The Frog Prince (story)
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The Frog King (German: Der Froschkönig), also known as The Frog Prince, is a fairy tale, best known through the Brothers Grimm's written version. In the tale, a spoiled princess reluctantly befriends a frog, who magically transforms into a handsome prince. Although in modern versions the transformation is invariably triggered by the princess kissing the frog, in the original Grimm version of the story, the frog's spell was broken when the princess threw it against a wall in disgust.[1] In other early versions it was sufficient for the frog to spend the night on the princess's pillow. Some variations of the story have used a toad instead of a frog, but with the same storyline.
It is Aarne-Thompson type 440. Others of this type include the Scottish The Tale of the Queen Who Sought a Drink From a Certain Well and the English The Well of the World's End.[2] The Grimms themselves picked out The Well of the World's End as a variant.[3]
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[edit] Shapeshifting
The violent act of the princess, throwing the frog against the wall, is a common folkloric trait of undoing shapeshifting magic, and not even the most violent; in The Tale of the Queen Who Sought a Drink From a Certain Well and the English The Well of the World's End, the heroine must behead the frog to transform it to a prince.[4]
[edit] The story in popular culture
A popular phrase related to this story is, "You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your handsome prince." It is used to encourage females who have romance troubles. It is unclear where the motif comes from. Maria Tatar's The Annotated Brothers Grimm merely attributes it to "American versions of the story", without becoming more specific.
A version of this character exists in the Fables comic book; he is named Ambrose, though he is also known as "Flycatcher." He is first seen as the quasi-permanent janitor of the main building of the New York City Fabletown, the Woodland Apartments. He has this job because he is always on community service for the offense of eating flies---this violates Fabletown law because it might draw the attention of the "mundys" (non-Fables) to the presence of the Fables among them. The book 1001 Nights of Snowfall retells the familiar tale about his curse and how a kiss from a beautiful princess restored his humanity (though he would uncontrollably turn back into a frog during moments of extreme stress, a kiss could always reverse the spell). Prince Ambrose did not live "happily ever after," however; his wife and children were killed by the invading forces of a villain known as the Adversary. Ambrose, trapped in the form of a frog, could only watch helplessly. Ambrose eventually returned to human form, but he repressed all memories of his family's death. Believing them to be merely "lost," Ambrose journeyed to the "mundyworld" hoping to find them.
1950's American TV Comic Ernie Kovacs, as his character Pierre Ragout, told this story on his show one night. He employed the version of frog spending the night on the princess' pillow and the princess waking up the next morning "to find a handsome prince lying in her bed". He then concluded with the punch-line, "And you know something, boys and girls? To this very day, her parents don't believe a word of it."
A Frog Prince appears in the Discworld novel Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett; however he is a frog that has been turned into a human, rather than a human rescued from a spell. A later Discworld novel, Wee Free Men, features a man who was turned into a toad but, for most of the book, cannot remember what his human identity was.
Robin McKinley also wrote a short story, collected in The Door in the Hedge, retelling the tale of the frog prince. Here the princess was not a spoiled brat and she dropped a cursed pearl necklace, rather than a golden ball, into the pond.
A variation of this tale appeared in a 1999 commercial for Honey Nut Cheerios, wherein Buzzbee tried to get the redheaded princess to forsake kissing the Frog Prince for the cereal.
Castlemain XXXX ( a beer) also used the frog prince theme in an advertisement. Here an Australian girl kisses a frog who turns into a handsome sheepshearer. He then kisses the girl and she turns into a lovely cool beer.
Capital One made a commerical where a princess kisses a frog, who turns into a ferret that recites legal jargon for reasons why he didn't turn into a prince. After subsequent kissings, the ferret turns into an orangutan, then an ugly centaur.
Walt Disney has started production on a movie based on the tale to be released in 2009. The movie will feature Disney's first African-American princess.
[edit] Jungian analysis of this story
The second version of the story serves as a good example for Jungian literature analysis. According to Carl Jung's analysis, the story presents an initiation process of a young female psyche. Fairy tale, in Jungian analysis, is a rich source of archetypes and it can be analyzed as a dream. The ego character in this story is the young princess. Being a virgin, she views her male companions as animals, more specifically, frogs. The golden ball represents her Self, which is lost in the well in the woods. Here both the well and the woods represent her unconsciousness. During her process of searching for her Self, she met a frog, who was actually a man. The frog helped her and wanted to drink from her cup and eat from her plate, which represent his desire of kissing her. To sleep on her bed represents the intimacy between husband and wife. As the virgin princess violently threw the frog against the wall, she suddenly came to realize the masculinity inside her unconscious Self. Upon this realization, the frog returns to the real image of a man or in this case, a prince with kind eyes. The princess is now a matured woman ready for marriage.
[edit] See also
[edit] Books
- The Prince of the Pond, Jimmy the Pickpocket of the Palace, Gracie the Pixie of the Puddle, a trilogy by Donna Jo Napoli
- The Frog Princess a novel by E.D. Baker
[edit] References
- ^ Heidi Anne Heiner,"The Annotated Frog King"
- ^ Heidi Anne Heiner, "Tales Similar to Frog King"
- ^ Maria Tatar, The Annotated Brothers Grimm, p 4 ISBN 0-393-05848-4
- ^ Maria Tatar, The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, p174-5, ISBN 0-691-06722-8
