“The Fisherman and
His Wife”
by The Brothers Grimm
***
A woman pope – and a married one at that? A female empress
sitting on a throne two miles high? And, by the way, a talking fish who’s an
enchanted prince who grants limitless wishes but can’t even get himself back
into human form? Surely, “The Fisherman and His Wife” is one of the zaniest,
even eeriest tales to come out of brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm’s early 19th
century collection of German folk tales. Although the Brothers Grimm, as they
are known, believed – or at least insisted – that the tales they collected and edited
reflected a uniquely German soul, variations of some of their stories exist in
multiple cultures. And the widespread popularity of many of the stories,
including the subject of today’s post, suggests a source deep in the human
psyche.
Including the stories of magical wishes and their often-unintended,
even disastrous consequences.
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The subcategory of a wife with strange wishes (desires?)
paired with a compliant, even feckless, husband, is as old as Eve. Is it a
reflection of male fears about dominant women? I promise, I wasn’t even
thinking, consciously at least) about the coming week’s election when I decided
to make November a week of fairy tale fantasy at this site.
Perhaps a fisherman, a category of human known for tall
tales, was considered an appropriate teller of such a story. It begins this
way:
“There was once a fisherman and his wife who lived together
in a hovel by the seashore, and the fisherman went out every day with his hook
and line to catch fish, and he angled and angled. . .”
In the tale, the fisherman had caught nothing. But it seems to have been a lovely day, and the water was so clear he could see all the way
down to the bottom of the sea. And see perfectly well that there were no fish –
until he found a huge flounder on his line! Notorious bottom-dwellers,
flounders can camouflage themselves quite well against a sandy sea bottom, both
of their eyes facing straight up, waiting for their own prey. And if the
fisherman could see clear to the bottom, it’s easy to suspect that the flounder
could see clear up to the top where the fisherman was. Was the fish angling for
a man as much as the man was angling for a fish?
The fisherman hauled the great fish out, no doubt quite
pleased with his catch. The fish, however, was no ordinary flounder.
“Fisherman, listen to me,” it said, “let me go. I am not a
real fish but an enchanted prince. . . I shall not taste well; so put me back
into the water again, and let me swim away.”
Having perhaps taken more than a few pulls at his jug (a
circumstance the Grimms may have edited out to make their story more appealing
to children), the fisherman is perfectly willing to carry on the conversation.
In the end, he lets the flounder off the hook. It swims away, leaving behind a
trail of blood, the first omen of worse things to come.
When he returns home, the fisherman can’t resist telling the
story to his wife. And she (perhaps having had a whiff of his breath) calls him
on his tall tale. Well, what did you wish for, she asks. You find a talking fish,
which is obviously a magical creature, and you don’t even make a wish for a
nice little cottage for us to live in instead of this miserable hovel?
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Chagrined, or merely wanting to escape his wife, or possibly
to sample his waiting jug again, the fisherman goes back to the spot where he
last saw the fish. The sea, however, is no longer clear, but discolored. The
fisherman calls to, the fish (perhaps the first recorded instance of a sonic
fishing lure), but careful to excuse his plea as coming from his wife, not from
himself. The flounder swims back, asks what is desired, and tells the man to go
home, for the wish is already granted.
Of course, the wife (at least, that’s how the fisherman
justifies himself) soon wants bigger and better wishes, and her husband
resignedly returns again and again to the waiting fish, who grants them.
From a cottage to a castle, then to become king – yes, the
wife is king because the husband insists he has no interest in such a position.
Then emperor. Then pope. Interestingly, the fisherman’s mild attempt to
dissuade his wife from this last desire doesn’t mention the improbability of a
female pope – only that there is already a male pope and you can’t have two
popes, can you?
Nothing, however, is too much for the flounder to grant,
although the sea becomes more discolored and violent with each mounting
request. Until at last . . .
But I’ll let you read that for yourself. The now
copyright-free story is available online at German Stories, among other sites.
But it leaves me wondering, who was the flounder, really? After
criticism of the violence and sexual content of their initial 1812 volume of
stories, the Brothers Grimm were known to add more moral, even religious
content. And given the well-known iconography of a fish, and its role as an
incarnation of the son of a king, and its power, I wonder. . .
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