In one of the video lectures accompanying the course, Prof. Rabkin shows Walter Crane's drawing of Rumpelstiltskin next to a drawing of an actor playing Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. He takes the similarities between the two figures as a hint of anti-semitism on the part of Crane. I'm not sure about this, but I am intrigued by parallels between the narrative structure of the fairy tale and the Shylock plot in Shakespeare's play. I had, in fact, started to think along these lines before I had listened to the lecture. The trigger was a remark in an essay by an (anonymous) fellow student I reviewed for the course. (My thesis has nothing to do with the author's—he or she did not even hint at the parallel I saw.)
The anonymous author observed that Rumpelstiltskin is the only character with a name in the fairy tale. This got me thinking: All others—the miller, the king, the daughter—are nameless; they are identified by the role they play in a hierarchically-organized society. Rumpelstilskin, on the other hand, has no role in it—he is the outsider who can be indentified only by his name. He enters the story when one of the protagonists is in dire straits, and he agrees to help, at a price. The price seems monstrous, but the protagonist accepts it in desperation, hoping that nothing would come of it in the end. The outsider helps and returns to receive his reward—after all, he has a contract. But it's of no use—society closes ranks against him and deprives him of what is rightfully his.
Isn't this, in a nutshell, also the Shylock plot? Of course, there are significant differences between the play and the fairy tale. Shakespeare provides reasons for Shylock's rage: He lives in a racist world, and the humiliations he has to endure make his hatred of that world and the way it deforms his own character understandable. [The most riveting production of The Merchant I ever saw, on PBS, made this perfectly clear by locating the play in Fascist Venice of the 1930s].
One cannot expect psychological depth in a fairy tale, and the Grimms treat Rumpelstiltskin without empathy, although his remark that instead of lifeless treasure, he wants something alive as compensation is the only humane sentiment expressed in the entire story, and although he shows empathy for the queen when she weeps over his demand and relents by giving her three days to discover his name. The protagonists, and the Grimms who tell the story, apparently consider his demand so horrendous that he remains a monster, in their view, and he dies a horrible death in the end, brutally described by the Grimms. There is no equivalent to the famous "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" speech that humanizes Shylock.
Still, the parallels intrigue me. It may well be that the trope of the outsider entering a highly-structured world in order to aid a member of that world, only to be cheated out of his reward and repulsed without a sign of gratitude, can be found in high art and folk tales alike.
Addendum (Aug. 2015): A recent issue of the New Yorker featured a retelling of the story that I find intriguing because it's told from the gnome's point of view and in doing so, humanizes him ( M. Cunningham, "Little Man", The New Yorker, Aug. 10&17, 2015). I am particularly moved by the interaction between the miller's daughter and Rumpelstiltskin as they watch the straw being turned into gold. I would also like to point readers to my translation of the initial version because it demonstrates the degree to which the Grimms embellished their material. In fact, this initial version does not suggest any parallel to the Shylock plot that I saw in the published version—we must conclude that this entirely the Grimms' doing.
August 10, 2012
Last update: Oct. 24, 2015