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... and there he kept her
Apr. 21st, 2003 11:29 amat some point i need to do some research concerning this nursery rhyme:
in all the "Little Golden Books" I've seen, Peter is a red-cheeked cherub with a fork in a pumpkin... his wife is equally cutsie, and they for some reason, live in a giant pumpkin. One with Art Noveau doors and a lovely red brick chimney... A pumpkin Mucha might have designed, or perhaps one of the Pre-Raphealites. Such a lovely depiction for a child to look at....
Yet, even in it's most innocent interpretation, the rhyme has sexism and abuse at its root. (like most children's tales, i suppose... One should read Bruno Betelheim's "The Uses of Enchantment" sometime, for a sobering look at the realities behind some children's literature... But i digress, back to Peter,) The first part is obvious...Peter's wife leaves all the time, this is what it means by "couldn't keep her..." it may have been that his wife, who was probably a young peasant daughter in an arranged marriage, was attempting to flee a life of sexual conscription and forced drudgery (literally) or otherwise assert her rights. I also wonder if the interpretation of "to keep" in this instance implies that the wife could not remain faithful, and was "Straying" in the sense of infidelity, rather than physically leaving.... But in any case, the rhyme is clear on one thing.... She was not being dutiful... how does one punish an undutiful wife? This rhyme intends to instruct us.
How indeed? Perhaps he locked her up, and that may have been the intent of the rhyme on one level. A wife was property after all, (and property people paid you to take off their hands as well, that's what a dowery is for, you know. You may not know that in india, families may sometimes abort a daughter because the dowery (which is still a practice there) will financially ruin them.) But something doesn't ring true, at least, when one considers the size of a pumpkin. Simple fantastic license? Cinderella rode away in a coach made from a pumpkin afterall... Maybe this is precedent for a giant gourd theory in Medeival Children's Rhymes, or at least establish the pumpkin as the largest possible vegetable... The Golden Books would have us think so, with Peter cheerfully eating his pumpkin, apple-cheeked wife peeking out of a curtained window in the side of a gigantic pumpkin home.
But when thinking about the rhyme a while ago, I began to think that the actual intent of the rhyme may have been that he placed some portion of her into a normal sized pumpkin shell, some part that might fit, very well.
this seemed likely to me, especially given that "to keep" is also a verb that implies preservation, and measures taken to prevent decay.
So perhaps Peter cut off her head, and put that in the pumpkin shell? Perhaps this rhyme would teach us that this is the appropriate punishment for a wife one "can not keep."
peter, peter, pumpkin eater
had a wife but couldn't keep her
put her in a pumpkin shell
and there he kept her, very well.
in all the "Little Golden Books" I've seen, Peter is a red-cheeked cherub with a fork in a pumpkin... his wife is equally cutsie, and they for some reason, live in a giant pumpkin. One with Art Noveau doors and a lovely red brick chimney... A pumpkin Mucha might have designed, or perhaps one of the Pre-Raphealites. Such a lovely depiction for a child to look at....
Yet, even in it's most innocent interpretation, the rhyme has sexism and abuse at its root. (like most children's tales, i suppose... One should read Bruno Betelheim's "The Uses of Enchantment" sometime, for a sobering look at the realities behind some children's literature... But i digress, back to Peter,) The first part is obvious...Peter's wife leaves all the time, this is what it means by "couldn't keep her..." it may have been that his wife, who was probably a young peasant daughter in an arranged marriage, was attempting to flee a life of sexual conscription and forced drudgery (literally) or otherwise assert her rights. I also wonder if the interpretation of "to keep" in this instance implies that the wife could not remain faithful, and was "Straying" in the sense of infidelity, rather than physically leaving.... But in any case, the rhyme is clear on one thing.... She was not being dutiful... how does one punish an undutiful wife? This rhyme intends to instruct us.
How indeed? Perhaps he locked her up, and that may have been the intent of the rhyme on one level. A wife was property after all, (and property people paid you to take off their hands as well, that's what a dowery is for, you know. You may not know that in india, families may sometimes abort a daughter because the dowery (which is still a practice there) will financially ruin them.) But something doesn't ring true, at least, when one considers the size of a pumpkin. Simple fantastic license? Cinderella rode away in a coach made from a pumpkin afterall... Maybe this is precedent for a giant gourd theory in Medeival Children's Rhymes, or at least establish the pumpkin as the largest possible vegetable... The Golden Books would have us think so, with Peter cheerfully eating his pumpkin, apple-cheeked wife peeking out of a curtained window in the side of a gigantic pumpkin home.
But when thinking about the rhyme a while ago, I began to think that the actual intent of the rhyme may have been that he placed some portion of her into a normal sized pumpkin shell, some part that might fit, very well.
this seemed likely to me, especially given that "to keep" is also a verb that implies preservation, and measures taken to prevent decay.
So perhaps Peter cut off her head, and put that in the pumpkin shell? Perhaps this rhyme would teach us that this is the appropriate punishment for a wife one "can not keep."
