The Juniper Tree (fairy tale)

"The Juniper Tree" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. In some editions the story is called The Almond Tree. The Text in the Grimm collection is in Low German.

It is tale number 47 and Aarne-Thompson type 720: "my mother slew me, my father ate me". Another such tale is the English The Rose-Tree, although it reverses the sexes from The Juniper Tree; The Juniper Tree follows the more common pattern of having the dead child be the boy.

Synopsis

A young couple struggles to have children until one day the woman wishes for a child as red as blood and as white as snow under the juniper tree. The tree grants her wish by growing magical berries for her to eat. After eating the berries, the mother falls ill and requests that she be buried under the juniper tree, as that is where she wished for the child. After a few months she gives birth to a son and dies a few days later. Her husband grieves for a long time, and gets married again. His second wife gives birth to a daughter, Marlinchen (in some versions Ann Marie). One day, the second wife offers Marlinchen an apple and she graciously accepts it. Then she has an evil thought and offers the boy one. As he reaches in a box to get it, she slams the box's heavy lid on him, beheading him. She then tricks Marlinchen into thinking that she was the one who killed her brother. The stepmother then turns the boy's body into a stew, and in some other versions, black sausages, without anyone knowing apart from her and Marlinchen. Marlinchen cannot stop weeping. When the father returns the boy has 'gone to stay with his mother's great uncle'. The father is upset that the boy did not say goodbye. The father eats the stew, suspecting nothing, and declares it delicious. Marlinchen, however, keeps the bones left over from the meal and buries them beneath the juniper tree. A beautiful bird flies out of the tree. It goes and sings a song about his cruel death to multiple people, receiving gifts for his beautiful voice. It then flies back home and sings its song. The father goes out to see what is singing such a beautiful song and the golden chain falls about his neck. The father tells everyone that a beautiful bird gave him a chain. It sings again and Marlinchen goes out to see if this is true, and the red shoes fall to her. She comes in giggling happily and tells everyone how happy she is with what the bird has given her. All this time the stepmother is complaining of heat, claiming she has a horrid fire burning in her arteries. It sings a third time, the stepmother goes out, hoping for relief, and the bird drops the millstone on her, crushing and killing her.

Characters

None of the characters in The Juniper Tree have names except for Marlinchen. Instead, they are referred to by their relationship to one another or by their occupation.

The Son

The child of the father and the father's first wife as well as Marclinchen's half brother. He dies at the hands of the stepmother. His bones are buried under the Juniper Tree by Marlinchen allowing him to later be reincarnated into a bird. As a bird, he goes around town and gathers gifts from townspeople as they hear the bird's beautiful singing voice, a gold chain, a pair of red shoes, and a millstone. He returns to the house and gifts his father the chain and his sister the shoes and kills the stepmother with the millstone.

The Step-mom

Married to the father, and mother to Marlinchen. She kills the son by beheading him with a chest as he reaches for an apple. She then convinces her daughter that she killed the son. She later feeds his remains to his father in a stew. Later, when the son returns to the house as a bird she is crushed by a millstone that he drops on her and killed .

Marlinchen

The Son's half sister. Daughter of the Father and the Step-mom. She is convinced into believing that she killed her brother by her mother. She grieves intensely, crying and crying. After her father eats the stew, she buries the remaining bones (her brother's bones) under the Juniper Tree. She is given red slippers when he returns to the house as a bird.

The Father

Father to the Son and Marlinchen. He is married to the Step-mom and widow of the son's mom. He eats the sons remains without prior knowledge, he loves it. He is given a gold chain by the bird when the son returns to the house as a bird.

The First Wife

This is the mother of the Son in the story, she dies a few days after giving birth. She is buried under the Juniper Tree, which granted her wish to bear a child "as red as blood and as white a snow".

Motifs

The themes of cannibalism, death, and food play an important role in the short story, The Juniper Tree.

Cannibalism

Some argue that The Juniper Tree draws cues from the short story Hansel and Gretel. Following the death of the main character, the mother (in an attempt to cover up his death) literally "chopped him in pieces, put him into the pan and... [cooked him up in a stew]. The husband then eats the stew, saying how “delicious [the] food is," and even asks for the wife to "give [him] some more.”

