Vasilissa the Beautiful

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Ivan Bilibin's illustration of the red rider from Vasilissa the Beautiful.

Vasilissa the Beautiful is a Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki.^[1]

Another of the many versions of the tale also appears in A Book of Enchantments and Curses (under the title Vasilissa Most Lovely), by Ruth Manning-Sanders.

Aleksandr Rou made this fairy tale into a film, Vasilissa the Beautiful in 1939; it was the first large budget feature in the Soviet Union to use fantasy elements, as opposed to the realistic style long favored politically.^[2]

1 Synopsis
2 Variants
3 Commentary
4 See also
5 References

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

A merchant had, by his first wife, a single daughter, who was known as Vasilissa the Beautiful. When she was eight years old, her mother died. On her deathbed, she gave Vasilissa a tiny wooden doll with instructions to give it a little to eat and a little to drink if she were in need, and then it would help her. As soon as her mother died, Vasilissa gave it a little to drink and a little to eat, and it comforted her.

After a time, her father remarried, to a woman with two daughters. Her stepmother was very cruel to her, but with the help of the doll, Vasilissa was able to perform all the tasks imposed on her. When young men came wooing, the stepmother rejected them all because it was not proper for the younger to marry before the older, and no one would look at her ugly daughters.

One day the merchant had to go on a journey. His wife sold the house and moved them all to a gloomy hut by the forest. One day she gave the girls all a task and put out all the fires except a candle. Then her older daughter put out the candle, and the two sisters sent Vasilissa to fetch fire from Baba Yaga's hut. The doll advised her to go, and she went. While she was walking, a man rode by her, dressed in white, riding a white horse whose equipment was all white; then a similar rider in red, and the sun rose. She came to a house that stood on chicken legs, and was walled by human bones. A black rider, like the white and red rider, rode past her, and night fell, but the eyes of the skulls lit up. Vasilissa was too frightened to run away, and so Baba Yaga found her when she arrived in her mortar.

Baba Yaga in her mortar, by Ivan Bilibin

Baba Yaga said that she must perform tasks to earn the fire, or she would eat her. For the first task, she must clean the house and yard, cook supper, and pick out black grains and wild peas from a quarter measure of wheat. The next morning the white rider and the red rider rode through the house. Baba Yaga left, and the doll did all the work except cooking the supper. When the black rider rode through the house, Baba Yaga returned and could complain of nothing. She had three pairs of hands seize the grain to grind it, and set Vasilissa the same tasks for the next day, with the addition of cleaning poppy seeds that had been mixed with dirt. Again, the doll did all except cooking the meal. Baba Yaga set the three pairs of hands to press the oil from the poppy seeds.

Vasilissa asked about the riders and was told that the white one was Day, the red one the Sun, and the black one Night, but Baba Yaga having cautioned her about too many questions, she did not ask about the hands, which, Baba Yaga informed her, would have meant she would have been seized by them like the wheat and the poppy seeds, for food. Baba Yaga asked how she performed the tasks, and Vasilissa said, With her mother's blessing. Baba Yaga wanted no one with a blessing in her house and drove her out, but gave her a skull with burning eyes as the fire she had asked for. The skull told her to bring it home.

She arrived home to find that her stepmother and stepsisters had been unable to light a fire since she left. The skull soon burned them up, and Vasilissa stayed alone, waiting for her father. She wove linen and gave it to the Tsar, but it was too fine for other women to sew, and so Vasilissa came to sew it, and the Tsar fell in love with her and married her.

[edit] Variants

In some versions, the tale ends with the death of the stepmother and stepsisters, and Vasilissa lives peacefully with her father after their removal.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Commentary

The white, red, and black riders appear in other tales of Baba Yaga and are often interpreted to give her a mythological significance.

In common with many folklorists of his day, Alexander Afanasyev regarded many tales as primitive ways of viewing natures. In such an interpretation, he regarded this fairy tale as depicting the conflict between the sunlight (Vasilissa), the storm (her stepmother), and dark clouds (her stepsisters).^[3]