KidLit Forum

The Stepmother
By Giuseppe Pitre

“The Stepmother” is an Italian fairy tale. It was first written by the Italian folklorist Giuseppe Pitre in 1870 and then translated by the American folklorist, academic and lawyer Thomas Frederick Crane. The fairy tale was also published in “Italian Popular Tales”, the most important of Crane’s work, in 1885.

The text presents the story of a farmer who had two children- a boy and a girl. His wife dies, so he remarries a woman. She has a daughter of her own, who is blind, and she hates her stepchildren. When the father leaves to the fields, she sends them to him but points them into the wrong direction. The children realize they are lost when they get to a mountain, but their father is not there. They find two springs, the boy wants to drink from them, but the girl, who is enchanted, warns him that if he drinks from the first one, he would turn into a donkey and the second would make him a calf. They boy avoids the first one but drinks from the second and becomes a calf with golden horns. The children get to a palace, where the king’s son marries the girl because of her beauty and accept the calf as the girl claims she has brought him up and is fond of him. The father gets to the palace one day by accident and meets his daughter. He doesn’t recognize her first, but then she says who she is, apologizes for not coming back and fills his bag with gold. When the stepmother hears this, she is angry but does not show it and she takes her husband and her daughter to the palace. As the king was gone, she throws her stepdaughter into the ocean, dresses her daughter in her clothes and makes say she is got blinded by the calf when the king returns. On hearing this, the king orders the calf to be butchered, but the latter calls for her sister’s help by the sea. Her sisters answers, though powerless in a fish’s mouth. The king hears the conversation, discovers the plot and has the blind girl killed, cooked like a fish and sent to her mother. The father also finds out about this and leaves his wife to live at the palace.

If we take into consideration Vladimir Propp’s typology, we can identify the girl as the boy and the girl as the heroes of the story, because they both go on the journey and they work together in order to restore the balance lost because of their stepmother. The girl might also be considered a magical helper, as she is enchanted and recognizes the dangers in the springs. The villain of the story is, of course the step mother, who tries to kill the two children and does not give up even when she finds out she has not succeeded. She also installs her daughter as the false hero when she dresses her in the girl’s clothes and makes her pretend it is the king’s wife.

We can also identify several functions from Propp’s four spheres, although their order is mixed. First of all, we have a short initial situation where we are presented the children’s family. This is followed by two types of absentation- the death of the mother and the father’s leaving to the fields. We have both the departure and the trickery when the children leave home to find their father and they are pointed into the wrong direction by their mother. The interdiction is set by the girl and the violation of the interdiction is done by the boy’s drinking from the enchanted spring. The marriage comes in the middle of the story when the girl marries the prince. The return in done by the father, when he finds his girl and goes home with the gold he receives from her. The step mother sets on the pursuit of the girl by trying to kill her. However, he have a rescue set in motion by her brother and the king’s men. The stepmother receives her punishment when her daughter is killed, cut into pieces and sent to her and she gets left by her husband.

In the ATU classification, we could place this story into the 450- Brother and Sister category, as we are presented the story of two siblings, and into the 709- Snow White category, because of the strong step mother motif.

I believe this was a story which was used in order to educate and civilize children as to beware of their stepmothers or other family members which are not blood related and to always listen and support their siblings. I enjoyed reading it, but I think that it might be considered boring by some children nowadays, as they are used with more action in their stories.