Reines Licht: Blindness, Religion, and Morality in Selected Early Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen

ABSTRACT This paper undertakes a disability studies reading of blindness in selected early Grimms Kinder- und Hausmärchen (KHM). I argue for the use of the religious model of disability as a methodology for this reading and develop a new model known as the moral model: as I demonstrate, the religious model locates disability in the individual. In contrast, the moral model — which is often conflated with the religious model — should be a symbiotic methodological approach that locates the disability in the moral fabric of the tales rather than in the individual. My analysis shows that blindness equals damnation in the KHM. Evil characters are punished with it due to sin and a lack of morality, whereas good characters are saved from such a punishment. This salvation often takes the form of miraculous healing, often by God.

In this case, I propose to use the well-established religious model of disability, and my extension of the religious model, the moral model of disability. In outlining them here, I shall also compare both models to two more contemporary models of disabilitythe medical and social modelsto further contextualize definitions.
The religious model is recognized as one of the oldest sociocultural approaches to disability and centres around the disabled individual's soul and direct relationship with religion (in the case of my paper, Christianity). The objective of the theory is to analyse disability using Christian motifs and cultural interactions with the disabled body to highlight the religious stigma placed on disabled individuals. To the religious model, disability can often result from having an imperfect soul. Disability can be a punishment from God for a sin the disabled individual committed, 3 the sin of a previous generation made manifest in the disabled individual, 4 a temporary test of faith, 5 a salvific journey to help bring the disabled (and thus sinful) individual closer to God throughout their life, 6 or even a representation of general moral paucity. 7 As Edward Wheatley argues, the religious model held considerable sway over disability discourse: Modern medicine tends to retain discursive control over disability by holding out the possibility of cures through developments in research; medieval Christianity held out the possibility of cure through freedom from sin and increased personal faith, whether that of the person with the disability or a miracle worker nearby. 8 Wheatley compares the (here Catholic) Church's institutional hegemony to that of modern, institutionalized medicine, which promises a cure to disabled individuals. Where medicine offers medical intervention as salvation, religion offers the soul's salvation. Crucially, the religious model thus locates the disability in the individual, as healing a body or redeeming a sinful soul is a highly individual process, especially if the person is disabled. This interior location is comparable to that applied by the medical model of disability which works very similarly to the religious model but views disability as a medical/physical 'defect' that needs to be solved via medicine. 9 The religious model, therefore, can be seen as comparable in rationale to the medical model. Nevertheless, the religious model remains unclear in its definition due to how complex the relationship between religious institutions and the fabric of society can be. In a later essay, Wheatley also points out that the religious model has significant societal implications: The religious model overlaps to a certain extent with the social model because, through alms-giving and church-related hospices and hospitals devoted to the disabled, medieval society helped to care for people with disabilities. 10 The social model to which Wheatley refers is a model of disability borne out of social and political activism against the medical model. Rather than locating a disability in an individual's body, the social model distinguishes between impairment and disability. The impairment is what is 'wrong' with a disabled individual's body or mind, and the disability lies outwith the body, being constructed by society. 11 To use a simplistic example, a blind individual's lack of sight is an impairment (hence the term visually impaired applying more broadly to blind and partially blind individuals), but that person's disability is constructed by society when braille is not commonly available in public places. The social model thus locates disability outside of the body and focuses on social responses to disability. If the religious model is similar to the social model, it too locates disability outside as well as inside the body by definition.