The Parallel Between Food and Death

It is quite clear by the end of the novel that food is associated with death. At the beginning of the short story, the girl is cutting an apple when she cuts her fingers and "blood [falls to] the snow." An apple later is even referred to as ushering in the Devil when the little boy comes home and the Devil figuratively makes the mother say to him, "My son, wilt thou have an apple?” You could even look to the son as a source of death when he is turned into stew. Finally, a milestone is used to kill the mother. A millstone is a tool typically used to grind corn.

Guardianship

Critics suggest that the character of the mother in "The Juniper Tree" is used to represent a guardian spirit. This theme of guardianship is shown throughout other Grimm fairy tales such as Cinderella, Briar Rose, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. In all of these stories, there is some object (normally represented through nature) that watches after the main character. In the case of "Briar Rose," "the briar hedge is the symbol of nature guarding her rose: the princess who sleeps inside the castle."

Commentary

Many folklorists interpret evil stepmothers as stemming from actual competition between a woman and her stepchildren for resources. In this tale, the motive is made explicit: the stepmother wants her daughter to inherit everything.

The millstone in the story would have had biblical connotations for the readers of the Grimms' days, especially as the verse Luke 17:2 says that anyone who causes a child to sin would be better off being thrown into the sea with a millstone about his neck; both refer to a millstone as a punishment for those who harm the young and innocent. Another biblical connatation could be the offering of the apple from the stepmother, possessed by the devil, to the son, which parallels the devil, disguised as a serpent, offering the forbidden fruit (traditionally an apple) to Eve.

In his essay "On Fairy-Stories", J.R.R. Tolkien cited The Juniper Tree as an example of the evils of censorship for children; many versions in his day omitted the stew, and Tolkien thought children should not be spared it, unless they were spared the whole fairy tale.

Adaptations

Throughout the centuries, the Grimm Brothers fairy tales have been retold and adapted by an abundance of sources. The story was adapted:

• For the comic book Grimm Fairy Tales as issue 17. The story goes: a woman kills her stepson in order to prevent him from eloping with her daughter, then buries his body underneath the juniper tree in their yard. The next day, a bird on the branch of the tree tells the daughter the truth, and out of grief, she hangs herself from the tree. The story is told to a woman named Patricia, who was contemplating having her drug-addict stepson Bryan killed because of the horrible example he set for her daughter, Carolyn. But, in a sense of twisted irony, her daughter dies anyway from a drug overdose.

• By Barbara Comyns Carr in her novel, The Juniper Tree, published by Methuen in 1985. In Comyns Carr's adaptation the stepmother is a sympathetic character and the son's death an accident. Whereas in Grimm's fairy tale it is Marlene (the daughter) who buries the bones of the son, Comyns Carr makes Marlene ignorant of the death and has the stepmother, desperate to prevent her husband from finding out and in the throes of a nervous breakdown, bury the little boy under the juniper tree. At the end of the adaptation, the stepmother does not die but is treated and begins a new life. The Juniper Tree was Barbara Comyns Carr's first novel after an 18-year hiatus in her work and was described in The Financial Times, at the time of publication, as "delicate, tough, quick-moving .... haunting".

• As The Juniper Tree, an opera in two acts by Philip Glass & Robert Moran, (1985); libretto by Arthur Yorinks.

• As the 1990 Icelandic film The Juniper Tree, based on the Grimm Brothers' tale, starring Björk as a visionary young girl whose mother has been put to death as a witch.

• In the story "The Crabapple Tree", by Robert Coover, appearing in the January 12, 2015, issue of The New Yorker.

• English Folk singer Emily Portman sings a version of the story called "Stick Stock"

• The book 'The Grimm Conclusion' (by Adam Gidwitz) was based on this fairy tale

• For a collection of fairy tales created by Lore Segal and Maurice Sendak.

References

Oliver Loo. The Original 1812 Grimm Fairy Tales. A New Translation of the 1812 First Edition Kinder- und Hausmärchen Collected through the Brothers Grimm. Volume I. 200 Year Anniversary Edition 2014. ISBN 9781312419049.