Reading Notes: Beauty and the Basilisk


  • this story likely takes place in a medieval or village time setting, in a rural part of a country (the mother has to go to the next village to get the items) 
  •  the mother goes in to the city to buy items for her 3 daughters 
  • two of the daughters seem to be very materialistic, but the third daughter is very selfless
  • the mother grabs the items for the two daughters, but the load is too heavy and she cannot make it back to their home
  • the mothers gets lost in the forest and stumbles upon a palace, realizing she has forgotten the roses for her third daughter 
  • she arrives at the palace, where there's a garden of the most beautiful roses she had ever seen
  • the mother cuts the roses and is met by a basilisk that tells her that she must promise her daughter or he will cut her to pieces 
  • the daughter accepts and is forced to breastfeed the basilisk 
  • the basilisk says she must marry him, so she accepts 
  • the basilisk forces her to cut off his head, and when she does, a serpent emerges that tells her to cut off his head as well, which she accepts 
  • after she cuts the serpents head off, a handsome young man emerges who says they will be married, and they are married in the palace with a large crowd 
  • the third daughter, named mary, does not ask for much at all and accepts what her mother and the basilisk tells her to do 
  • the irony of the situation is that the third daughter asked for the least but ended up causing the most trouble

Basilisk by Friedrich Johann Justin Bertuch
    Source: Wikipedia


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Introduction

Week 7 Story: The Tiger King