Day 4 - The Heroine Preparing to Save Herself

So here's something I didn't know: In the Aarne–Thompson system of classifying folktales, there is a type called "The heroine rescues herself and her sisters."  Get the hell out, right?  I WOULD NOT JOKE ABOUT IT.  It's a type of tale (type 311, in fact), although of course, it's not a type that anyone ever bothered to relate to me when I was a child, because I was raised under a leaky bridge by sexist trolls.

I'm kidding.  It was more of a leaky overpass.

Okay, in any case, I stumbled across "How the Devil Married Three Sisters"while reading up on "Bluebeard."  Both tales feature an evil husband, a forbidden room, and a multiplicity of curious brides.  Where Bluebeard has a room full of bloody corpses, however, the Devil has the doorway to hell.  In his house.  To each his sulfurous own.

Both tales also feature a telltale sign that the wife has been overly curious.  In "Bluebeard," the wife, shocked at the sight of her husband's former wives hanging from hooks on the walls, drops the key to the room in the blood on the floor, after which, the key will not come clean.  In "How the Devil Married Three Sisters," the oldest and middle sisters are still wearing their wedding corsages when they open the door.  The flowers wilt in the heat of Hell - as flowers will - and then the Devil, realizing what they have done, casts them down into the fiery pit. Bummer.

It's hard getting married to a guy when you suspect he's murdered both of your older sisters, but that's what our heroine does, because the devil has money, and her parents like the match.  (Sigh.)  After the wedding, our clever heroine receives the same prohibition about opening the door, and she experiences the same need to open it anyway.  But.  Before opening the door to Hell, she removes her corsage and places it in water.  As she stares into Hell itself, she sees her sisters languishing there, pulls them back out again, and after some celebrating (I presume), she goes back to the Devil with her corsage still "fresh."  Seeing that she has obeyed him, the Devil becomes utterly smitten.

Now, call me crazy, but when you go to your new husband, and he is overcome with love and lust upon seeing that your "flowers" are "still fresh," I see a giant virginity thing happening.  The two older sisters might have been untouched by man on the night of their wedding, but their curiosity - their need to know more than their husband permitted - was tantamount to sexual unchastity. SO INTERESTING, yes?  Yes, indeed.

ANYWAY, from this tale, I chose the moment when the third sister goes back to the devil with her "fresh flowers" and looks into his eyes, innocently, as if nothing has happened.  It's a critical performance, because she can't very well say, "Hey, you cast my sisters into hell, but I just pulled them out again, and tomorrow, I'm going to trick you into taking us all back home, so fuck you very much."  She has to get through this night so that she can save the day tomorrow.

Here she is, looking up at the Devil, plotting her escape.