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I t’s more than a fairy tale and a tongue-twister. Rumpelstiltskin is a complex soap opera in which the bad guy with the long name is the only honest character.

“The miller’s daughter and her father lie and the king is greedy,” said children’s literature expert Jane Kelley. “But Rumpelstiltskin is the only one who’s punished.”  

Kelley examined the classic story in order to analyze how 12 modern writers updated the 300-year-old tale. Her new book on the subject is “Critical Multicultural Analysis of Folktales: Power Representation in Reconstructed Rumpelstiltskin Stories” (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2009).

The subject fits well with Kelley’s work as an assistant professor in Washington State University’s College of Education, where she instructs future teachers.

“What I want teachers to understand is that each fairy tale is written not just for a different time, but for a different culture,” said Kelley. “We can use them to help us understand cultures and peoples.”

In Kelley’s course “Critical Analysis of Children’s and Young Adult Literature,” doctoral students examine the sociopolitical and cultural aspects of texts.  Her “Advanced Children’s Literature” class focuses on books that have received the prestigious Caldecott Award. 

When it comes to fairy tales, Kelley finds that college students have a lot to learn. Many think Walt Disney wrote Cinderella. Others assume that the Brothers Grimm wrote America’s best-known fairy tales, when in fact they just recorded a collection of existing German tales—although, Kelley noted, the brothers put their own spin on the plots.

In the early 1800s, the Grimms wrote down two versions of Rumpelstiltskin. It is a pretty complex story. Just for starters, in order to make himself appear more important, a poor miller lies to the king that his daughter can spin straw into gold. The king locks the girl in a tower, and demands that she spin gold or be executed. She has given up all hope, when a dwarf appears and spins gold in return for her necklace; then again the following night for her ring. On the third night, the nameless creature spins gold in return for a promise that the girl's first child will become his.

The miller’s daughter ultimately marries the king and manages to hold on to her baby by figuring out Rumpelstiltskin’s name.

The moral of the story? There’s a lot of debate about that. In her book, Kelley examines how writers in the 1990s changed events to create their own moral by altering who wields power.  She explores which characters dominate. Who conspires, who resists, who takes action?

For example, author/illustrator Diane Stanley took a feminist approach in her 1997 book “Rumplestiltskin’s Daughter.”

“On the third night, Rumpelstiltskin says, ‘I want a child, I think I’ll be a good dad,’ ” said Kelley. “And the miller’s daughter says ‘The king is a jerk, I’d rather marry you’ – and they elope.” When the couple’s daughter grows up and comes to the attention of the king, she cooks up a plan that results in prosperity for the people of the kingdom. She becomes prime minister.

Revising folk tales is a literary tradition that stretches back centuries before the “Fractured Fairy Tales” of TV’s Rocky and Bullwinkle fame.  Modern children’s books include such titles as “The Wolf Who Cried Boy” and “The Fourth Little Pig.” And there is no end of revisions in sight for the Rumpelstiltskin tale, Kelley said. “Since I finished this study, two more authors have rewritten the story.”

Kelley can be reached at 509-335-8852 or at jekelley@wsu.edu.

For more information about her work, see http://education.wsu.edu/directory/faculty/kelleyj.

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