Rapunzel

In the narrative frame preserved by the Brothers Grimm and earlier literary antecedents, Rapunzel's origin begins with her mother's craving for a garden plant (called 'rapunzel' in the German text, identified in source discussion as cornsalad or rampion). The parents steal the plant from a sorceress's high-walled herb garden; when discovered they bargain away the unborn child to the sorceress as recompense. The sorceress names the child after the plant. According to the Grimm summary, when Rapunzel reaches twelve the sorceress confines her in a tall tower with no stairs or door and only a single high window, raising her there and keeping her isolated. Scholarship and comparative notes in the sources link the Grimms' tale to earlier literary variants — Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force's Persinette and Giambattista Basile's Petrosinella — and note possible thematic parallels to mythic or hagiographic confinement stories (e.g., Danaë, Saint Barbara) and dawn/sun-goddess motifs, but the sources treat Rapunzel primarily as a folktale figure rather than a mythic deity.

The Grimm summary describes Rapunzel as a beautiful girl who grows up with extraordinarily long, golden hair. Her hair is the tale's most salient physical trait: exceptionally long and described as golden, it functions within the plot as a physical ladder between the tower and the outside world. The sources note no consistent supernatural bodily traits beyond the extraordinary length and beauty of her hair; she is otherwise presented as a human maiden raised in the sorceress's care.

Sources do not present Rapunzel as possessing overt magical powers; her role is narrative and functional. In the Grimms' version her long braided hair is used physically as a means for the sorceress (and later the prince) to ascend and descend the tower when she fastens it to a hook and lets it fall to the ground. Rapunzel also sings from the tower, and her singing attracts the prince who discovers the tower because of her voice. In the tale's resolution, Rapunzel sheds tears two of which fall into the blinded prince's eyes and immediately restore his sight; this restorative event is narrated as part of the plot rather than as a documented ritual or explicated supernatural power. Other retellings and adaptations sometimes amplify or alter motifs (for example, linking the hair to magical plants or to Samson-like strength), but those variations are treated as literary reworkings in the sources.