The Rose Tree isn’t a story you’ll find in many modern children’s books. It’s dark themes echo those in Snow White only this time the step-mother succeeds in killing the young beauty whose lips are as red as rose petals and whose heart is as pure as gold.
After failing to deliver on an errand, our young heroine is invited to put her head in her step-mother’s lap so she can comb out her hair, only the step-mother chooses an ax instead of comb and off comes young beauty’s head. It gets worse, the step-mother cuts out her heart and liver and turns it into a stew for the father. The child’s distraught half-brother, takes her body and buries it under a rose bush. Time passes and from the bush flies a bird singing a strange song,
‘My wicked mother killed me, my dear father ate me and my little brother whom I love sits below where I sing above stick, stock, stone dead!’
The bird flies first to the cobblers and sings her song. The cobbler gives her some red leather shoes; the bird flies onto the watch makers where she sings her song again and is rewarded with a gold watch. At the mill, she has to sing her song three times before she’s given a heavy millstone. With all her treasures, she flies home where she rattles the millstone against the eves.
‘There’s thunder!’ cries the step-mother. The brother runs outside to watch the storm and the bird drops the red shoes on him, then the father runs outside and the bird drops the watch on him. The step-mother is curious what gift the thunder has brought her so she too runs outside only this time the bird drops the heavy millstone on her and kills her dead.
There a many ways to read and interpret traditional stories. On one level we can explore the characters and interactions as if they were real people. Who in our lives dresses up cruelty with kindness like the step-mother? Do we imagine that her step-daughter sensed her anger and knew the danger she was in? Have we ever played the role of the passive bystander like the father? What are the inner conflicts that the brother must be feeling? These are good openers for talking about gas-lighting, intuition, complicity and survivor’s guilt.
We can also explore the symbolic meanings expressed within the story. A rose often depicts beauty and innocence. In this story it is the rose bush that gives birth to the bird which carries the girl’s voice, truth and soul energy. Red shoes allude to feminity. In the story called The Red Shoes, it is feminine desire that is out of control, causing the heroine to dance in her red shoes to the devil’s tune without being able to stop until she is saved by the woodcutter who amputates her feet. Here it refers to the love the brother has for his sister even in the face of his mother’s vengeance, and his own feminine qualities. The watch invites the father back to accountability and moral order. And the millstone, combines the crushing force of truth with cyclical time and judgement. Viewed through a symbolic lens, the whole the thrust of the tale is the transformation of loss; when grief is fully tended, as it is for the boy in his care for his sister’s body, beauty, truth and justice unfold in the form of the the rose bush and the bird.
Another way of exploring a story like this is to consider how each of the characters operate within our own psyche. When have we behaved cruelly through jealousy, or what part of us refuses to see the innocence of another? In what ways are we passive observers of brutality and abuse? How might we be nourished by systems that harm other people? How do we tend the needs of our inner child who has been torn apart by conflicting loyalites? What do we need to grieve and lay to rest so that we can find our true voice?
I’ve come to love stories that, on the surface, are grisly and repellent, because they carry deep emotional truths that help us traverse the challenging paths of our lives.
I am hosting a monthly story circle, Echoes of Shadow and Light, every first Wednesday for anyone who is inspired to explore stories in this way. We’re going to kick off with The Rose Tree on 2 July.