Zel
How does zel end up with mother?
Mother has spent her life yearning for a child but been unable to bear one, she sees it as a cruel act by God to curse a woman who could not live without being a mother to be barren. She makes a deal with the devil, a gift with plants in return for her soul. This gift with plants she then uses to grow a magnificent garden and manipulates the people next door into a position where the husband steals rapunzel from her to sate his wifes pregnancy cravings. Mother coerces the man into making the deal for his child by slowly covering him with briars that will gouge his eyes out and kill him. Mother takes the child and loves her more than anything else in life. The text does not pass a huge amount of moral judgement on her actions as this section of text is in mothers perpective and she sees what she did as okay because it brought her what she needed most in the world, a child. However Rapunzel does not react well when she finds out, though this is mostly because she is on the edge of sanity at this time, she does not think giving up a soul is a good choice for any price, and she is also unimpressed to learn her parents were manipulated into giving her up.
How is Zel's childhood shown?
Zel is said to have had a great childhood, mother says that she brought her up in the best way she knew how, encouraging curiosity and spirit and indulging whims. Zel herself is full of joyful spirit and gains elation from even the simplest things around her, she is a very happy girl. This is testament to her childhood and certainly illustrates that until the events of the text Mother had been a loving, caring and wonderful parent.
How does Mother act and speak towards Zel?
Mother is very loving and attentive towards Zel, however she is also very protective and traps Zel within her rules and cage of protection far before the tower is involved. In a way the tower is simply Mother's attitude towards Zel becoming personified physically. She also deeply loves Zel though and this is shown through the dress. She says herself that she makes the dress beautiful because Zel is beautiful and she deserves it. Zel only wearing the dress in the time when she pretends to be sane for Mother, this represents how their relationship is deteriorating but they are pretending it is fine. The motif of the goose and her egg is also important in the portrayal of the Mother Zel relationship. The goose has lost her clutch of eggs, or could never have them and instead pretends to have eggs which are in fact stones. When given a real egg she tries to look after it but rejects it. This is both a metaphor for mother and foreshadowing for the rest of the text. Mother is the goose, she tried to replace not having a child with other things and then sacrificed everything to have a child. She desperately needs Zel to see that the egg from another goose can be accepted by the goose, but this is also an innate need she has to prove to herself that she did the right thing. When she decides the goose is evil is the moment when her and Zel's relationship enters its downfall. Mother ends up hating the goose and wanting to kill it, and this reflects her inner self loathing.
Why is she locked up?
Mother panics, that is the simple reason why she locks Zel up. Mother knows that Zel must be tied to only her when she makes her choice to sell her soul to the devil and after the experience in town where Zel receives a gift and then has the boy who gave it to her stuck in her mind Mother realises how easy it would be for Zel to slip away from her. However in her quest to keep them close Mother inadvertantly drives them apart, her lies about an enemy which fills Zel with fear, and her keeping Zel in complete isolation which drives her mad cause Zel to hate her in the end. For Zel trusted and loved her completely and Mother betrayed that trust by not telling her the truth.
Does Mother have any regrets?
At the end Mother is filled with regret, she initially regrets raising Zel in a way that made her curious and joyful, then she regrets trying to force Zel into a decision to forfeit her soul, locking her in the tower and driving her mad. She regrets everything that drove her apart from the daughter she loves so much. This regret is shown when she realises she and Konrad are alike and saves his life with the last strength remaining in her own. This quote shows Mother's regret when she realises Zel is losing herself, "I hold that child in a tower. The only one I love, the one I love more than life itself;for two years I have held that one in a stone room. And I live alone. I live the life I would have lived if I had never had Zel in the first place. Only it is worse-for I know what I have lost."
What are the actions and attitude of the original parents?
Zel's parents are not explored in great detail and what we do know of them comes from Mother's perspective. As Mother is shown in town to have a very condescending view of people who live there and go about their lives fearing God and things they are ignorant of, so the portrayal of the parents would have been affected by this bias. She portrays them as ordinary people who fall prey to coercion, fear and their own impulses. This does not place a lot of fault on them, but simply implies that Rapunzel was raised more happily by Mother.
Which is portrayed as being the better parents?
The way this text addresses who are the better parents is interesting because it portrays the time when Zel and mother were together as good however her deal with the devil means the relationship goes bad. In a way it is saying that if mother had had a child she would have been a great mother but even a child is not worth bargaining your soul for. Mother's story is the tragedy of the text, she needed the one thing she was cursed not to have, but the means she takes to get it end up tearing it away from her.
