Understanding the Handless Maiden

The Handless Maiden is a story about the taking of power from women by their fathers and husbands and about men's insensitivity to woman's need to be free to be themselves.

The Devil's Bargain is the bargain fathers make to take their daughters power-to-do by over-protecting them or by choosing their own priorities over the very different needs of their wives and daughters. They expect their daughters and wives to be "little princesses," and to do women's work, but not to have any real control over their lives. Men should make the important decisions, they too often believe.

In this story, the daughter attempts to break free of her father--who has disempowered her--to go into the forest (her solitude and naturalness)--to find herself and learn how to do for herself. But of course, she soon encounters her "prince" who also sees her as beautiful, pathetic and powerless. Like a knight, he "rescues" her by marrying her and expecting her, like her father, to conform to his needs.

She finds herself confined again and denied the ability to do as she pleases, right back under the control of a man and expected to meet his needs. In the end, she takes her baby--who also symbolizes her own innerchild--and plunges back into her solitude, running away from those who control her life. Unable to get her husband to understand that she needs control over her life and that her naturalness lies in thenatural things of the Earth rather than society's wealth and power, she at last chooses her self over her life with her husband and saves herself by retreating again into the forest alone. Here she realizes her own power-to-do and comes to love herself enough to live her life her way without others telling her what to do. Complete and whole at last, she does not give her power over her life back to her husband or to society, but lives in her naturalness (the forest) alone but free. Freedom is always won at the cost of aloneness. Feeling lonely is the price of being human.