Allerleirauh

Allerleirauh is often an overlooked princess because she story includes the heavy topics

of incest and abuse. When the King’s wife dies it becomes essential that he was to marry again.

However, he would not marry any woman unless she was as beautiful as his late wife was.

Ironically, the only woman in the kingdom that possesses the beauty he seeks is his daughter,

with whom he becomes obsessed. The princess chooses to flee from her home when her father

forcefully declares his intent to marry her and she realizes she cannot change his mind.

Allerleirauh gives her father three tasks that must be accomplished if he wishes for her hand in

marriage. The princess tries to outsmart her father by giving him seemingly impossible tasks.

The King somehow manages to come up with her gifts, but she realizes that the gifts will help

her achieve her journey to escape. The princess makes a decision based on her moral values and

determines that her own father is wrong. She disguises herself as a furry animal and runs away to

hide in the forest. She is later found by men hunting in the woods and they decide to give her a

job in the palace kitchen. She courts the king of the palace, and at the end of the story marries

him. The story also fails to differentiate between Allerleirauh’s father and the new king she

marries.

Allerleirauh is not a typical princess. She proves she is capable of controlling her fate

when she chooses to run away from her father. She manages to fit ‘three dresses from the sun,

moon, and stars into a nutshell’ to take with her. The clothes themselves also connect show how

she traditionally magical and natural entities. The final garment Allerleirauh takes with her is ‘a

cloak of all kinds of fur,’ from all the animals in the kingdom. She put on the cloak, and

‘blackened her hands and face with soot,’ showing she is not afraid to be unsightly and dirty.

This was all in order to disguise herself. Allerleirauh cherishes the fur cloak because it connects
her with nature and with creatures in the forest where she went to escape her father and where

she found refuge. Allerleirauh’s cloak is more than a disguise. It transforms her into a mystical

creature who does not have a place in society. By wearing it she has chosen to remove herself

from being a princess and instead become part of the forest where she hides. The forest is a

haven for Allerleirauh.

Allerleirauh is also an excellent cook. She makes soup for the king which is so good that

the chef resents her for it. Judging from her horrid appearance and her mysterious culinary skills,

the people around her do not perceive her to be anything but a witch. Yet Allerleirauh has not

forgotten where she came from. She uses the celestial gowns to secretly attend balls and court

the king, and when she asks herself ‘oh, you beautiful princess, what will become of you?’ Both

sides of her life are disguises. The princess is choosing to dress up until she decides who she

wants to be. The memory of being a princess was tainted by her mother’s death and her father’s

advances. The life she inhabits in the fur cloak is known as her transition stage, which gives her

the time to heal after the distress her father caused her.

The ending of this story leads the reader to wonder if Allerleirauh actually got the happy

ending she deserved. Allerleirauh seems to enjoy the anonymity of being the mysterious furry

creature and creating her own destiny. At every opportunity she has to reveal her identity to the

king, she lies and says ‘I do not know anything’ about the items she has magically hidden in his

soup. After the third time, the king ‘grabbed the cloak and tore it off’ and she was ‘no longer

able to hide,’ her healing time comes to a vicious, abrupt end which is not on her terms. She

again loses her control over a powerful male figure. More importantly, the fur cloak symbolizes

her progress in development. The fur cloak is her cocoon in which an internal development is

occurring. The princess is trying to protect her sexual self, which is why she left her father.
Allerleirauh begins to understand that her father only valued her as a female and not as a person.

The princess must be valued as a person by the new king in order for her acceptance of him.

Allerleirauh’s father was wrong in his intentions to marry his own daughter. The central themes

show the importance of Allerleirauh to develop her own sense of moral rules and values. When a

parent is wrong the child has the right to question the act and rebel. She does not appear willing

to give up her freedom, and the new king is not much better than the father she initially escaped

from. She had the agency to run away, but now it has been taken from her.