as when the little mermaid gave up her beautiful voice for help. It was highly common that the wife had to go to the witch three times, as in most fairy tales; three is an important recurring number. I do like it how when the wife cried out, the witch was able to help the couple during the flood by transforming them. It was sad that they both ended up drifting off, but it’s also what makes me like this fairy tale. I found it highly odd, and did not like the fact that when the couple found each other again, they did not recognize their own spouse. This just would not happen. It makes me view the couple as less of a good fit, and not as much in love as I once thought when the fairy tale began. I mean yes, they do end up back together and probably live “happily ever after,” but come on.
Colleen B.
beautiful story. great blog, ive always been interested in the history behind fairy tales but never known where to look
There is definitely a parallel to “Rumpelstiltskin” here. Greed is clearly the driving force in this tale, where the miller’s greed results in the pact, and the Nixie’s greed for gold results in the lovers’ reunion. I suppose the message would be that devotion and perseverance can resolve any marital predicaments. Although the tale explains that the couple is living peacefully and happily prior to his disappearance, perhaps the abduction of the hunter symbolizes a discrete conflict within their relationship—the story does revolve around a secret kept from the son by the miller and his wife. Such a secret may connote a deviation in fidelity: the nixie, representing desire, overtakes the hunter, fulfilling the pact with his father. The hunter’s desire being lustful (as he fervidly pursues a hare, and then skins it just before the nixie takes him), the miller’s desire is greed. Or, perhaps there is a less farfetched secret. Regardless, I agree that the ending is more satisfying than the hackneyed wrap-it-up style of many “happily ever after” tales. Whatever the abduction symbolizes, the wife provides the fix, presenting hard evidence for their love—the most important aspect of the tale.
Josh B.
I am going to look into this! I havent came across a fairy tale that has been like this! thank you for writing about it!
-nikita
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I do see more examples of real world situations in this fairy tale than many others. For example, in many fairy tales people meet each other and fall in love and immediately get married. In this tale there is a sense that the hunter married his wife after a time knowing each other. The love that the wife has for her husband is shown by her constant tries to get him back. She doesn’t give up after one try she keeps trying until it seemed hopeless to ever find him again; knowing he was in the water with the Nixy is very different from being separated in different countries. This can be contrasted with Beauty and the Beast in which Beauty’s father lets her go to what they think to be her death in his place. What father would let his daughter go to death in his place? The only kind I can think of is a selfish, cowardice father that clearly only loves his daughter conditionally – under the condition that it doesn’t put his own life in any danger.
I read this story and while I liked it I was actually caught up in something you had said in the actual blog post. You say, “Despite abundant cultural myths to the contrary, many, if not most fairy tales do not feature a passive heroine, waiting for hero prince to rescue her” and I was wondering...how did it get to be that the stories where women are portrayed as weaklings that need to be saved from either themselves or from another man become more popular than the ones with strong women who are perfectly capable of saving their men? When I was growing up I was only aware of those stories, mostly from Disney, where the main “princess” needed to be saved from doom by her man. In fact, I can remember the first strong woman film that I saw was actually Pocahontas. My favorite part of that movie is when she throws herself between John and her father and basically tells her dad that if he kills John he’ll have to kill her too. Is needed to have a man save a woman merely an American thing or did I just miss out on a whole genre of great stories as a kid?
Wow! I have never heard of this fairy tale but I think it's my new favorite. While I do like the usual fairy tales, even with the weak moronic women, and the equally moronic men, I appreciate a fairy tale where both characters seem to have some actual brains and human decency. It's refreshing.
This story was very entertaining and a real good change to the normal stories we see. It says a good thing to the readers about marriage and about how it is ok for women to be strong individuals and can save the day to. But thinking on the marriage issue, shows that if you keep working no matter what gets in the way you can make it work. This is a story that shows a lot of positives to young men and women who so many times give up when things get hard for them and usually just take the easy way out, and don’t fight for what they want.
John J
Many of the stories that I have read in my Fairy Tales class, I have noticed that a majority of the female characters save the male characters. I agree that the “this variant, once again, from The Yellow Fairy Book, seems strangely modern in its willingness to make both the hero and the heroine work as shepherds at one point in the story,” but isn’t the male suppose to be the hero? Aren’t we supposed to look up to male characters as a hero and not the female characters?
In the story Beauty and the Beast, Beauty saves the Beast and her father. Not only did she sacrifice for her family for her father’s sake, she helped the Beast become the man he was before he turned into an ugly creature. Also, in the story Cinderella, Cinderella did not have to try to slipper on to meet Prince Charming. In fact, she saved him from all the trouble to look for the beautiful woman he danced with at the ball. He did save her from her evil stepmother and stepsisters but she saved him from missing the right woman.
Ashley G.
I whole-heartedly agree with your opening assertion; female heroines are NOT always the wilting, ineffectual violets that most readers (and Disney, seemingly) seem to remember them as. In fact, my first academic paper for this course was on this same subject - more specifically, the empowered, aggressive female.
