“The Goose Girl” is a tale of class warfare and deception capped off with a grisly execution. How charming! While not the most popular of fairy tales, it has found its way into modern consciousness, and modern writers have taken the opportunity to reconsider the rather archaic assumptions about class and social status woven into the original story while updating, adapting, and retelling the tale.
As Mari Ness pointed out in her sharply insightful essay on “The Goose Girl” here on Reactor, the Grimms considered it one of the finest tales in their collection, pointing to the idea that nobility is inborn, and reassuring readers that a change in station doesn’t actually affect one’s innately noble qualities. This simplistic view of social hierarchy hasn’t aged particularly well, which makes the story fertile ground for exploring questions surrounding privilege, entitlement, equity and equality (and who deserves access to healthy food, healthcare, a place to live, decent employment and education, social mobility, basic rights, and so on).
In case you don’t remember the tale, here’s my quick summary:
A princess is betrothed to a prince in another kingdom. The queen sends her daughter away to meet her fiancé, but gives the princess a charm (usually a handkerchief with three drops of the queen’s own royal blood) for protection. The princess is accompanied by her loyal and magical horse, Falada (who can speak), as well as her maid. There may or may not be guards as well, but they are irrelevant and get lost along the way. Eventually, the princess and the maid stop at a river, and the princess orders her maid to fetch her some water, but the maid refuses, telling her to do it herself. The princess does so, but when she bends over to get the water, her mother’s kerchief falls in the water, and she loses the magical protection.
The maid then takes the princess’ place on Falada, and demands that they change places, threatening to kill the princess unless she swears never to speak of their role reversal. The princess goes along with this. When they get to their new home, the maid takes the princess’ place as the prince’s betrothed, and the princess is given a job watching over geese (because of course the treacherous maid doesn’t want to keep her in the palace).
The princess is moderately content to become a goose girl, and starts to get along well in her new station in life. The only hiccup is the little goose boy, Conrad, who regularly tries to take her hat so he can see her beautiful hair. Luckily the goose girl can ask the wind to blow his hat away, forcing him to chase after it whenever he gets too close.
Eventually, though, Conrad succeeds, and because the goose girl has such beautiful hair, the goose boy realizes she must be the princess. The prince and the queen soon catch on to this as well, and realize that the prince is about to marry a commoner who is deceiving everyone. At dinner, the prince asks the maid what she would do to someone who deceived the entire court and kingdom about their station and pretended to be royalty. Bizarrely (because surely she must realize that they’re onto her?), the maid says she would have that person dragged through town naked in a barrel filled with spikes. So that’s what they do to the maid, who dies by her own horrific death sentence, and the princess is restored to her rightful place as royalty, marries the prince, and they live happily ever after.
The story certainly leaves us with as many questions as it answers: Why can Falada talk? Why can the princess command the wind? Why are Falada and Conrad the only ones in the story with names? Why on earth does the maid recommend such a grisly death when she has to at least suspect that the royals are onto her? Luckily, a host of modern authors have chosen to grapple with “The Goose Girl,” demanding the old story get down from its high horse, fetch its own water, and let their new tales have a shot at the crown…
The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
Princess Anidori learned to speak to birds before she learned to speak to humans, and when she comes of age, her mother decides to make her brother the crown prince rather than allowing Ani to inherit the crown. Instead, she’s sent to the neighboring kingdom of Bayern to wed their prince, and although she’s disappointed, she’s obedient to her mother’s will. Along the way, her lady-in-waiting Selia instigates a full-on coup with half the guards in Ani’s entourage. Ani flees but makes her way into Bayern under an assumed name, where she finds that Selia has taken her place. She finds a place tending animals in the king’s household and befriends a young guardsman, eventually foiling Selia’s plans to marry the prince and start a war between the kingdoms.
Little Thieves by Margaret Owen
This retelling includes everything but the geese. At age 4, Vanja is given to two godmothers, Death and Fortune, who take her in turn to be the servant and companion to Princess Gisele. Years pass and after abusive treatment by the royal family, Vanja gets a chance to take Gisele’s place, stealing the enchanted pearls that make the princess beautiful and desirable to all who meet her, casting an illusion over her features. Now Vanja has spent almost a year impersonating the princess and stealing treasures from the greedy local nobility, saving up to escape the country entirely. She’s nearly saved enough when she crosses paths with the wrong god, who curses her to slowly turn into gemstones unless she can make up for what she’s stolen. Suddenly Vanja finds herself facing an attempt to take over the empire, an investigation into her own crimes, and a ticking clock to break the curse. With a delicious slow-burn romance and heist-y shenanigans to boot, this one is wonderfully satisfying even as it leaves you wanting more. (Don’t worry! There’s a trilogy—book 3, Holy Terrors, should be on sale this April!)
“Rags and Riches” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, from Troll’s-Eye View edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
Told from the point of view of the princess’ wicked maid, Willa is a girl born into royal servitude, who works her way up from scullery to lady’s maid by learning everything she can with insatiable curiosity. Through boldness that shocks herself as well as her princess, she swaps places with the royal and begins to live out what, until then, has been merely an idle daydream…until Willa is caught off guard when her soon-to-be-husband’s father asks her what the punishment should be for a profound and wicked deception. Hoffman allows her to realize she’s been caught, though, and considers what one might do if one has achieved her greatest ambition and has no idea what comes next. Given that this collection is aimed at younger readers, it’s a kinder, but no less satisfying, retelling.
A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher
Another luscious retelling from Kingfisher, this one introduces us to Cordelia, the daughter of a sorceress who has spent much of her young existence trapped under her mother Evangelina’s spell of obedience, and Hester, a spinster of 50 who’s worked hard to make her life her own. When Evangelina sets herself and Cordelia on a social-climbing collision course with Hester’s brother, a kind and wealthy squire, Cordelia realizes that there are no lengths her mother won’t go to in order to get what she wants. A spark of rebellion is fostered by the keen and savvy Hester and her friends. A regency romance setting is perfect for this class-conscious fairy tale retelling, and if you’re familiar with “The Goose Girl,” it’s a nerve-racking ride to wonder exactly which elements of the story will come into play as the narrative unfolds.
“The Tale of the Handkerchief” by Emma Donoghue, from Kissing the Witch
Part of Donoghue’s stellar collection of linked tales, this retelling of “The Goose Girl” is told by the princess’ prickly maid, who finds herself embroiled in her own web of lies and fear of discovery. Yet she tells her side of the story in such a way that we cannot help but sympathize with her feelings even as her actions and choices are not particularly laudable. Every woman in Donoghue’s collection is depicted in a way that casts light on the stark choices women have had throughout history. In the end, the maid and the princess are allies against the world rather than enemies of each other, and choose their own places in their stories.
Thorn by Intisar Khanani
Princess Alyrra is reluctantly betrothed to Prince Kestrin, from the much more powerful neighboring kingdom. Alyrra doesn’t fit into her own family; her father is dead, her mother and brother are ruthless, callous, and cruel. Although her betrothal is an escape from her family, she hardly sees how trading one set of royals and court intrigues for another will lead her to true freedom, so when her companion, Lady Valka, aligns herself with a mysterious and powerful sorceress and steals Alyrra’s identity, Alyrra is willing to make the best of her new life, away from the palace and royal machinations. It’s not so easy to leave her responsibilities behind, however, and as she’s drawn into the lives of common folk, she begins to see that it’s not so simple to stay silent and ignore looming threats to the kingdom. Told in clean, bright prose and with enough complexity to make every character feel layered, this take on the older story is a satisfying page-turner.
