The Robber Bridegroom

Rating:
Summary: A warped fairy tale
Review: Eudora Welty borrowed from the old Brothers Grimm fairy tale 'The Robber Bridegroom' to create this story that is part fairy tale, part historical fantasy, and very strange. Instead of old Europe, the action takes place in the southern United States. The old characters are all there: the innocent daughter, the merchant father, the irascible thief who becomes the 'bridegroom', and some new people have been added. A wicked stepmother, a boy named Goat, and an Indian tribe are just a few of the extras.

Apparently some of the characters, like Mike Fink and the Harp brothers, were real people, or at least were part of American folklore. Welty combines old world and new world fairy tales to create something completely unique. If you know the story of the Robber Bridgroom, you'll see how Welty has slyly snuck in very subtle similarities (the bird in the cage), and you'll be astonished at how much the ending was changed from the original story.

The book moves with rapid speed through larger than life situations. The Indians cooked and ate the merchant's family and he and his daughter escaped, THEN he married the evil Salome, THEN some guy tried to kill him while he slept with his bag of gold, THEN Lockhart carried his daughter away naked, THEN... It becomes almost too frantic, and you might need to go back a few pages now and again to make sure you didn't miss something. It's probably not the best introduction to Welty, but it's one of her most colorful works. For an elegantly written, surrealist fairy tale, you can't do much better than this.

Rating:
Summary: A warped fairy tale
Review: Eudora Welty borrowed from the old Brothers Grimm fairy tale 'The Robber Bridegroom' to create this story that is part fairy tale, part historical fantasy, and very strange. Instead of old Europe, the action takes place in the southern United States. The old characters are all there: the innocent daughter, the merchant father, the irascible thief who becomes the 'bridegroom', and some new people have been added. A wicked stepmother, a boy named Goat, and an Indian tribe are just a few of the extras.

Apparently some of the characters, like Mike Fink and the Harp brothers, were real people, or at least were part of American folklore. Welty combines old world and new world fairy tales to create something completely unique. If you know the story of the Robber Bridgroom, you'll see how Welty has slyly snuck in very subtle similarities (the bird in the cage), and you'll be astonished at how much the ending was changed from the original story.

The book moves with rapid speed through larger than life situations. The Indians cooked and ate the merchant's family and he and his daughter escaped, THEN he married the evil Salome, THEN some guy tried to kill him while he slept with his bag of gold, THEN Lockhart carried his daughter away naked, THEN... It becomes almost too frantic, and you might need to go back a few pages now and again to make sure you didn't miss something. It's probably not the best introduction to Welty, but it's one of her most colorful works. For an elegantly written, surrealist fairy tale, you can't do much better than this.

Rating:
Summary: "The sun shone down of all our possessions. "
Review: In Eudora Welty's tale "The Robber Bridegroom" wealthy planter Clement Musgrove has a tragic past. When captured by Indians years before, Musgrove lost his wife and son, but his precious daughter, Rosamond, survived. After this terrible incident, Musgrove's wealth grew, it seems, with amazingly good luck. But his greatest treasure is Rosamond. She's beautiful but she's also known to stretch the truth at times. One day she returns home naked with a tale that a disguised bandit took all of her clothes.

This Welty novel reads like a fairy tale. There's a wicked, ugly stepmother, and a creature named Goat she uses for her dirty work. I could say that this is a fairy tale for adults, but that has an unpleasant connotation.

