Dead Princess In A Fairy Tale And Life

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Not having received recognition of her femininity from her mother

girls-daughters in fairy tales and in life are forced

seek this recognition from other objects

From the text of the article

The subject of my research was the famous fairy tale by A. S. Pushkin's "The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Heroes". A fairy tale, like any work, has many focuses of analysis. In my article, I will consider only a psychological perspective and focus on the features of the relationship between the main characters and their personality structure. In my opinion, this is one of the fairy tales that describes the typical relationship between mother and daughter. This theme is quite common in other fairy tales. Similar motives are found in the fairy tale "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", "The Tenth Kingdom" and others. The focus of my attention in this article will be the relationship between the stepmother (Queen) and the royal daughter (Princess).

I will not repeat the plot, everyone knows it. The events of the tale take place quite quickly until the moment when the Princess grew up in the royal family. From this moment, a detailed description of the life of the heroes and their interaction begins. The central figures are the Tsarina and her stepdaughter Tsarevna and the relationship between them.

So, the girl is ripe:

But the princess is young

Silently blossoming

Meanwhile it grew, grew, Rose - and blossomed, White-faced, black-browed, To the temper of such a meek one.

A grown-up girl needs confirmation of her emerging femininity from significant objects - mother and father. The mother and father at this stage of the relationship with their daughter have their own parenting tasks.

The father's task is to notice, admire and be fascinated by the beauty of his daughter-girl and at the same time not be tempted. It is very important to balance on this line and not slide either to the pole of alienation or to the pole of excessive convergence with violation of borders. The second pole seems to be more dangerous. The psychological immaturity of the father can be the cause of incest (symbolic or real) and lead to serious consequences in the mental and personal development of the daughter.

But this is not a storyline of our tale, therefore, not of our article. The Tsar-father, apparently, coped with his paternal function at this stage of the relationship with his daughter.

The task of the mother is to accept the emerging beauty and femininity of her daughter and to admit that she (the daughter) is "lovelier, blush and whiter …" of the mother.

A gift to a growing up girl from her mother is the recognition of her female identity. However, this can only be done by a mother with a formed stable "I-woman" identity.

Not every mother is such in real life. An infantile, psychologically immature mother with an unformed female identity herself needs to confirm her unstable self-esteem and is forced to consider any object that appears in her field as a reason for comparison and competition. Including a growing daughter. This is also the Tsarina in the analyzed tale.

In a fairy tale, this impossibility is reflected through reinforcement - the mother is not a native, but a stepmother. Replacing a mother with a stepmother is a fairly common technique used in many fairy tales. This emphasizes the "psychological inferiority", the mother's incapacity, her inability to fully fulfill her maternal functions.

This cannot be done by the Tsarina in our analyzed fairy tale - the stepmother of the daughter-princess. She, due to her personal characteristics, is not able to convey such a gift to the growing Princess. And her apples are poisoned.

In the stepmother-queen, a narcissistic personality structure is guessed. Despite her real beauty and mind

Tell the truth, young lady

There really was a queen:

Tall, slim, white, And she took it with her mind and with everyone;

The queen is not a self-sufficient and self-confident woman.

But then she is proud, lolly, Willful and jealous.

She constantly needs confirmation of her erratic self-esteem.

"I eh, tell me, everyone is sweeter, All blush and whiter?"

As a confirmation of her female identity, she regularly refers to the Mirror as a self-object of significance to the Queen.

She was given as a dowry

There was one mirror;

The mirror property had:

It speaks skillfully.

She was alone with him

Good-natured, cheerful, The mirror is not simple, but magical. What is the essence of his magic? In a fairy tale, the magic of a mirror is manifested in the fact that it can talk. I think more important here is that the mirror is alive. Living, that is, having its own will, having its own activity, and not passively reflecting everything that gets into it.

