Before seeing the Disney movie The princess and the frogKeep this in mind: Everything you know about the fairy tale can be wrong.
You may know the story of the Frog Prince: a handsome young prince was innocently minding his own business when, for no apparent reason, an evil witch cursed him and turned him into a particularly ugly little frog. He was doomed to live in this miserable and humble condition until a princess with a pure and loving heart saw past his ugly exterior and kissed him. His purity and sweetness would break the evil spell and turn him back into a handsome prince and the perfect boyfriend for the lucky princess. This is how the story goes, right?
Incorrect.
Pick up The tales of the Brothers Grimm and you will read a completely different version. The true story of the Frog Prince is even better.
You see, the witch in the story wasn’t really bad at all. Her name was Ellspeth, and as she stated in her autobiography Ellspeth’s Book of Shadows, Prince Heinrich was not as innocent as he later claimed. He refused to get out of her way as she walked up the mountain pass, looking for wild witch hazel. To add insult to injury, he called her all sorts of obscene names. Ellspeth cursed the short-tempered young prince for his own good, to give him a lesson in manners.
When the princess (whose name was Anika) arrived, tossed her famous golden ball into the air and dropped it into the swamp Heinrich called home, Heinrich saw it as his golden opportunity to seize Anika. He offered to retrieve his golden ball from the pond, if he would let it stay in the castle. His plan was to taunt Anika and her father, the king, while staying warm, humid, and comfortable in the royal palace. Anika agreed, but could only put up with Heinrich’s greedy and selfish ways for a while. When he wanted her to allow her slippery corpse to sleep on her pillow, Anika was disgusted and threw Heinrich face to face with a stone wall. That would have killed an ordinary frog. But in Heinrich’s case, it made him wake up and smell the swamp water. He realized that he had been a hideous idiot and became a prince again.
However, Anika decided not to forgive Heinrich’s thoughtlessness. She and the prince did not marry, and they certainly never lived happily ever after. In fact, after that incident, whenever Anika and Heinrich crossed paths, she was polite but distant with him. He accepted that he would never get anywhere with her romantically, although in his later years, he became quite bitter at the lack of a closer relationship. Rumors are said to have circulated that the princess was born with webbed fingers, which were later corrected by surgery. In fact, Heinrich’s family did have webbed fingers, although he did not inherit the gene himself.
A fascinating variation on the fairy tale is Barbara G. Walker’s “The Frog Princess” from her book Feminist fairy tales. In it, a female frog aspires to marry a handsome and kind prince. She goes to a good forest fairy, who agrees to transform her into a human being if she can get the prince to kiss her. The clever frog succeeds, but its success comes at a terrible price. Although the prince and the frog end up living happily, their happiness is forever spent apart. Female frogs, Walker notes in his introduction to the tale, are often larger and stronger than males of their species. For that reason, the frog is the perfect symbol of the independent woman who can succeed in the world, even without her handsome prince.
Cited works
“The frog prince,” The tales of the Brothers Grimm by the Brothers Grimm. There are many issues; mine happens to be translated by Mrs. EV Lucas, Lucy Crane and Marian Edwardes. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1945.
“The frog princess” Feminist fairy tales by Barbara G. Walker. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1996.
“Relationship Basics: Never Kiss a Frog”, The Magical Girl’s Guide to Femininity by Violetta Marmalade-Spirit, told to Erin E. Schmidt. Unpublished, 2008.
