Mythic dimension of "The Red Shoes"

[Peter Byrne Manchester <PMANCHESTER@ccmail.sunysb.edu>]

       I was not left lonely when I volunteered to organize research into the 
mythical aspects of "The Red Shoes" story tradition, about which Karen 
Newcombe had expressed interest a week or so ago.  Tipped off by Brian 
Gallagher (thanks a ton!), I now discover that a great deal of the relevant 
work has already been done.

>Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1993 08:57:24 -0700 (PDT)
>From: briang@efn.org (Brian Gallagher)
>Subject: RE: H.C. Andersen's "Red Shoes"
>
>Look into a book entitled Women Who Run With The Wolves by
>Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Chapter 8, "Self-preservation:
>Identifying leg traps, cages, and poisoned bait", reproduces an
>ancient version of the story and interprets it in the light of
>the author's 20+ years as a storyteller and practicing Jungian
>psychologist.  

       The version Estes presents is "a Magyar-Germanic version my Aunt 
Tereza used to tell us when we were children" (p. 215).  That means that her 
text is an original, currently in print (and a best-seller to boot), so I 
don't want to transcribe it.  Her knowledge about the substance of the story 
and about its traditions means that she has probably very accurately 
portrayed a version current in medieval, maybe even early medieval times.  
But she also talks about the roots of the 'red shoes' myth motif in very 
ancient Persian, Indian, and Egyptian 'threshold' rites for young women at 
the time they enter into their roles with respect to the passage of blood, in 
which they paint their feet red.  There are a lot of layers between that 
stratum and the early European story!

       Clarissa Pinkola Estes <what a trip of a name to type!> really doesn't 
need to reconstruct all that history in order to get at the archetypal 
dimension of the one we know from Hans Christian Anderson, about which Karen 
raised her question.  Her family's version makes loud and clear the 
manipulations HCA used to 'moralize' the story.  I can briefly outline the 
major changes or additions he made, assuming his source tradition was close 
to the one Estes tells from.

       First you need to know this much about Estes' interpretation:  she is 
clear that the brutal ending is truthful about the nature of the red shoes.  
The story is "variously known by the names 'The Devil's Dancing Shoes', 'The 
Red-Hot Shoes of the Devil', and 'The Red Shoes'."  Her theme is that the 
girl (called Karen by HCA, but nameless in Estes's version) has had the Wild 
Woman in her captured and injured in instinct by the dry and near-blind rich 
woman who 'domesticated' her, so that when she later tries to let the Wild 
Woman out, she is vulnerable to "Leg Traps, Cages, and Poisoned Bait" (title 
of the chapter).  Brian generously transcribed the specific hazards that 
Estes discusses:

>The traps:
>      #1 The Gilded Carriage, the Devalued Life
>      #2 The Dry Old Woman, the Senescent Force
>      #3 Burning the Treasure, Hambre del Alma, Soul Famine
>      #4 Injury to Basic Instinct, the Consequences of Capture
>      #5 Trying to Sneak a Secret Life, Split in Two
>      #6 Cringing Before the Collective, Shadow Rebellion
>      #7 Faking it, Trying to be Good, Normalizing the Abnormal
>      #8 Dancing Out of Control, Obsession and Addiction
>
       This last, the most drastic, is the one dramatized by the story.  It 
ends in disaster, with the girl quite abject.  The last line:  "And now the 
girl was a poor cripple, and had to find her own way in the world as a 
servant to others, and she never, ever again wished for red shoes."  (Several 
times in the chapter, Estes talks about Janis Joplin, as an illustration of 
how it can go if the 'dancing-out-of-control' Wild Woman gets an audience who 
egg her on for vicarious excitment.)

       I'll summarize HCA's major changes quite schematically:

       MAGYAR-GERMANIC                    HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSON

A little girl, poor, whose         A motherless poor girl
mother dies.

