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scripttorture · 6 years

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Hi, i was wondering about rapunzel and how her story might be different in a more realistic setting, regarding isolation etc?

If you’re talking about the recent Disney version I haven’t seen it. I’mgoing to be going off the Grimm/Lang versions I read growing up back in yedayes of yore.

Children that grow up in extreme isolation end up with pretty severemental health problems and depending on the age they were confined may not beable to socialise normally or speak.

Speech and socialisation are learned skills. We need to be taught them.

I don’t know a great deal about childhood development. If this characterwas isolated at an extremely young age then I can only describe the effects ingeneral terms.

I don’t have a lot of sources on the effects of solitary confinement onchildren, most of the sources I have are focused on teenagers in Americanprisons. I think the youngest prisoner I’ve seen talked about was 10.

So for the sake of the ask, I’m going to assume the character wasisolated at an age no younger than 11. Isolating younger characters has evenmore serious effects.

In the folklore versions of this story (I’m going by memory but I thinkI got this from Lang) Rapunzel is confined until she falls pregnant and thewitch imprisoning her flies into a rage and throws her out into the forest tofend for herself. Going with the idea that historically puberty hit severalyears later than it generally does today…I’d say an age of 16-17 when she’sreleased.

Rapunzel is also not completely alone; she has contact with the witchwho imprisoned her and later her lover. But in most versions the contact seemsto be fairly limited and it’s debatable whether it would count as ‘positive’.The definition of solitary confinement is 23 hours or more a day without humancontact. So Rapunzel could be visited twice a day and still meet the definitionfor being in solitary confinement.

We need more social contact than an hour a day. Especially when we’reyoung. And this is a very long time to be in solitary confinement. Most sourcesconsider anything more than a week to be prolonged solitary confinement.

I’d expect a character like this to have a lot of long lasting mentaland physical health problems.

The physical health problems are partly related to the environment she’sin. Towers aren’t large and I doubt a growing child could get enough exercise inthis environment which would affect her muscle development, strength andpossibly coordination.

There’s also a more indirect effect: depression and anxiety are usuallycited as the most common mental health problems in solitary confinement. Bothconditions can make it difficult to eat. Nausea is pretty common. So is havingtrouble keeping food down or sometimes having any interest in food at all.Given her age not eating enough could have some pretty serious long termconsequences. It could stunt her growth, have long term effects on her bonesand joints, weaken her immune system and delay puberty. It might also make herpregnancy later in the story more dangerous.

In terms of mental health problems, wellthe masterpost on solitary confinement lists them here.

We can’t predict the mental health problems a particular survivor willget in advance. The possible symptoms are well known and in the absence ofclear evidence I tend to suggest picking symptoms based on what the authorfeels fits the character and storyline. Sometimes I can suggest that particularsymptoms are more likely but there’s nothing wrong with picking more unusualsymptoms or a more unusual combination of symptoms if they add more to thestory.

There are some studies onsolitary confinement that tried to find the most common symptoms. Unfortunatelythey contradict each other, there isn’t a clear statistical breakdown. Moststudies put depression, anxiety and self harm as the most common symptoms withhallucinations and psychosis as the least. Having said that some studiesrecorded about a third of the participants hallucinating in solitary.

In a character this young long term difficulties socialising and longterm learning difficulties are more likely than they would be in an adult. Bothof these factors would affect the character for a long time after release,making it difficult for her to get a job and interact with people in a basiceveryday setting. These symptoms can also lead to long term social isolationwhich further worsens both these and other symptoms.

After 5-6 years of long term confinement, with no known release date inpoor living conditions- To be honest I’m unsure a character this young wouldsurvive. Not when she’s got an open window several stories up. It’s incrediblylikely that she’d feel suicidal at some point and given the extreme length oftime she’s confined I think it likely she’d act on those feelings.

Given the method that’s open to her I think it’s incredibly likely she’ddie.

If she did survive for thislength of time then she’d be severely mentally ill and probably completelyunable to socialise normally. This in turn would likely lead to further socialisolation, which would probably make her feel suicidal.

In a modern setting I think a character like this would need prettyextensive care and might end up in an institution.

The thing is- These myths and folkloric stories that contain unrealisticdepictions of isolation are often so fantastical that I think critiquing themfor the way they show solitary confinement is missing the point.

Rapunzel’s story also contains: magic radishes, human hair strong enoughto support an adult man, the idea that a girl’s neck could support a manclimbing up a wall using her hair, magic singing, oh and a bloke falling from alethal height into a thorn bush suffering no broken bones but somehow ending upblind. Yes isolation isn’t taken seriously in this story, but neither is any other injurious activity.

And well that’s the thing with myths and fairy tales they often explicitlyask us to ignore the fact that characters are doing things we know would be deadlyor downright impossible. I personally think that attempts to update them ormake them realistic sometimes miss what these stories were originallycommunicating.

Making these fantastical stories more realistic can sometimes result inmore rather than less unfortunate implications. Because in a story with so manyother impossible injuries/lack of injuries, Rapunzel’s unrealistic isolationdoesn’t really stand out. We’ve already been asked to believe that humans cansurvive the impossible. But in a story ‘updated’ so that the other injuries areabsent we could end up with a narrative that accidentally suggests Rapunzel’sisolation is harmless in reality.

There’s nothing wrong with fairy stories. There’s nothing wrong withwriting things that are outside reality. But when it comes to torture and abuseI think we need to be clear when weare writing realistically and when we are writing the fantastical.

I hope that helps. :)

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#tw torture #tw child abuse #solitary confinement #fantasy ask #fairy tales #rapunzel #tw suicide #tw self harm #effects of solitary confinement #Anonymous

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