Petrosinella (Fairy tale)

Author: Giambattista Basile

Time Period: 1501 CE–1700 CE

Country or Culture: Italy

Genre: Fairy Tale

PLOT SUMMARY

“Petrosinella” begins with a pregnant woman, Pascadozia, who has a craving for a “beautiful bed of parsley” (475) in the vegetable patch of the ogress who lives next door. When she cannot resist the craving any longer, she sneaks into the garden and steals the delicacy. Pascadozia does this several times before the ogress catches her and threatens that she will only let her go if Pascadozia gives up the child she is carrying. Fearful for her life, the mother-to-be quickly agrees. Soon after, Pascadozia has a daughter whom she names Petrosinella, because of “a pretty birthmark on her breast the shape of a tuft of parsley” (475).

When the girl’s seventh birthday comes, the ogress seizes the opportunity to claim the child by telling the girl to remind her mother of the promise. Pascadozia attempts to refuse only once and then sends her child to the ogress. Petrosinella is imprisoned in a tower that has only one access point, a small window at its peak, which can only be reached when the ogress climbs the girl’s rope of hair.

One day, a prince comes upon the tower and falls in love with its prisoner. After several days of innocent interaction, the two begin to meet on a regular basis, pursuing amorous activities during their trysts. As their nightly encounters escalate, they plan an escape. Meanwhile, the ogress is given the news that her ward is conducting an affair. In her anger, the ogress becomes indiscreet in a discussion with the hag who had shared the news, and she reveals information about an enchantment she has cast on three acorns that are hidden in the tower. The spell blocks any attempts at escape. Fortunately for the young lovers, Petrosinella overhears and finds the magical objects.

When the couple escapes, the neighbor alerts the ogress to their departure. Petrosinella is not without ability though, and she uses the enchanted acorns, one at a time, to stall the ogress’s path as she and her lover flee. The first acorn turns into a Corsican hound that attacks the ogress, but the ogress easily outmaneuvers it. The second acorn becomes a ferocious lion that turns cowardly when the ogress possesses a donkey and runs toward it. Her disguise becomes her downfall when the third acorn turns into a wolf that gobbles her up, mistaking her for a donkey, as she has not had time to change back into her original form.

The young couple’s travels culminate in an arrival at the prince’s home kingdom, where they marry and cherish the lesson that “one hour in a safe harbor can make you forget one hundred years of storms” (479).

SIGNIFICANCE

A young girl kidnapped and trapped in a tower, a pregnant woman whose cravings endanger those closest to her, and a set of three enchanted objects are not uncommon motifs in both oral and recorded folktales from across Europe, Asia, and Africa. Italian folklorist Giambattista Basile’s story “Petrosinella” (ca. 1634–36), which captures all three motifs, is one of the best-known and earliest recorded variations of the maiden-in-the-tower tale, and later versions often copied the basic aspects of the tale while adding to or modifying the plot and characters to fit the new story.

The motif of locking a girl in a tower to protect her from puberty and sexual activities is not surprising considering Basile’s story or later tales that warn against the dangers of sexual interaction. Basile’s Petrosinella is only seven years old when she is taken from her mother, but other versions have the girl closer to adolescence when she is imprisoned. For example, in the 1698 tale by Charlotte-Rose de la Force, Persinette is taken from her parents shortly after her birth, but when she reaches twelve years old, the fairy decides “to shield [Persinette] from her destiny” (480). Friedrich Schultz’s 1790 “Rapunzel” is almost identical to de la Force’s tale. The Grimm brothers’ sorceress also raises the girl Rapunzel from infancy but interns her in a tower when she reaches the age of twelve. Obviously, incarcerating the child does not protect her, as in all variations the prince finds her, falls in love with her, and gains access not only to the tower but also to the girl herself. If one considers an adult audience, all of the authors are clear in the revelation of sexual activity, which results in either escape, as in Basile’s story, or in pregnancy and exile, as in German variants by Schultz and the Grimms.

The idea that the pregnant woman’s cravings must be satisfied was also familiar in folklore and superstition. Strong appetites for exotic or unusual fare would have told the audience that the woman at the beginning of the story is pregnant, and many cultures held superstitious beliefs that a pregnant woman whose cravings were not met would be touched by evil in some way. One possibility would be through miscarriage. One could interpret the theft of the newborn daughter by fairy, sorceress, or ogress as a version of miscarriage, since the woman who bore the child was not allowed to raise her. The later claiming of the daughter, as in Basile’s story, would have been just as devastating for her mother, who had raised the child for seven years only to lose her because of those early cravings.

The three enchanted acorns are another recognizable motif based partially on the common use of the triad and its importance in spiritual symbolism. The ogress enchants the acorns to strengthen the girl’s imprisonment; however, when the girl and her lover co-opt the magical objects, they are used as a means both of escape and of destroying the ogress. In this story, the acorns turn into three animals that frighten and ultimately devour the monstrous mother figure. In Thomas Crane’s “The Fair Angiola,” a late nineteenth-century Italian retelling, the witch is outwitted through the use of three magical objects stolen by the Rapunzel figure and her prince. In Crane’s tale, the witch’s three balls of yarn transform into a mountain of soap, a mountain of nails, and a wild flood.

Whether the version of the tale is Italian, French, German, or from another culture outside of Europe, the story of a girl hidden in a tower by a primarily evil substitute mother figure remains universally appealing, partially because readers can find recognizable motifs, characters, and conventions in each retelling.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ashliman, D. L. Folk and Fairy Tales: A Handbook. Westport: Greenwood, 2004. Print.

Basile, Giambattista. “Petrosinella.” Zipes 475–79.

Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Vintage, 1976. Print.

Brown, Mary Ellen, and Bruce A. Rosenberg. Encyclopedia of Folklore and Literature. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1998. Print.

Crane, Thomas Frederick. “Fair Angiola.” Italian Popular Tales. London: Macmillan, 1885. 26–29. Print.

De la Force, Charlotte. “Persinette.” Zipes 479–84.

Schultz, Friedrich. “Rapunzel.” Zipes 484–89.

Zipes, Jack, ed. The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm. New York: Norton, 2001. Print.