In Chapters 21 and 22 of this book, Marina Warner elaborates in detail on The Language of Hair and on Blondes; the information is fascinating. These chapters also contain myriad facts hat are not widely known -- one more reason why this book is so valuable IMHO and a pleasure to savor, slowly, at one's leisure, according to one's interest.
The author does not refer only to human hair but also to animals' coats, skin, pelt, fur. She relates the incidental fact that, in Perrault's original version, Cinderella's slippers were not of glass but of vair(=fleece).
According to WArner, hair constitutes one's identity. The language of the self would be stripped of one of its richest resouces, without hair. Through hair the body reveals the passage of time and the fluctuating claims of gender; strangers offer a glossary of clues in the way they do the hair on their heads.
Hair, Warner says, is central to magic; snippets of hair have been used in love charms and fertility rites and, to the Greeks, were symbols, akin to fetishes, of loss and mourning, and thrown into the funeral pyre. Victorians put the locks of a dear one in to lockets.
Long hair was especially prized - and often the solution to a calamity. Grimm's Rapunzel imprisoned in an inaccessible tower, pulled up her lover by her hair and gained her freedom by descending (with him, one presumes) in the same manner.
Blond hair, Warner says, shares certain prperties with gold.
Gold does not tarnish; it can be hammered, annealed or spun, will not diminish or fade, its brightness survives time, burial and the forces of decay ----
and so does hair, more than any other part of the body.
The imperviousness of hair as a natural substance led to its deeper symbolic meaning and warrants the high place hair plays in the fairy tales. Hair can be cut, sizzled with hot tongs, steeped in chemicals and dyes without apparent suffering, and will go on growing, sometimes in abundance, and is not stopped by death. This phenomenon was noted in the case of great heroes, like Charlemagne (+814) and Saint Olav, King of Norway (+1030), and stimulated the cult that developed round their tombs. (pg. 372)
On the same page, Warner writes
"Our capillary arts borrow and build on the physiology of hair, which we humans share with other creatures of fur and fleece. The affective behaviour of our pelt inspires dramatic
variations : the stiff spikes and punk styles imitate the bristling aggression, and reproduce literally the thrills of terror, both given and received : these are hackles raised in emphasis. Perioxide blondes, like Marilyn Monroe in her winsome dumb babyish act, recall the fluffy down of some children's heads, or baby chicks, or ducklings. The conflict btween the pretence at innocence and known sexiness creats the special effefct of the Hollywood blonde ..."
During this discussion we've seen that fairy tales were told in many parts of the world,
(e.g. an early Chinese version of Cinderella), the earliest legends shrouded in mythology. All of these tales were transmitted orally. Many centuries later came Charles Perrault, idle bourgeois though he may have been with too much time on his hands. It was he who collected the stories and put them all together. A century or so later came the Brothers Grimm, and there was also Giambattista Basile.
The tellers and sources were different; the tales had been told to different audiences; different languages were involved. No wonder the versions are different !
Blond hair, we know, signifies virginity, innocence, vulnerability. And the tradition, the the ideal still exists, though perhaps we no longer take it literally in these modern times. Hollywood certainly hasn't let go - between [ i]Gentlemen Prefer Blondes[/i] or, more recently, Legally Blond.
The Scandinavians (Danes, Norwegians, Swedes and Icelanders) are predominantly fair-haired, and old Norse mythology describes them as such. Millions in central Europeans are of Slav descent, and in Mediterranean countries dark-hair and darker complexions are the rule.
Even so I am not sure we can deduce that the fairy tales of of blond heroines originated in the north of Europe.
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