Mother has spent her life yearning for a child but been unable to bear one, she sees it as a cruel act by God to curse a woman who could not live without being a mother to be barren. She makes a deal with the devil, a gift with plants in return for her soul. This gift with plants she then uses to grow a magnificent garden and manipulates the people next door into a position where the husband steals rapunzel from her to sate his wifes pregnancy cravings. Mother coerces the man into making the deal for his child by slowly covering him with briars that will gouge his eyes out and kill him. Mother takes the child and loves her more than anything else in life. The text does not pass a huge amount of moral judgement on her actions as this section of text is in mothers perpective and she sees what she did as okay because it brought her what she needed most in the world, a child. However Rapunzel does not react well when she finds out, though this is mostly because she is on the edge of sanity at this time, she does not think giving up a soul is a good choice for any price, and she is also unimpressed to learn her parents were manipulated into giving her up.
How is Zel's childhood shown?
Zel is said to have had a great childhood, mother says that she brought her up in the best way she knew how, encouraging curiosity and spirit and indulging whims. Zel herself is full of joyful spirit and gains elation from even the simplest things around her, she is a very happy girl. This is testament to her childhood and certainly illustrates that until the events of the text Mother had been a loving, caring and wonderful parent.
How does Mother act and speak towards Zel?
Mother is very loving and attentive towards Zel, however she is also very protective and traps Zel within her rules and cage of protection far before the tower is involved. In a way the tower is simply Mother's attitude towards Zel becoming personified physically. She also deeply loves Zel though and this is shown through the dress. She says herself that she makes the dress beautiful because Zel is beautiful and she deserves it. Zel only wearing the dress in the time when she pretends to be sane for Mother, this represents how their relationship is deteriorating but they are pretending it is fine. The motif of the goose and her egg is also important in the portrayal of the Mother Zel relationship. The goose has lost her clutch of eggs, or could never have them and instead pretends to have eggs which are in fact stones. When given a real egg she tries to look after it but rejects it. This is both a metaphor for mother and foreshadowing for the rest of the text. Mother is the goose, she tried to replace not having a child with other things and then sacrificed everything to have a child. She desperately needs Zel to see that the egg from another goose can be accepted by the goose, but this is also an innate need she has to prove to herself that she did the right thing. When she decides the goose is evil is the moment when her and Zel's relationship enters its downfall. Mother ends up hating the goose and wanting to kill it, and this reflects her inner self loathing.
Why is she locked up?
Mother panics, that is the simple reason why she locks Zel up. Mother knows that Zel must be tied to only her when she makes her choice to sell her soul to the devil and after the experience in town where Zel receives a gift and then has the boy who gave it to her stuck in her mind Mother realises how easy it would be for Zel to slip away from her. However in her quest to keep them close Mother inadvertantly drives them apart, her lies about an enemy which fills Zel with fear, and her keeping Zel in complete isolation which drives her mad cause Zel to hate her in the end. For Zel trusted and loved her completely and Mother betrayed that trust by not telling her the truth.
Does Mother have any regrets?
At the end Mother is filled with regret, she initially regrets raising Zel in a way that made her curious and joyful, then she regrets trying to force Zel into a decision to forfeit her soul, locking her in the tower and driving her mad. She regrets everything that drove her apart from the daughter she loves so much. This regret is shown when she realises she and Konrad are alike and saves his life with the last strength remaining in her own. This quote shows Mother's regret when she realises Zel is losing herself, "I hold that child in a tower. The only one I love, the one I love more than life itself;for two years I have held that one in a stone room. And I live alone. I live the life I would have lived if I had never had Zel in the first place. Only it is worse-for I know what I have lost."
What are the actions and attitude of the original parents?
Zel's parents are not explored in great detail and what we do know of them comes from Mother's perspective. As Mother is shown in town to have a very condescending view of people who live there and go about their lives fearing God and things they are ignorant of, so the portrayal of the parents would have been affected by this bias. She portrays them as ordinary people who fall prey to coercion, fear and their own impulses. This does not place a lot of fault on them, but simply implies that Rapunzel was raised more happily by Mother.
Which is portrayed as being the better parents?
The way this text addresses who are the better parents is interesting because it portrays the time when Zel and mother were together as good however her deal with the devil means the relationship goes bad. In a way it is saying that if mother had had a child she would have been a great mother but even a child is not worth bargaining your soul for. Mother's story is the tragedy of the text, she needed the one thing she was cursed not to have, but the means she takes to get it end up tearing it away from her.