Indeed, symptomatic of this definition complexity are academics' imprecise naming conventions for the religious model. It has been called 'the religious and/or moral model', 12 'the religious/moral model', 13 and Rhoda Olkin drops the term 'religious' in favour of the 'moral model', which she also compares to the medical model. 14 The religious model appears to be conflated with or analogous to the moral model, despite the fact that no 'official' definition exists for the latter past the exact definition of the religious model. The complexity of defining the religious model thus muddies the water so that the links between disability and religion, and disability and morality become part of the same axiom under one model. I question this conflation. Analogizing both societal stigmas (views of moral paucity placed upon disabled individuals by societal norms) and religious ones (punishment for sin, tests of faith, etc.) from a religious institutional perspective can lead us to ignore how (non-)disabled characters reconcile societal concerns of morality and theological questions of sin and the soul with corporeal  195-203 (pp. 195-98). 12 Retief and Letšosa,p. 127. 14 Olkin,p. 132. difference. 15 This distinction between morality and religion is significant for the context of the early KHM, which were published during a time in which secularism was on the rise. Even if Christianity still played a significant role in the moral and social fabric of Germanophone lands, the stigma associated with institutionalized Christian doctrine may not have been the guiding factor in approaching disability. A blind person who believes they are condemned by God and are out on the street begging does not merely suffer once, nor are those sources of suffering identical. A conflation of morality and theological sin can lead to a conflation of the root cause of suffering due to blindness.
Consequently, I propose to consider the religious and moral models as conceptually different but inherently intertwined, reflecting the fact that the line between religion and morality is not always clear-cut. Under my hypothesis, I define the religious model in similar terms to how Wheatley compares it to the medical model, in the sense that it unpicks the religious stigma of disability as divine punishment, cure, or test and that it locates the disability strictly in the body of the disabled individual. Thus, the stigma this model applies to a disabled individual is spiritual and reflects that individual's 'unclean' body and soul and is defined by their relationship with God. The moral model, on the other hand, I define as a model which uses the concepts of disability andunlike the religious modelimpairment to locate disability outside of the body. Examples of this are social exclusion based on ableist stigma (stigma which applies explicitly to disabled individuals, typically to deny or denigrate their disabled identity and experience), such as the belief that the disabled individual is evil, morally bankrupt, or of little value to that society based on their physically impaired abilities being equated to a moralistic drain on society. When comparing the moral and social models, the key difference is that the moral model takes the perceived moral bankruptcy of disabled individuals as the fundamental reason for discrimination or exclusion. While the social model's more wide-ranging analysis of exclusion (for example, in terms of public spaces, healthcare, political policy, travel, social, and emotional responses to disability, etc.) can be highly useful for analysing the KHM, the moral modelas I will demonstrateprovides a new and specific focus on morality and moral didacticism which is uniquely suited to the KHM. These two models need not always appear in a pair, but when they do, their symbiosis depends on (Christian) morality: the religious model analyses the morality of the individual from a spiritual perspective; the moral model highlights how an individual's impairment excludes them from partaking in society because of some perceived moral deficiency according to social norms.
Putting what I have stated before in the context of the early KHM, it becomes clear that the religious and moral models are highly appropriate for undertaking a disability studies reading of such a corpus. To return to the religious model and healing: Ann Schmiesing's medical analysis of selected KHM centres itself around cure and prosthesis in tales such as 'Die drei Feldscherer'. 16 During her review of the use of medical narratives in the tales, Schmiesing concludes that '[h]uman characters can typically achieve at best a simulacrum of wholeness when attempting to heal or cure, whereas true wholeness is depicted as the provenance of God or other supernatural figures' (p. 51). Further, the context of healing and cure narratives is that the stories were collected and published when health matters were only just beginning to become a part of public policy and institutionalized discourse. 17 As Essaka Joshua notes, it is also important to state that more recent approaches to disability analysis regard discussing disability in an inappropriately medical context as ableist. 18 A disability studies medical analysis of tales in the KHM which do not involve medical themes would falsely attribute disability (and specifically the experience of blindness) to a medical deficiency when it is unwarranted. This false attribution would not only fail to understand disabled identity properly in the KHM but would lead to false generalizations about blindness in the context of the corpus. Thus, while medical discourse can happen in the early KHM, it is generally inappropriate to use a medically informed model which relies on strong medical, institutional discourse when that discourse was neither dominant at the time nor in most of the textual corpus.
