man who is seen and heard; the brother,
the real brother.
Miguel de Unamuno,
He is handsome and heroic. He is a prince, that is,
he is powerful, noble, and good. He rides a horse. He
travels far and wide. He has a mission, a purpose. Inevitably he fulfills it. He is a person o f worth and a worthwhile person. He is strong and true.
O f course, he is not real, and men do suffer trying to
become him. T hey suffer, and murder, and rape, and
plunder. T hey use airplanes now.
What matters is that he is both powerful and good,
that his power is by definition good. What matters is
that he matters, acts, succeeds.
One can point out that in fact he is not very bright.
44
Woman Haling
For instance, he cannot distinguish Cinderella from her
two sisters though he danced with her and presumably
conversed with her. His recurring love o f corpses does
not indicate a dynamic intelligence either. His fall from
the tower onto thorns does not suggest that he is even
physically coordinated, though, unlike his modern
counterparts, he never falls off his horse or annihilates
the wrong village.
The truth o f it is that he is powerful and good when
contrasted with her. The badder she is, the better he is.
The deader she is, the better he is. That is one moral of
the story, the reason for dual role definition, and the
shabby reality of the man as hero.
The Husband, the Real Father
The desire of men to claim their children may be the crucial impulse of civilized life.
George Gilder,
Mostly they are kings, or noble and rich. They are,
again by definition, powerful and good. They are never
responsible or held accountable for the evil done by
their wicked wives. Most of the time, they do not notice
it.
There is, of course, no rational basis for considering
them either powerful or good. For while they are governing, or kinging, or whatever it is that they do do, their wives are slaughtering and abusing their beloved
progeny. But then, in some cultures nonfairy-tale
Onceuponatime: The Roles
45
fathers simply had their female children killed at birth.
Cinderella’s father saw her every day. He saw her
