Respectfully Yours, Rapunzel

Reimagining the Beginning of Rapunzel

If it pleases the court, I maintain the following revisions to the premise of Rapunzel.

The witch wanted a child and knew the young couple nextdoor could/would eventually become pregnant
The witch helped the woman become pregnant; Perhaps the woman even went to the witch secretly for help becoming pregnant (or end the pregnancy)
The witch did something herbally to make it so that the woman would crave rapunzel leaves as soon as she became pregnant. The witch then started growing rapunzel to supply the woman for the craving even before she knew she would be having a baby.
The witch waited and got the news from the happy couple, now stressed out about having enough money to feed both themselves and the baby
The witch knew the husband would be afraid of her powerful nature-based magic and would neither ask for the rapunzel leaves directly nor question (or try to renogiate) her price for them (the newborn child) because he would not want to risk harm to his wife or the baby.
She prepared the rapunzel and regularly monitored the garden for signs of the impending theft; she was waiting for him when he got there. No matter how silently he scaled the wall, she would have caught him.
Perhaps subconsciously he wanted to get caught - he was wracked with guilt for what he knew was wrong (stealing) and also he knew they could not afford the baby.
(It was not that the husband wanted something bad to happen to the baby, but he knew how poor they were and that it would be difficult financially to take care of it)
Perhaps the wife wanted the husband to get caught. She also knew how difficult it would be to raise the baby on their meager income and it was more socially acceptable for the baby to disappear by bargain/kidnapping than it was for the couple to voluntarily give the child away.

Part II: Reimagining

I do not dispute the facts laid out as follows at the beginning of the second paragraph in the extremely abbreviated telling of "Rapunzel" in Beneath the Moon (Yoshitani 37):

Rapunzel grew up to be beautiful
She had long golden hair
She was locked in a tower at the age of puberty approx. 12 yrs
The tower had one room with a window, no door or stairs
The tower was deep in the woods
The tower was surrounded by thorns
The witch required help from Rapunzel to revisit her 'golden' years (pun intended)
The prince heard Rapunzel and saw how to get to the tower when the witch did it

Part III: Reimagining

It is at this point that I diverge from the tale in the following details:

Rapunzel was not singing just for the fun of it or to pass the time. She was not stupid; she knew eventually someone would find her or hear her and her singing was a call for help. She had never seen anyone but the witch so she may never have been told where babies come from or how big the world was by population, but I think she knew other people were out there.
Possibly she wasn't even singing. Possibly she was screaming for help and then one day the prince heard her and thought he would play the hero.
Maybe the witch came down, saw him, told him to finish the job of dispatching with Rapunzel and then he ended up falling for Rapunzel instead.
When the witch eventually comes back she realizes it has finally been long enough and that Rapunzel is about to have a baby of her own because the prince got her pregnant. She is hoping to continue stealing Rapunzel's youth magic for awhile longer and is outraged that they were intimate and Rapunzel was no longer pure. However, what's done is done and the witch is prepared to steal this baby as well if necessary to repeat the cycle all over again.
She banishes Rapunzel to the wastelands AFTER she has the "twins" (Warner 135) and has hidden them somewhere and then pushes the prince from the tower because he won't sleep with her, proving even further that she is past her prime and cannot bear any children.
The prince lands in the thorns and injures his testicles, not his eyes (M.Goldman suggestion), as most versions say, and is thus prevented from bearing future children as punishment for "marrying" Rapunzel without witnesses before the lord, etc. or the blessing of her parents or the witch.
The prince is found lost and disfigured but Rapunzel joins him and they take care of each other, her with now cut-off hair and him with no chance of virility.
M. Goldman suggestion for next step in storyline inspired by my retelling: Witch's plan after finding out Rapunzel is pregnant is soured when prince injures his testicles because she had hoped to get further future children from them to forcibly adopt.

Part IV: Reimagining / Analysis

What happens next? (VERSION 1)

The prince is not completely out of commission as far as having more children, they only think he is, and he and Rapunzel have a surprise pregancy (the last one may have surprised her, but not him) and this time they believe they will get to keep the child but the Witch finds out and now the new baby has secret siblings that it has never met. The prince regains the throne but when it is later time for him to step down, his first-born and heir(s) come out of woodwork to reclaim their birthright to the kingdom.