Taken to "old mother shoe-         Makes her own red shoes, sewn from cloth
maker" for her childhood red       straps, crude, but she loved them and 
shoes; given to her, first         they help her accommodate her hard life.
worn when mother dies.

Wealthy old woman in gilded        Big old lady portrayed as kind and 
carriage takes her in, cleans      feeling sorry for her, asks the parson if
her up, burns her shoes.           she can take care of her.  Shoes burned.

                                   <Spurious sub-plot involving Queen and
                                   Princess, tempting Karen to vanity and 
                                   envy.>

Finds red shoes in shop of old     Goes to rich shoemaker; thinks of 
crippled cobler.  He winks at      the Princess's shoes; is told these were
her as the old woman, color-       made for an earl's daughter; shoes are 
blind, buys them for her.          said to be "shiny."
Shoes said to "glow."

Confirmation on the "Day of The    Merely said to be old enough to be 
Innocents.                         confirmed.

Details on red shoes in church     Karen "thought only of the red shoes,"
emphasize lusciousness:  "like     but the story details not how she thought
burnished apples, red-washed       about them, but all the pious activities
plums...bright like crimson,       going on that she was ignoring.
bright like raspberries, bright
like pomegranates."

Old soldier with red beard taps    Old soldier with red beard simply "struck
the soles of her shoes with a      the soles with his hand."
little song that made the soles
of her feet itch.

Old lady hides the red shoes.      Old lady becomes very ill.  Has to be
She becomes bed-ridden, and so     nursed and tended, but Karen is invited 
Karen is free to search them       to a grand ball.  Looks at lady "who 
out, obsessively.  When she        after all could not live," at the shoes,
finds them and puts them on,       goes to the ball, and there the dancing
they dance her out the door.       shoes take over.

A Spirit of Dread prevents her     Gets in among the gravestones, but is 
from entered the churchyard;       accosted by an angel at the church door.
he pronounces her curse.           Curse toned down, and a moralizing
                                   note on "proud, vain children" is added.

Executioner cuts off her feet,     Asks feet to be chopped off so she can
the shoes dance them off into      "repent of my sins."  He makes her wooden
the forest, she becomes a          feet and crutches, teaches her a 
cripple and a servant.  End.       penitent's psalm.  She keeps trying to go
                                   to church, but is blocked by the dancing
                                   shoes.  Frightened, and seeking "real
                                   repentence in her heart," begs the parson
                                   to be taken into service.

       The whole rest of the 'redemption' stuff from there on is totally 
spurious preachment.  How "She proved to be very industrious and thoughtful. 
She sat very still and listened most attentively in the evening when the 
parson read the Bible."  It gets progressively more ghastly, until finally,
"Her heart was so overfilled with the sunshine, with peace, and with
joy, that it broke.  Her soul flew with the sunshine to heaven, and no one
there asked about the red shoes."  Bleuch!

       What I expected to find as the "magic" in this, as a children's story, 
is actually some pretty drastic and violent action (an authenticating aspect, 
as Estes makes clear)--some pretty powerful "voodoo" as Kate Bush's lyric has 
it.  (Anybody reading Alice Walker lately is aware that the social 
pathologies around this whole area can be pretty drastic, too.)

       So far as I can tell at this point, in the kb song only the shoes 
themselves and the frenzied dancing come from the folk story.  The dramatic 
situation ("She," dancing like the Diva <'Goddess', Sanskrit> in red shoes, 
dancing like "I" would love to, but can't, because "all her gifts for the 
dance had gone") seems quite different.  Also, it is not clear that for Kate 
the shoes are the devil's only:  is the stanza with "your eyes are lifted to 
God" supposed to be redemptive?

       Anyway, about Clarissa Pinkola Estes's book <I'm practicing>:

>This is one hell of a wonderful book. Amen.
>
>Brian 

Amen.
............................................................................
                                                            Peter Manchester
"C'mon, we all sing!"                          pmanchester@ccmail.sunysb.edu
                                                     72020.366@compuserv.com