The Silenced Women

• The Little Mermaid
• Sleeping Beauty
• Snow White
• The Goosegirl
• Cinderella
• Rapunzel
• Sister of the Swans
• The Silent Princess
• Cassandra

These tales have a pattern, a common thread that weaves around and through them: silent women, hidden women, women mocked when they speak.

Sadly, what happens in fairy tales doesn’t stay in fairy tales. It does, however, show us a pattern that continues in many places today.

Although there have been many versions of each tale through the ages we’ll look at common themes that persist in most of the tales.

Silence as a Sacrifice for Love

Both the Little Mermaid and the Sister of the Swans chose silence out of their love for others.

In the classics Little Mermaid, as well as the Disney version, the mermaid willingly gave up her voice to gain legs and meet the prince with which she was infatuated. Disney had a song (Silence is Golden)prepared for the transformation, which was cut from the film.

The lyrics, though, will set the tone for all of these silent women:

But silence, silence is golden, my dear

Up above, they hate chatter

So what does it matter

If you become mute

(spoken) Nobody likes a loudmouth!

I mean it

Silence, silence is golden, my dear

Don’t you think you should try it

They’ll say she’s so quiet, so shy and cute!

Although the mermaid gets the man in the Disney version the sacrifice was useless in the Hans Christian Anderson tale; the mermaid became the foam on the waters when the prince married someone else.

The perhaps lesser-known tale of mute sacrifice is the sister that remained mute for six years in order to free her brothers from a wicked enchantment that turned them into swans.

Learning that she would need to pick spiny plants, spin them into thread, weave cloth, and from that make six shirts all while remaining silent, she willingly took it on. Better yet, many versions have her doing it while living in a tree!

At the very last minute, just as she was to be burned at the stake by evildoers, her brothers in their bird form flew past her and she threw the shirts over their long necks, thus returning them to human form.

Six years of silence, nothing but back breaking work. Alas, the story doesn’t say what became of her sacrifice.

Sleeping Silence

Both Snow White and Sleeping Beauty have more in common than Disney movies: both were put out of action because they were pawns of power then silenced through sleep.

Snow White was a threat to her stepmother, not because of her beauty, but because she was the true heir to the throne. Evil malice eventually caused her to fall, deathlike, into a silent state, removing her inconvenient self from any possibility of retaking the power that was due to her.

Sleeping Beauty has the least personal agency of any of the princesses: sleep and silence are forced on her. Indeed; many tales include a nobleman, prince, or king not wakening her with a kiss but instead raping her as she sleeps and she bearing children that she finds when she is awakened.

Her sleeping silence is a curse on the royal family, and one she is doomed to bear and enact for no reason other than being born.

Invisible Silence

Cinderella and Rapunzel are wide awake, but their invisibility to the world invokes a kind of silence.

Cinderella was the only child of a nobleman who married a bitter widow with daughters of her own. When the nobleman died his daughter, who had long been ignored by her stepmother, completed the transformation into invisibility by becoming the maid-of-all-trades for the family.

The story of a young/poor/homely/ignored girl that eventually marries a prince after proving her identity is thought to have been told as far back as 7 BC, and although the identifying slipper/bracelet/necklace changes over time all the versions begin with her invisibility of personage.

In some she is too dirty, in others, too poor, and in still other beautiful only when magics assists; in all she is not recognized until her identity is proven by matching her to a found object. Her worth is not in herself, it is her relevance to an object.

Rapunzel, too, had little worth to her family; she was traded at birth to a sorceress in exchange for the wild herbs (rapunzel) that her mother stole from the sorceress during pregnancy. Named after the plant, she was trapped in the tower far from all people, reachable only by allowing the sorceress to climb the walls of the tower by way of using her long hair as a rope.

Vowed Silence

Although not placed in a tower, both the Goosegirl and the Silent Princess were pledged to remain silent in full view of the public. Both, too, were mute in part due to planned marriage.

The Goosegirl was really a princess with a talking horse that was betrayed by a servant woman. The servant masqueraded as the princess, threatening her death if she tells anyone of the deception, and then kills the talking horse for good measure. Ordered to care for the geese, her innate princess-ness raises suspicions that she refuses to explain. She is tricked to tell her story to stove (!!?!!!) and is overheard by the king, whom she eventually does marry.

The Silent Princess is mute and must be made to speak before anyone may marry her. She sat, veiled, while suitors tried, failed, and died as a result. One clever man, who was cursed form childhood to marry the Silent Princess, tricked her into speaking by telling and hearing stories told by a bird hiding within objects in the room.

Marriage, arranged as a matter of state, reduced these princess to silent pawns offered from parents to nameless and unknown others, without their having a ‘say’ in the matter.

Silenced Truth

Cassandra was priestess to Apollo, and cursed by that god when she refused his advances (as gods were wont to do in those times). The curse was, although she could foretell the future no one would ever believe her again.

This did NOT stop Cassandra from trying, however. She gave warnings to here brother not to kidnap Helen because it would lead to war. When war did happen, she warned that the giant horse that the Greeks delivered as a gift would lead to downfall, and that also was ignored and Troy fell to the Greeks.

Seeking to hide from the rampage this caused she hid in a temple, was raped, and taken as a concubine by a king, and subsequently killed by the queen, as she had accurately foretold.

Although she was not technically a silenced woman, since no one would believe her it amounted to much the same thing when the truth she spoke was ignored as if she’d never said it.

Silent Women

Silent women aren’t confined to fairy tales and mythologized across the ages. Silent women are very much a part of our every days NOW.

As a teen and young married wife and mother, I was part of the Plymouth Brethren, a non-denominational but fundamentalist Protestant group. One of the doctrines of the Brethren is the priesthood of all believers. As long, that is, as those believers are men. Women in the Plymouth Brethren may teach children Sunday School, but the cannot preach or even lead prayer when men are present. this is likely why the wiki-list of notable members of the Brethren is made up of only men.

The frustration I felt as a young mother, sitting in silence and waiting for my husband to speak-Speak-SPEAK already!- that frustration is still alive and growing as I see the signs that silencing women is gaining in popularity all over the world… and even here in the United States.

Child marriage (under the age of 18) is still legal in some states, and four states (California, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Oklahoma)have no minimum age for marriage.

Pregnant women requesting divorce in Missouri, Texas, and Arkansas, even in proven cases of domestic abuse, will not have the divorce honored until after they have the child.

Once the view of small fringe fundamentalist communities, head-of-household voting is being spoken of openly by politicians and talk show hosts today. Some are also calling for a repeal of the 19th Amendment, doing away women voting completely.

Look for them, the silent women. Encourage them to speak and believe them when they do. Amplify their voices. Speak the truth.

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This content was also published by the author on Medium.