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    The Rumpelstiltskin Problem
    The Rumpelstiltskin Problem
    The Rumpelstiltskin Problem
    Ebook117 pages1 hour

    The Rumpelstiltskin Problem

    By Vivian Vande Velde

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Have you ever wondered just what was going on when that odd little man with the long name stepped up and volunteered to spin straw into gold for the miller’s daughter? If you stop and think about it, there are some very peculiar and rather hard-to-explain components to the story.
    Vivian Vande Velde has wondered too, and she’s come up with these six alternative versions of the old legend. A bevy of miller’s daughters confront their perilous situation in very different ways — sometimes comic, sometimes scary. Most of the time, it’s the daughter who gets off safely, but sometimes, amazingly, Rumpelstiltskin himself wins the day. And in one tale, it is the king who cleverly escapes a quite unexpected fate.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateAug 28, 2000
    ISBN9780547691664
    The Rumpelstiltskin Problem
    Author

    Vivian Vande Velde

    Vivian Vande Velde has written many books for teen and middle grade readers, including Heir Apparent, User Unfriendly, All Hallow's Eve: 13 Stories, Three Good Deeds, Now You See It ..., and the Edgar Award–winning Never Trust a Dead Man. She lives in Rochester, New York. Visit her website at www.vivianvandevelde.com.

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      Book preview

      The Rumpelstiltskin Problem - Vivian Vande Velde

      Houghton Mifflin Company

      Boston

      This book is dedicated to hospice caregivers—

      especially to those angels disguised as nurses

      and volunteers at Journey Home

      Copyright © 2000 by Vande Velde, Vivian

      Straw into Gold from Tales from the Brothers Grimm and

      the Sisters Weird, copyright © 1995 by Vivian Vande Velde,

      reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.

      All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce

      selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin

      Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

      www.hmco.com/trade

      The text of this book is set in 11.5-point Dante.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Vande Velde, Vivian.

      The Rumpelstiltskin problem / Vivian Vande Velde.

      p. cm.

      Summary: A collection of variations on the familiar story of a

      boastful miller and the daughter he claims can spin straw into gold.

      ISBN 0-618-05523-1

      1. Fairy tales. [1. Fairy tales. 2. Folklore.]

      I. Rumpelstiltskin (Folk Tale). English. II. Title.

      PZ8.V55 Ru 2000 398.2'0943'01—dc21 00-027607

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      MV 10 9 8 7 6 5

      Contents

      Author's Note [>]

      I A fairy Tale in Bad Taste [>]

      II Straw into Gold [>]

      III The Domovoi [>]

      IV Papa Rumpelstiltskin [>]

      V Ms. Rumpelstiltskin [>]

      VI As Good as Gold [>]

      Author's Note

      The Rumpelstiltskin Problem

      There's a game we used to play when I was in school that kids still play, though it has various names. We called it Gossip. Somebody would whisper something to one person, who was supposed to whisper the same thing to the next person, who whispered it to the next, and so on until the last person said it out loud, at which point everyone would laugh because little by little along the way bits and pieces had been left out or misheard, other words had been added, details were lost, the sense changed—and the final message was usually totally different from the original.

      That's the way it is with fairy tales. In the beginning they were told, not written down. And over time, as the stories were repeated by different people in different situations, they constantly shifted and changed—the way your story might shift and change, for example, if you were caught putting shaving cream on your cat. How you justified the situation to your parents might differ sharply from what you told your friends, which would probably be different from any explanation you might offer to the cat.

      That's why we sometimes have completely different versions of the same story. But in some cases, so many details have been lost that the story stops making sense.

      That's how I feel about the story of Rumpelstiltskin—it makes no sense.

      The story starts with a poor miller telling the king, My daughter can spin straw into gold.

      We are not told how the miller has come to be talking with the king in the first place, or why the miller chooses to say such a thing. In any case, to my mind the reasonable answer for the king to come back with would be: If your daughter can spin straw into gold, why are you a poor miller? But the king doesn't say that; he says, Then she shall come to my castle and spin straw into gold for me, and if she does, I'll make her my queen.

      Now, no matter the reason the miller said what he did, you'd think that in reality he would have noticed that his daughter doesn't actually know how to spin straw into gold. (Unless she's lied to him. In which case you'd think that now would be the time for her to set things straight.) But still he brings her to the castle to show off a talent he knows she doesn't have—which doesn't sound to me like responsible parenting.

      At the castle the king locks the girl into a room and tells her, Spin this straw into gold, or tomorrow you shall die.

      Not my idea of a promising first date.

      The girl seems smarter than her father. She knows that she can't spin straw into gold, so she's worried. But what does she do? She starts crying. Not a very productive plan.

      Still, along comes a little man who, by happy coincidence, knows how to do what everyone wants. What will you give me to spin this straw into gold for you? he asks her, and she offers him her gold ring.

      Now think about this.

      Here's someone who can spin an entire roomful of straw into gold. Why does he need her tiny gold ring? Sounds like a bad bargain to me.

      But the little man agrees and spins the straw into gold.

      Is the king satisfied?

      Of course not.

      The next night he locks her into an even bigger room with even more straw and offers her the same deal: Spin this straw into gold, or tomorrow you shall die.

      Again the little man comes, again he gets her butt out of trouble (this time in exchange for a necklace—apparently the poor miller has a secret stash somewhere, to keep his daughter in all this jewelry), and yet again the king makes his demand: Straw for gold.

      At this point the girl has run out of jewelry, but the little man says he'll spin one more time if she'll promise him her firstborn child. Why he wants this child he never says, and she never asks. Obviously the miller's daughter is no more a responsible parent than her father is, for she agrees to the bargain.

      Fortunately for everyone, the next morning the king is finally satisfied with the amount of gold the girl has spun for him, and he asks her to marry him.

      Swept off her feet because he's such a sweet talker (Spin or die), she accepts the king's proposal.

      Eventually the happy couple has a child, and the little man suddenly shows up to demand what has been promised to him.

      Again the girl cries, perhaps hoping that yet another little man will step forward to get her out of trouble.

      Although the deal clearly was firstborn child for a roomful of straw spun into gold, the little man now offers the queen a way out: Guess my name, he says, and you may keep the child.

      And if she doesn't guess his name, what does he get, besides the child she has already promised him? Nothing. I told you: This guy doesn't know how to bargain. You wouldn't want to go to a garage sale with him; he'd talk the prices up.

      Now, the queen should be able to guess the little guy's name is Rumpelstiltskin by noticing that that's the name of the story, and—since nobody else in the kingdom has a name—she might go with that first. But nobody in this kingdom is very smart, so instead the queen sends the servants out into the countryside to look for likely names.

      Luckily for her, at the last moment, one of the servants spots the little man dancing around a campfire singing a bad poem that ends with the line, Rumpelstiltskin is my name. Why is he doing this? Because if he was singing Kumbaya, the story would go on even longer than it already does.

      Being from this kingdom of the mentally challenged, the servant doesn't recognize the importance of what he has observed. I couldn't find any names, he tells her. All I found was this little guy dancing around a campfire singing 'Rumpelstiltskin is my name.' You

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