Take Bell, for instance, from "Beauty the Beast", while she is highly desired and sought after for her virtue and physical beauty, and is wanted as a bride by a seemingly endless number of suitors, she, nonetheless, turns them all down - even when her financial situation makes it quite clear that it's in her best interest to be married to a wealthy man as soon as possible.
And yet, time and time again she rebuffs their advances.
This depiction of an empowered, strong-minded woman who is in charge of her own fate is also evident in another "Beauty and the Beast" retelling, Angela Carter's "The Tiger's Bride". While this heroine's fate is one that is purely sexual in nature, she refuses to give herself to the Beast until the last possible moment, despite whatever pressures or advances he makes on her.
While these fairy tale heroines may in fact be the ones who are chosen, she has the ultimate power of choice.
-Adam K.
To Ashley G., I was wondering what you meant by asking, “Aren’t we supposed to look up to male characters as a hero and not the female characters?” If by “we” you are referring to hundreds of years ago, then I would say that there was a tendency for male dominance in fairy tales. But women were just as capable of doing heroic deeds as men were; I am guessing it just was not as common. These actions were then written about in the fairy tale canon.
Yet, your examples are referring to modern, Disney versions of fairy tales. So I am at a loss as to why you would think that females, especially in this day and age, are not supposed to be considered heroes. In Western society, there is an ever increasing equality of the sexes that is very apparent. So I just think that your assertion against the female heroine is outdated and a bit off base.
I absolutely loved this fairy tale! I have never read it before, but I am sort of a hopeless romantic so I thoroughly enjoyed it. I especially liked how the wife was determied to get her husband back. As mentioned, usually when we think of fairy tales we think of a white knight saving the damsel in distress however, this tale is the opposite of that. We have the wife seeking help to get her husband back. I thought it was tragic how they came together only to be torn apart a second time. I think it was a realistic ending that they find each other again. One sort of gets that idea from the beginning. It seems fair because it was the father's mistake that caused such problems for the son in the first place. It is very justified that the son finds his love again because he is an innocent victim in the situation. I would've liked to have known what happened to the father though.
Heather V.
I was hesitant to read this fairy tale at first thinking it would be all about fairies based on the name “The Nixy.” I am not a person to be into stories that are completely unrealistic but I decided to read it anyway. I wasn’t sure this was going to be like the classic fairy tales but I did find many similarities. The number three was a major indicator. It is such a common number used to represent the significance of an action that most fairy tales have something that happens three times. Another similarity between this story and classic fairy tales is that there is a witch that gives a solution to overcome the wife’s dilemma. Her solution seems extremely random when she tells the wife to do them, but once the wife and husband meet in the end it comes together. The fact that the fate of the son was already determined based on his parents actions is also a classic theme.I thought it was very interesting that it wasn’t a classic but you can still make connections to them.
Kayla P
I have to agree with Corrine when it comes to wondering where these types of fairy tales were when I was a child. I didn’t read many fairy tales when I was younger partly because of this very fact. It has always seemed to me to be an excessive amount of the stories either have a damsel in distress, who is always just sitting around for someone else to save her, or a distressing damsel who is actively getting herself into trouble, and once again needs someone else to save her. Rarely even is it another woman who gets to do the saving!
On just a quick little side note, I also thought instantly of “Rumpelstiltskin” as I was reading through this story. I’m one of those people who cannot see the character of Rumpelstiltskin as an evil guy, nor really can I see the Nixy as one. It’s not the Nixy’s fault that the miller didn’t ask for clarification as to what she was requesting… Though it is a shame that the miller’s daughter-in-law and son were really the ones who had to repay the greedy miller’s debt rather than the careless man himself.
I had never read this story before now. I thought the Nixy and the young boy would fall in love. This was not the case. Instead he marries a human girl, like himself and the Nixy is the villain in this tale. The Nixy was barley mentioned at all and the encounter the boy had under the water was not mentioned in the slightest. It is interesting to think of what might have been, what could have been. The focus is not on the Nixy, for whom the story is named. This is unlike other mermaid tales that usually have the magical being at the center of attention. The story overall was rather short and could have used more detail. I would have liked more details on what the Nixy looked like; how fair a maiden was the bride and what did the prince look like? But this isn’t the only tale that lacks descriptive beauty
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After reading “The Nixy,” I have to say I rank it among some of my favorite fairy tales. The tale includes frequent tragic situations, but resolves to a happy conclusion. It actually bears quite a resemblance to musical harmony. In music, certain note combinations create tension, whereas others relieve it. Certain chords cause tension because the notes form a pattern that conflicts with what your mind wants it to be. Your mind screams out wanting the chord to go one way, but it stays in the same place or does an unexpected turn.
This tale has some of these same qualities. I found myself internally wanting the plot to go different ways. I wanted the hunter not to go near the millpond, the wife to be able to save him, and them to recognize each other immediately. Yet at each event, the opposite happened. I think part of the story’s craft and success lies in creating suspense and following paths that the reader did not want to go. Yet after all the strife, the buildup of tension makes the ending even more emotional than if everything went smoothly beforehand. This is no different from a piece of music relieving tension at the end, which makes the piece even more satisfying than if it had no tension at all.
T390 Andrew S.
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