Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin

The story of Rumpelstiltskin has roots in the oral tradition of many cultures that practiced spinning and has variations across Europe. For many readers, the most familiar version of the tale is the one the Brothers Grimm recorded in the 1800s. A miller boasts to the king that his beautiful daughter can spin straw into gold. The king brings the miller’s daughter to the castle and threatens to have her executed if she doesn’t spin a large quantity of straw into gold by morning. Rumpelstiltskin appears when the girl is crying over her seemingly impossible predicament. For three consecutive nights, Rumpelstiltskin spins straw into gold for the miller’s daughter. Each night, he asks the miller’s daughter what she will give him in exchange. She gives him a necklace on the first night and a ring on the second. On the third night, she has no more valuable possessions left to offer, and Rumpelstiltskin asks for her firstborn child. These sorts of escalating demands are often seen in fairy tales about magical helpers: “They ask for something trivial to start with, then move to something that is beyond the norm of an economy of bartering. The helper or donor quickly moves into the role of villain” (Tatar, Maria. The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. WW Norton & Co, 2002). The miller’s daughter accepts the bargain.

After the three nights are over, the king marries the miller’s daughter. A year later, the queen gives birth, and Rumpelstiltskin comes to claim the child. The queen is so distraught that Rumpelstiltskin is moved with pity and tells her that she can keep her child if she guesses his name in three days. Fairy-tale scholar Maria Tatar makes some interesting points about Rumpelstiltskin’s motives and morals: He may be “a devilish creature, a misshapen gnome of questionable origins,” but he demonstrates hard work and compassion in his dealings with the miller’s daughter and is even “prepared to add an escape clause to their contract even though he stands to gain nothing from it” (The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. WW Norton & Co, 2002). The queen dispatches a royal messenger to search the kingdom for unusual names. On the third day, the messenger sees Rumpelstiltskin gleefully dancing outside a hut in the woods to the following chant: “Tomorrow I brew, today I bake, / Soon the child is mine to take. / Oh what luck to win this game, Rumpelstiltskin is my name” (Tatar, Maria. The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. WW Norton & Co, 2002). Just in time, the queen guesses the correct name. Defeated, Rumpelstiltskin flies into a rage and tears himself in two.

Shurtliff’s novel largely follows the pattern of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale while weaving in her own inventions. In Rump, the miller becomes the antagonist, and his boast to the king is part of a plot decades in the making. Of course, the biggest departure from the Grimms’ tale is Shurtliff’s decision to make Rumpelstiltskin the hero of the story. The fairy tale figure is an enigma. The Brothers Grimm story offers no explanation of where he comes from, how he possesses the power to spin straw into gold, or even what kind of creature he is, although he is usually interpreted to be a gnome or a demon. Shurtliff’s novel answers these questions and turns Rumpelstiltskin into a human child with his own family history, dreams, and struggles. Although changing Rumpelstiltskin from a villain who demands a woman’s firstborn child to a plucky protagonist may seem like a significant departure from the original text, fairy tale scholars have found heroic traits in the classic story’s titular character: “Spinning straw to gold, Rumpelstiltskin is less demonic helper than agent of transformation, a figure who becomes heroic in his power to save life and to demonstrate compassion” (Tatar, Maria. The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. WW Norton & Co, 2002). As part of her research for the novel, Shurtliff studied many “different interpretations of the story, like Maria Tatar and Jack Zipes” (Baird, Samantha. “A Morning with Liesl Shurtliff, Author of ‘Rump.’” Brigham Young University, 2019). In Rump, Shurtliff patterns her plot on the Brothers Grimm story while giving her protagonist more opportunities to demonstrate the positive qualities suggested in the classic fairy tale.