The Girl Without Hands

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The Girl Without Hands or The Handless Maiden or The Girl With Silver Hands or The Armless Maiden is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 31.^[1] It is Aarne-Thompson type 706.^[2]

1 Synopsis
2 Variants and Adaptations
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

A poor miller was offered wealth by the devil if he gave him what stood behind the mill. Thinking that it was an apple tree, he agreed, but it was his daughter. When three years were up, the devil appeared, but the girl had kept herself sinless and her hands clean, and the devil was unable to take her. The devil threatened to take the father if he did not chop off the girl's hands, and she let him do so, but she wept on the stumps, and they were so clean that the devil could not take her, so he had to give her up.

She set out into the world, despite her father's wealth. She saw a royal garden and wanted to eat some pears she saw there. An angel helped her. The pears were missed the next day, and the gardener told how she appeared. The king awaited her the next day and, when she came again, married her. She gave birth to a son, and his mother sent news to the king, but the messenger stopped along the way, and the devil got at the letter, changing it to say that she had given birth to a changeling. The king sent back that they should care for the queen nonetheless, but the devil got at that letter too, saying they should kill the queen and the child. An exchange of letter meant the devil still tampered with them, demanding the eyes and tongue as tokens.

The queen mother finally killed a hind to provide the proof and sent the queen and her son out into the world to hide. She went into a forest, and an angel brought her to a hut, and helped her nurse her son.

The king returned, and they discovered the letters had been tampered with. The king set out to find his wife and child. After seven years, he found the hut, and lay down to sleep with the handkerchief to cover his face. His wife came out and when the handkerchief fell, directed her son to put it back. The child grew angry, because he had a father in heaven but none on earth. The king got up to ask who they were, and she told him. He said that his wife had silver hands, but she had natural ones, and she said that God had given them back to her. So they went back to his kingdom.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Variants and Adaptations

In starker versions of the tale found around the world (such as the "Armless Maiden" tales recounted throughout Africa), the maiden's dismemberment comes when she refuses the sexual advances of her father or her brother, as in the Xhosa version of the tale, "A Father Cuts Off His Daughter's Arms". ^[3] In Basile's Penta of the Chopped-off Hands, the heroine has her own hands cut off into order to repulse her brothers' advances.^[4] Other variants of this tale include The One-Handed Girl, The Armless Maiden, and Biancabella and the Snake.^[5]

Many contemporary fiction writers and poets have found inspiration in this fairy tale. Examples include Loranne Brown's novel The Handless Maiden, Midori Snyder's short story "The Armless Maiden," and poems by Margaret Atwood ("Girl Without Hands"), Elline Lipkin ("Conversations With My Father"), Vicki Fever ("The Handless Maiden"), Nan Fry ("Pear"), Rigoberto Gonzalez ("The Girl With No Hands"). Andrea L. Peterson's No Rest for the Wicked has a character named Clare, the girl from this story.