#old rinkrank
“In the stories discussed above, we have already seen elements or tinges of jealous passion intruding occasionally into otherwise innocent feelings of paternal devotion. There are, however, certain tales in which the father’s feelings about the daughter, or his actions in connection with her role as bride, exceed the bounds of propriety. This is perhaps most evident in those stories in which the father one way or another becomes involved in what transpires in the bridal chamber on the wedding night. To be sure, in “Hans My Hedgehog” (KHM 108) this involvement occurs at the bridegroom’s request: he tells the old king that he should have four men stand guard before the door and make a large fire, in which they are to burn the skin the hedgehog will shed just before he climbs into the marriage bed.
Once this has happened and Hans is lying in the bed “completely in human form, but … black as coal as though he had been burned,” the king calls for his physician, who washes the bridegroom “with good salves and covers him with ointments” so that he is transformed into a handsome young man, very much to the daughter’s delight. In “The Two Royal Children” (KHM 113), though, a father’s jealous love of his daughters, and accompanying envy of the suitor as prospective bridegroom, is indicated by his condition that if the young prince is to have one of the daughters to wife, he must remain awake in her bedroom for nine hours–from nine in the evening to six in the morning–without falling asleep.
The– ironic–implication of the father’s odd demand may be that he imagines that in this way the young man will be prevented from “sleeping” with the daughter and will thus have to suffer the torments of unfulfilled desire. As it happens, the eldest daughter and the two younger ones after her trick the father by having the statues of St. Christopher standing in their rooms answer each hour for the young man, who thereby passes the test despite having fallen asleep in the girls’ bedrooms (there is no indication that he engages in any intimacy with them, except the laconic reports that he “laid himself on the threshold”).