I was absolutely delighted with the first half of the novel, but then it lost interest for me. I loved the planter and his family life, and the novel had a very strong moral point about the true worth of wealth and possessions. The wicked stepmother was great fun, and I laughed when she ordered Rosamond out to the wood hoping that something bad would happen to the poor girl. After Jamie Lockhart stole Rosamond, the novel seemed to lose its focus and control. The novel began very strongly with Musgrove's story of his capture by the Indians, but once the plot left the Musgrove family and moved onto the robber's lair, I found it not at all to my liking. There was a fresh, child-like innocence and purity to the first part of the story, but the second dark half of the novel did not match its promising beginning-displacedhuman

Rating:
Summary: "The sun shone down of all our possessions. "
Review: In Eudora Welty's tale "The Robber Bridegroom" wealthy planter Clement Musgrove has a tragic past. When captured by Indians years before, Musgrove lost his wife and son, but his precious daughter, Rosamond, survived. After this terrible incident, Musgrove's wealth grew, it seems, with amazingly good luck. But his greatest treasure is Rosamond. She's beautiful but she's also known to stretch the truth at times. One day she returns home naked with a tale that a disguised bandit took all of her clothes.

This Welty novel reads like a fairy tale. There's a wicked, ugly stepmother, and a creature named Goat she uses for her dirty work. I could say that this is a fairy tale for adults, but that has an unpleasant connotation.

I was absolutely delighted with the first half of the novel, but then it lost interest for me. I loved the planter and his family life, and the novel had a very strong moral point about the true worth of wealth and possessions. The wicked stepmother was great fun, and I laughed when she ordered Rosamond out to the wood hoping that something bad would happen to the poor girl. After Jamie Lockhart stole Rosamond, the novel seemed to lose its focus and control. The novel began very strongly with Musgrove's story of his capture by the Indians, but once the plot left the Musgrove family and moved onto the robber's lair, I found it not at all to my liking. There was a fresh, child-like innocence and purity to the first part of the story, but the second dark half of the novel did not match its promising beginning-displacedhuman

Rating:
Summary: Simple (yet endearing) adult fairy tale
Review: In her first piece of full-length fiction (more of a novella than a novel), Eudora Welty has taken a Brothers Grimm fairy tale of the same title, set it along the Natchez Trace in Mississippi, added a couple of legendary Southern outlaws (including the notorious Harp Brothers, one of whom is represented only by his severed head), and stirred in a good measure of Southern humor. The result is a wickedly funny (if slight) adult fantasy, complete with the usual cast: a beautiful young girl, a stepmother, and a good number of Disneyesque dimwits. There are no hidden meanings or surprise plot twists--this is just a fanciful yarn cleverly told with great wit and style.

Rating:
Summary: Astonishing
Review: This lovely novella introduced Eudora Welty to the world. Now it can introduce you to Eudora Welty. A raucous, genre-bending mixture of historical fiction, romance novel, and tall tale -- all shot through with the compassion and psychological subtlety for which Welty would become famous -- _The Robber Bridegroom_ still holds a place of honor in Southern literature.

Rating:
Summary: Cupid and Psyche meets the American Tall Tale
Review: Welty's first published novel is a retelling of Psyche and Cupid, with a decidedly American twist. Instead of turning the Greek myth into a fairy tale, she's created a delightfully unbelievable, far-fetched and bizarre "tall tale".

Many of the elements of a fairy tale are there--the wicked stepmother, the beautiful heroine, the naive and loving father, the handsome hero--but these are overshadowed by tall tale traits such as the superb stretching-of-the-truth skills by nearly everyone encountered from the mail rider who was swallowed by a crocodile to our heroine, Rosamond, who can't tell a truth to save her life.

The story takes place along the Natchez Trace in Mississippi with "Red Indians", robbers and a few famous American tall tale characters filling up the bad guy roster--with the hero, Jamie, switching sides regularly. Rosamond's father Clement Musgrove is a wealthy planter who meets Jamie at an inn and unwittingly brings his disruptive presence into Musgrove family.

Many deaths, lies, misunderstandings and berry stains later, Rosamond and Jamie do live happily ever after. . . and Rosamond even starts telling the truth. . . well mostly the truth, "it was all true but the blue canopy".

This fanciful tale is a well-executed, superbly written, pleasant read and it's only afterwards that one realizes that Welty added a bit of acid to this pleasurable brew.