Bottingheimer's Theories of Direct Speech
Ruth B. Bottingheimer's theories of female submission by limiting "good" female characters to indirect speech, as presented in chapter six of Grimms' Bad Girls and Bold Boys: The Moral and Social Vision of the Tales does not hold up in the omitted tale "The Three Sisters". Bottingheimer argues that character is defined through speech patterns and that men and bad girls are defined as having direct speech than the good female characters. Cinderella does have much less speech than her sisters, even if the numbers fluctuating from edition to edition seems to suggest something else is also in play. The sisters in the three sisters, however, have a larger proportion of direct speech. The best correspondence seems to be to compare each sister's speech to that of her husband.
The sister who marries the bear has three instances of direct speech, and two instances of indirect speech, a total of five speeches. Her husband has a total of six speeches, all of which are direct. While this might suggest support of Bottlingheimer's theory, the other sisters fare better. The second sister has three direct speeches and one indirect speech, for a grand total of four. Her husband, the eagle, has four direct speeches. There is not much of a difference there. The third sister has two speeches, both direct. Her husband, the whale, has three speeches, one indirect, the other three direct. While one could argue that the number of speeches is different for each, arguing that there is some significance here, but the sisters are really minor characters in this story, a fact which should not be overlooked. There is also not as wide a gap in between total speeches in this tale-- Cinderella has a total of seven speeches in the last edition, the prince a total of twelve. This could, however, be due to the fact that "The Three Sisters" is a literary tale, which would be prone to have more direct speech in general.
Other feminist arguments
"The Three Sisters" seems to suppress women in other ways, however. After all, the sisters are married off by their father to save his life, without so much as a "by your leave" on their part. They are practically hypnotized by the princes when they arrive to pick up their wives, and leave without a sound. The sisters are forced to endure their husbands being animals for a large portion of the time, and must content themselves to living one day, week, or month at a time when their husband is in human form.
They are forced to submit to their husbands animal nature and cannot dare have their brother over for so much as tea without fearing for his life while the husbands are in animal form. At least the bear's wife takes the initiative to hide Reinald, the other two must be coaxed into it! Also, Rienald's princess marries him equally quickly after the spell is broken. Why should she marry a stranger just because he broke a spell?
Other Variants
"Marya Moryevna" is at least more sensitive to the needs of the sisters. Ivan, while he does feel he has the right to grant his sisters permission to marry (that is, after all, how it worked in those days), tells the prospective husbands they may marry if his sister is willing. They also get names in this version, even if they aren't the main characters. Marya herself is also a warrior capable of killing entire armies single-handedly (or so the text implies...). While the princess in The Tree that Reached Up to the Sky is not as aggressive as Marya, she does at least get some say in her marriage, which is more than can be said for the title characters of The Three Sisters.
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This page written and coded by Beth Epstein.