ABSTRACT
Rumpelstiltskin’s story competes against more accessible and straightforwardly chaste fare: cleaned-up versions of fairytales mass-marketed to urge prescriptive behavior. Because he wishes the contract honored and delivery of the child he was promised, Rumpelstiltskin appears vengeful or malevolent, which seems unfair. Rumpelstiltskin generously offers to disobligate the Queen from any payment from a contract that spared her life and bought her new-minted nobility. As imagined by the spinnstube’s canny ladies, given all the situation’s liabilities the Queen probably waived the otherwise satisfying chance for Rumpelstiltskin’s public humiliation. When he gallantly allows the contract to be renegotiated, Rumpelstiltskin tests an idea of pre-modern jurisprudence and personal responsibility: the rigorously fulfilled mythic/fairytale bargain. In the story’s aftermath, which commences as the tale ends in a raucous scene, the three males fade into insignificance. The fairytale nicely balanced many considerations with keen-eyed reporting on the unvarnished state of affairs as Rumpelstiltskin’s payment, the royal baby, completes the male spectrum: father, husband, son.
