Fisherman+and+His+Wife

= **The Fisherman and his Wife** =

//**"The Fisherman and His Wife**// is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale no. 19. It is Aarne-Thompson type 555, the fisherman and his wife." "'The Fisherman and his Wife'" lacks the fairy-tale magic usually associated with the Grimms' tales. It may begin with "Once upon a time," but it fails to end with social elevation and rags-to-riches trajectory associated with the fairy tale. Instead, the tale offers a cautionary lesson about the importance of remaining satisfied with your station in life. The fisherman's wife, with her unbridled ambition, offers an example of the monstrosity of greed but also of feminine power. She stands in sharp contrast to her husband, the patient fisherman who is satisfied with a modest improvement to his life."

If you would like to read the story, here it is (its not very long): []

Synopsis:

"The fisherman and his wife live in a hovel by the sea. One day the fisherman catches a golden flounder who claims to be an enchanted prince. The fisherman kindly releases it. When his wife hears the story, she says he ought to have had the flounder grant him a wish. She tells him to go back and ask the flounder to grant her wish for a nice house instead of their hovel. He returns to the shore and is uneasy when he finds the sea seems to be turning dark when it was so clear before. He makes up a rhyme to summon the flounder, and it grants the wife's wish. However, the wife gets greedy and makes increasingly outrageous demands: first a cottage, then a palace, then to become king, then emperor, and then pope. The fisherman knows this is wrong but there is no reasoning with his wife. The flounder grants the wishes, but the sea grows increasingly stormy every time the fisherman goes to summon it. Eventually the wife goes too far when she wishes to become equal to God. The flounder revokes everything it granted, and the fisherman and his wife are back in their hovel."



The moral of this story is that you should be grateful for what you get. Also, being given something without working for it can lead to insatiable greed, (as can be seen with wife). It is also interesting to note that the flounder denies her wish to become a god, but not anything below that. She was blinded by her greed to believe that she could have inhuman things, and was therefore diminished to her original filth.

Throughout the story, there is a motif of gold.... as she is granted more richness, more and more gold is mentioned. The major 'tip-offs' include fish and a magical being that grants as many wishes as asked. Also brashness (the wife) competing with humility (the husband) is a major theme that alludes to this story. If the husband had the strength to not give in to his wife's greed, none of the events would have occurred.

This story is alluded to in several stories and poems:

Virginia Woolf's //To The Lighthouse// //"//In Virginia Woolf's //To the Lighthouse//, Mrs. Ramsey reads the story of Ther Fisherman and his Wife to her son James. She finishes the story when it is "growing quite dark" and watches her son: "She saw in his eyes, as the interest of the story died away in them, something else take it's place; something wondering, pale, like the reflection of a light which at once made him gaze and marvel." Embedded in a narrative about marriage, intimacy, and ambition, the tale powerfully enriches the complexities of what is at stake in Woolf's novel."

William J. Bennett's //Book of Virtues//

"William J. Bennet included a "retold" version of "The Fisherman and his Wife" in his Book of Virtues. He provides the following gloss on the tale: "We should know too much of anything, even a good thing, may prove to be our undoing, as this old tale shows. We need to recognize when enough is enough." Bennett's message fails to take into account the interesting ways this tale inflects this message, reversing traditional gender roles, with the husband as patient fisherman, content with living in a pigsty, and the wife as a ruthlessly ambitious figure, willing to disturb the universe as she demands more and more power."

Gunter Grass's //The Flounder//

"Gunter Grass's //The Flounder//, based loosely on "the Fisherman and his Wife," takes place over the course of nine months, during which the narrator entertains his pregnant wife with tales about the various cooks the fisherman has met throughout his life. Grass uses the tale to draw contrasts between the contributions of men and women to culture and civilization."