What happens next? (VERSION 2)

The prince cannot have any more children but Rapunzel can. They have two choices if they want a family. They can go back and face the witch who has thrown the prince from the tower and is now enraged at losing Rapunzel, her source of youthful magic (or her only chane at a child herself). Or, they can find a surrogate. Or Rapunzel can have someone else's baby with the prince's blessing... and they can pretend it's his? To continue the royal line?

What happens next? (VERSION 3)

No one really cares what happens to the prince, in this, it seems. Does he go back to his kingdom or start his own? If so, with what followers? Do he and Rapunzel conquer some desert kingdom in the wastelands?

It's kind of like they are Adam and Eve kicked out of the Garden of Eden, except they were kicked out for finding/acting on sensual knowledge whereas Adam and Eve story has the characters already knowing this but not having knowledge of mortality. In this story, the couple is kicked out by the witch, as opposed to the Almighty. If that parallel is drawn, then the witch is not in fact an agent of evil, but one of change. This fits with the notion that the story serv as a teacher with a lesson about "teenage pregnancy" that the audience needs to learn (Warner 135).

New Beginnings, middles, endings

Rapunzel runs away, locks HERSELF in the tower and writes letters delivered by falcons to her parents that tell her father that he was weak, her mother was selfish, and she never wants to see them again.

Or....

Rapunzel strangles the witch with her own hair, escaping and marrying the princess about to kiss the frog prince. The witch kills the parents when they were neighbors and hides in a tower herself, marrying the traveling prince and living happily ever after.

Rapunzel Diary Entry - Modern Era

I've been looking out this window for seventeen years and not once has anyone looked back. Some people have guardian angels, maybe, but not me. I may be under guard but it is not for my protection - it is for theirs. If found, my father would tear them to pieces. Like the giants of industry that he slayed, or so I am told.

Who knows which version of him to believe anymore. The variations on the tale are more tangled than my cornsilk locks. These locks, I grew them, and now they bind me. They bind me to this skyscraper, this tower of business moguls who know nothing of my existence. Everyone wants the penthouse suite, but nothing is sweet about living pent up in this house, more like a house of cards.

It could all topple down on the DOW and they would only wonder weeks later what happened to that girl on the 77th floor, lowering her rope down to the young man at the fried onion stand in hopes for rescue - or at least appetizers.

They say that I am the only thing holding this house of cards together. I have diamonds in my clothing and a heart untouched by love from any human. I am a member of the most exculsive clubs and I have a spade ready to plant new flowers in the window box or to dig tiny graves for the birds that occasionally mistake my windows for freedom. In ways even I don't understand, my locks are the only thing keeping this house secure, for this, this is the house that Jack built.

Other Days

On other days, I watch the waves and become the rocks that meet their wild spray. I know that I let fate crash down upon me and appear solid, unmovable, but little by little I am weathered into a shape more amenable to the environment. I wish I could convince you that the movement and change you so highly value, swarthy sailor, are not so fulfilling for all the residents of this precious earth. I am a rock, and this has been my island for seventeen years now. Can you say you have committed to anything for even one third that span?

Aha. I thought not.

If I Leave Now: Message to the Prince

If I leave now, the light will not spin and the sailors will die. I could repel down the side at any moment but what good would that do? The only boats that reach these shores are those that crashed here years before and what I want now most of all is to stop your climb, to watch you fall. That was not supposed to rhyme, but you see what time has done here in this gloried observation deck. I have the best view and a job that saves lives. Can you say the same? Leave me be. If I leave now, this beacon of hope will become just another reminder of abandonment by the kingdom that bore you, noble prince.

It is not me who needs to be rescued, and you are not the answer to my prayers, though I do not doubt that you believe me to be the answer to yours.

Please end this, another conquest to feed your ego. The lighthouse has its keeper and you, captain, should have gone down with your ship.

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