When looking at the Grimm tale “Rapunzel” and the new Disney film “Tangled”, there are very obvious similarities between the two stories. The first similarity is the main plot about Rapunzel being locked away in a tall tower with her new mother who is actually an old woman who took Rapunzel when she was young.
Other similarities are that Rapunzel has very long hair and that she has magical healing powers. However, in the Grimm story, no one is aware that Rapunzel has magical powers until the moment when she heals the prince’s blindness. The prince becomes blind after the sorceress scares him out of the tower window and he falls into thorns that pierce his eyes and make him blind.
In Disney’s Tangled, Flynn Rider, who is not a prince but a wanted thief, does not go blind. Instead, Flynn is stabbed by Rapunzel’s mother figure. Rapunzel would normally use her magical hair to heal any wounds but it does not work in this case. However, she begins to cry and the tear rolls down to Flynn’s wound and heals him, just as her tears heal his blindness in Rapunzel.
There are also differences between the two versions of Rapunzel. A first difference is the fact that Rapunzel’s birth mother willingly gives her up to the sorceress because while she is pregnant with Rapunzel, she is craving the Rapunzel lettuce that the sorceress has in her garden next door. On the other hand, in Tangled Rapunzel is taken by the old woman (mother Gothel) because she wants to use her magical hair to keep herself looking young. Rapunzel is also not a princess in the book but in the movie she is the lost princess.
Another difference between the book and the movie is that in the movie, Rapunzel is able to escape from her tower and experience the world and meet new people, while in the book she only knows the prince and the sorceress.
The most important similarity between the two versions is that Rapunzel is able to heal the man that she loves and they both live happily ever after together.
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