Analyse af folkeeventyret 'The Rose Tree'

The Rose Tree is a folk tale that takes us through a little girl’s sad life story, living with her father, brother and her wicked stepmother. The little girl does not see her stepmother as a wicked woman but the stepmother is definitely wicked. Behind the stepmother’s kind act in front of the little girl, she is jealous and full of hate inside. She is kind to the little boy which is her own son, and that makes the little girl believe that the stepmother is a kind woman that loves all children even though they are not her own. One day the stepmother asks the little girl to go to the grocer’s shop to buy a pound of candles. The little girl does so but fails to complete the task that she was asked to do. When she returns empty handed the stepmother is angry but does not show her anger to the little girl and offers to comp her hair. As the stepmother comp, the little girl’s long golden hair rolls down to the ground. The wicked stepmother now hates the little girl even more because of her beautiful hair. She tells the little girl to fetch a billet of wood and an axe so she can continue to comp the hair, and in the little girl’s good believe that her stepmother will not harm her, she does so. The wicked stepmother chops off the little girl’s head and then stews her liver and heart and serves it for the rest of the family for supper. This shows a problem that can often happen in families where one of the parents is only a parent for one of the children. There is almost always a bad relationship between two of the family members and it’s shown in a surprising tough way in this folk tale because the stepmother suddenly decides to chop off the little girl’s head. That’s not how these kinds of problems are normally shown in fairytales. Normally, like in the fairytale, Cinderella, the wicked people picks on the girl all the time and makes her life a living nightmare, but in The Rose Tree, the wicked stepmother pretends to be nice to the little girl and then suddenly cuts of her head. It’s brutal and chocks the reader. It only gets worse when the wicked stepmother stews the little girl’s heart and liver and serves it for supper. It’s not a very formal way of behaving.