The Three Spinners
Joshua Adkins , William North , & Elijah Dormeus
The Three Spinners
Literary Elements
Irony: The young girl does not wish to spin,yet her mother's lie puts her in a position where she is expected to.
Repetition of 3: In folklore, the number three is thought to be mystical and possessive of certain spiritual properties particularly common in german folklore.
About Wilhelm Grimm
Analysis
Relevance of the Short Story
- Stories involve spinning.
- Exchange ability to spin for marriage.
- Magic number is 3, three rooms for spinning, three days to complete her work, and three aunts to help.
- Born in Hanau, Germany.
- Attended University of Marburg where he studied law and collected folktales.
- Grimm passed away at age 73 in 1859 (Bottigheimer).
- Takes places in 18th century, where German Romanticism is popular.
- Spinning itself is the subject of this tale, which is the German expression of a tradition documented from Ireland in the West to Greece in the East and with an ancestry stretching back to the 5th century b.c. (Bottigheimer)
- Spinning was crucial to the lives of women in 19th century.
- Speaks to a having "domesticated" women/wife.
- Respect amongst classes for work ethic.
- The tale focuses on the praise of hard work and its importance.
- Although the Prince's bride was chosen because of her "hard-work" and "cleverness" the Prince forbid her from spinning again because he thought her beauty would be marred by the results of spinning flax.
Bottigheimer, Ruth B. "Wilhelm Karl Grimm." German Writers in the Age of Goethe, 1789-1832, edited by James N. Hardin and Christoph E. Schweitzer, Gale, 1989. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 90. Literature Resource Center, Accessed 28 Mar. 2017.
Bottigheimer, Ruth B. "Tale Spinners: Submerged Voices in Grimms' Fairy Tales." Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, edited by Suzanne Dewsbury, vol. 77, Gale, 1999. Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=auctr_woodruff&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CH1420027002&it=r&asid=1f20017075fd1080bde89b105c48ae5b. Accessed 28 Mar. 2017. Originally published in New German Critique, no. 27, Fall 1982, pp. 141-150
"The woman was ashamed to reveal her daughter's laziness and said, "I cannot make her stop spinning. She wants to spin on and on forever, and I am poor, and cannot get the flax ("The Three Spinners" 14).
- Although hard work is generally praised by the upper-class they have little idea or tolerance of the sacrifices the working class make in their endeavors .
"The Three Spinning Women." Grimm 014: The Three Spinning Women. N.p., 2 Sept. 2002. Web. 28 Mar. 2017