To see yourself in a living mirror means to look at yourself through the eyes of the Other. Because when we look at ourselves in an ordinary mirror, we do not have excess vision. M. Bakhtin says that a person experiences lies and falsity in front of the mirror, because, being in front of the mirror, he wants to look at himself through the eyes of the Other, but he sees nothing in the mirror except doubling his own face. He does not see the emotional-volitional reaction to himself from the side of another person, he sees only his own eyes, which are reflected in this mirror.

Only by looking into the eyes of the Other (in this case, a living mirror) do we see ourselves through the eyes of the Other. These eyes can be friendly, affectionate, welcoming or, conversely, suspicious, hate us, look at us with poorly concealed contempt. Naturally, we cannot see any such reaction in the mirror, and the situation of a double is obtained.

The queen regularly turns to a mirror to confirm her unstable female identity.

My light, mirror! Say

Yes, report the whole truth:

I am the loveliest in the world, All blush and whiter?"

And her mirror answered:

You, of course, no doubt;

You, queen, are sweeter than everyone

All blush and whiter."

Having received another portion of recognition of her own female attractiveness from a significant object, the queen falls into a grandiose narcissistic pole:

And the queen is laughing, And shrug your shoulders

And wink your eyes

And click with your fingers

And twirl around, Looking proudly in the mirror.

However, time is passing inexorably - the queen begins to lose her former beauty, and the growing Princess becomes more beautiful every day. The beauty and youth of the stepdaughter is a silent reproach symbolizing the inexorableness of time and its consequences - the beauty and youth of the Queen are not eternal. This causes her feelings of jealousy and envy and actualizes the competition with the Princess. And once, habitually turning to the mirror, she did not hear from him words of confirmation of her incomparable beauty.

Going to a bachelorette party, Here is the queen dressing up

Before your mirror, I spoke to him:

I eh, tell me, everyone is sweeter,

All blush and whiter?"

What is the answer in the mirror?

You are beautiful, no doubt;

But the princess is the nicest of all, All blush and whiter."

This moment is difficult in every woman's life. The beauty and youth of a growing daughter is a testament to the inevitable wilting and old age of her mother. Conflicting feelings of love and hate appear for the daughter.

Not having received the usual confirmation of her own superiority, the queen in a rage rushes to the self-object.

But tell me: how can she

To be dearer to me in everything?

Admit it: I am the most beautiful of all.

Go around our whole kingdom, At least the whole world; I'm not even.

And falls into a narcissistic rage

As the queen leaps back, Yes, how he will swing a handle, Yes, it will slap on the mirror,

With a heel, how will he stomp!..

Unwilling to accept the reality of what is happening, the Queen uses rejection of reality and depreciation as a psychological defense. She accuses the mirror of lying:

Oh, you disgusting glass!

You are lying to me for evil.

What follows is a devaluation text regarding his stepdaughter:

How can she compete with me?

I’ll calm the foolishness in her.

See how grown up!

And it's no wonder that she is white:

The belly mother was sitting

Yes, she just looked at the snow!

But tell me: how can she

To be dearer to me in everything?

Admit it: I am the most beautiful of all.

Go around our whole kingdom, At least the whole world; I'm not even.

Not having received recognition of their femininity from their mother, girls-daughters in fairy tales and in life are forced to look for it from other objects. And often for this they have to go through countless heroes, gnomes, etc. in order to meet their female identity.

Having received a poisoned apple in a fairy tale (symbolically meaning not receiving confirmation of her femininity), the princess dies. But her death, even in a fairy tale, is not literal.

She, As under the wing of a dream, I lay so quiet, fresh, That she just didn’t breathe.

In fact, we are talking about psychological death - as an inability to live fully and assert one's femininity.

However, her fiancé, the prince Elisha, makes a series of efforts to save his bride. And having received a kiss from her beloved, the princess comes to life, wakes up from a long sleep.

And oh dear bride's coffin

He hit with all his might.

