Days 12-13 - Diptych

Prior to this challenge, my favorite fairy tale was "The Juniper Tree."  (Now, it is "How Geirald the Coward Was Punished," as you may know if you have been faithfully reading.  Gold stars, green clovers, and blue diamonds if so!)  The Juniper Tree belongs to a particularly gruesome class of tale, formally known as "mother killed me, father ate me."  Yeah, I know.  That's gross, not to mention dark AF. 

I have often sighed at the grim characterization of stepmothers in fairy tales.  I understand that they are competing for the most limited resource imaginable: One inheritance, which is essentially destined for the father's biological child/ren.  I understand how jealousy and fear can bring out the very worst in human nature, even when not combined with the evolutionary, biological, and emotional drive to ensure the success of one's own offspring.  It makes sense.

What doesn't make sense, however, is saddling your own daughter with the notion that she killed her half-brother, which is what happens in "The Juniper Tree."  That's just selfish, and rather horrifically so.  It was an odd delight, then, to re-read a version of "The Juniper Tree" in which the stepmother is tempted by Satan.

WHAT?!

Given the role apples play in the story, the presence of Satan feels particularly evocative.  So.  As part of a project to reclaim wicked stepmothers, I created this diptych, in which the stepmother is tempted by Satan.

As a diptych, they want to hang side by side