SOURCE: Stallman, Robert L. “‘Rapunzel’ Unravelled.” Victorian Poetry 7, no. 3 (autumn 1969): 221-32.

In the following essay, Stallman perceives Morris's “Rapunzel” as an archetypal Victorian treatment of the mythic quest and a “rite of passage” tale.

Morris' youthful little drama challenges modern readers of poetry quite as much as it did his Victorian peers. They met the challenge by ignoring the poem, but it hardly seems admirable of us to dismiss it as “bewitching” or as having an inexplicable “dark weirdness” about it.¹ If the poem is effective, there must be some rationale to its effect on us as readers, perhaps an effect that can be illuminated rather than explained away. Certainly, as we read the poem, we have the uncomfortable feeling of walking over thin ice that hides a vast world beneath its surface glitter. This is somewhat the same feeling we have on reading the original tale in...