The coffin was smashed. Virgo suddenly

Has come to life. Looks around

With amazed eyes

And swinging over the chains

Sighing, she said:

"How long have I slept!"

And she rises from the coffin …

Ah!.. and both burst into tears.

In fairy tales, with the help of this (kiss of a loved one), it is often possible to bring "conditionally dead" girls back to life. Before that, her chosen one has to overcome many obstacles and perform countless feats.

In real life, not every prince Elisha (Ivan Tsarevich, etc.) is capable of such feats in order to revive the dead princesses. And this is not their business, as it seems to me. In a fairy tale, princes, and in life, husbands, in doing so, perform functions unusual for them, cleaning up parental mistakes. And not always and not everyone succeeds in disenchanting their dead constricted. And this is not a man's business. After all, the curse was imposed by another (mother).

However, the mother's "witchcraft" is one-sided. She can bewitch her daughter, but she is not able to bewitch her. I think that in the case when the mother is not able to cancel her witchcraft, it can be done by another significant woman for the girl (in fairy tales, the good fairy godmother often appears in this role), or this can happen through the rite of female initiation. Unfortunately, in the modern world, initiations (female and male) have become oversimplified and formalized and have ceased to fulfill their originally intended functions.

In real life, a psychologist can become such a fairy godmother.

Let's go back to our story. Unable to withstand the comparison that is not in her favor, the queen receives a narcissistic trauma and falls into the opposite pole - insignificance with narcissistic depression. In a fairy tale, this fact is exaggerated until the latter's real death.

Evil stepmother, jumping up, Breaking a mirror on the floor, I ran straight through the door

And she met the princess.

Then her longing took, And the queen died.

And the queen, despite her vile character and unsightly deeds, is a pity. If we look deeper, we will see that in this case we are talking about women-mothers who themselves did not receive the necessary acceptance-recognition-love from their parents and are not able to pass it on "by inheritance", since they themselves are psychologically dead and are forced to constantly look for them at any cost in order to feel alive. To do this, they are forced to use loved ones, including their daughters, as narcissistic nourishment.

And theoretically they can be helped. But in reality there are many obstacles - unawareness of one's problems as psychological problems, rejection of one's responsibility in influencing loved ones, unwillingness to change something in one's life …

WHAT TO DO? THERAPEUTIC REFLECTION

There is no doubt that the period described in the text is a crisis for the woman-Queen. With varying degrees of awareness, she has to face the experiences of the inexorableness of time and the inevitability of her own changes under the influence of its continuous flow. For a woman who has entered this period of life, there is a discrepancy between the image of I (identity) and those bodily and social changes with which she inevitably faces. Her image “I” lags behind reality, does not have time to rebuild so quickly. Crises of this kind in psychology are called identity crises.

And there is nothing terrible and dangerous in this, if you do not ignore the "challenges of reality", but meet with them, realize them, live and change. Identity crises are always associated with high-quality and deep revision and restructuring of the personality - its values, meanings, adjustment of life goals and objectives. Of course, it is better to do this with the help of a specialist, but, nevertheless, having the skills of introspection and a certain level of reflexivity, as well as with the support of loved ones, you can successfully overcome this difficult period in life yourself.

Here are some tips for doing this:

• Do not close your eyes to the changes taking place in your life, take them for granted, inevitability and "normalcy";
• Accept with dignity and courage the fact of the maturation of your daughter and the withering of your own beauty as an inevitable given of life;
• Do not view your growing daughter as an object for comparison and competition, do not envy her, enjoy her flourishing femininity and beauty;
• Learn to find the virtues and delights of your age. Physical beauty is not the only virtue of a woman;
• Review and realize the system of values and meanings of your life;
• Set new goals and life tasks in accordance with changed values and meanings;

It is important to remember that age-related life crises are growth points for a person who does not close his eyes to the reality of the changes taking place. Awareness and acceptance of the “challenges” of reality will allow him to clarify and correct the image of I, to find resources and sources for joy in it.