Returning to the moral model: morality and society in the KHM was an essential consideration for the Grimms, even in the earlier editions of the corpus. For the original editions, the brothers primarily collected stories present in these editions to preserve and continue the folkloristic tradition, often with a view to political unification through the Germanophone language and culture. 19 In her introductory material to The Annotated Brothers Grimm, Maria Tatar notes that this interest in political unity was not to present a superior Germanic culture. Instead, the tales provided 'an appeal for national unity in the face of foreign domination', referring to the Grimms' perception of the French (intellectual) occupation of Germanophone lands. 20 Despite having this political interest as their priority, the brothers also established the early editions of the KHM as useful for children's moral instruction. By the second volume of the 1812 edition (published in 1815), the Grimms discuss the backlash to the tales as morally instructive tools for children in the preface: 16 Ann Schmiesing, Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms' Fairy Tales  The Grimms do not detail which tales should be deemed unacceptable for children; however, it is safe to say that with so many of the tales being filled with violence, and deliberately so, 21 violent endings in the tales were a justifiable and didactic educational tool to the Grimms. This desire for morally didactic education, in tandem with the fact that the Grimms far preferred Christian narratives to pagan ones in their tales, despite there being 'no compelling folkloristic reason for doing so', 22 means that my disability studies analysis of the early KHM should focus primarily on morality and religion. Thus, the moral model, alongside the religious model, becomes a vital element of this paper. All of this context becomes especially relevant considering that blindness is one of the most culturally complex disabilities, with a long history of religious, cultural, and medical connotations. 23 Throughout history, blindness has been culturally and medically linked with death. 24 Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy identifies (by way of Galen and Hippocrates) blindness as a possible symptom of melancholy. 25 Blind characters also often have supernatural powers in the form of foresight, such as the Tiresias of classical antiquity. Further, visually impaired individualsas with other physically disabled individualscan be portrayed as morally inferior to the sighted and able. Notions of beauty, goodness, and moral purity were inherently connected to an internalexternal corporeal concept in the Romantic era; disability and deformity often indicated an impure, sinful, or morally corrupt soul. 26 Paradoxically, blind people could also be perceived as being morally superior to the sighted, 27 with Edward Larrissy noting that 'the blind possessed an unimpaired potential for benevolence' as far as Romantic-era thinkers were concerned. 28 From a religious perspective, blindness is often seen as one of the more debilitating disabilities due to the hierarchy of the senses. St Augustine writes: Blindness is a defect of the eye, but it is the very thing which indicates that the eye was created for seeing light; and so, by its very defect, the member capable of perceiving light is shown to be more excellent than the other bodily members, since there is no other reason that lack of light should be a defect in the eye. In the same way the nature which once enjoyed God shows by its very defect that it was created excellent, since the reason for its misery is precisely that it does not enjoy God. 29 Here, the eyes are considered to be the purveyors of sight, the most important sense for seeing the light of God. Romantic-era authors such as the Grimms did not begin with an entirely new concept of blindness and would undoubtedly have been aware of these cultural, medical, religious, and moral interconnections. 30 As a result, a religious and moral disability studies reading of blindness in the early KHM becomes highly relevant and appropriate, as the profound relationship between theological questions of sin, questions of (Christian) morality, and moral didacticism also permeate the fabric of fictional, folkloric societies and cultures such as those depicted in the KHM.
What follows is that religious and moral analysis. First, I will analyse Aschenputtel (comparing the 1812 and 1819 editions), and then the 1819 edition of Hänsel und Grethel to examine how blinded and visually impaired persons are treated regarding their morality. In addition, I shall give further original readings on tales not analysed comprehensively before from a disability studies perspective: 'Die Krähen' and 'Der Königssohn, der sich vor nichts fürchtet' (both 1819). I intend to prove that society, and Christianity, treat morally 'worthy' characters considerably better than evil characters and demonstrate how my reworked definitions of the two models further this analysis to show the symbiosis of morality and societal stigma in respect to visually impaired characters in the KHM. I shall also go further than the main academic work on blindness in the KHM, Leah Laxdal's master's thesis (2008), 31 to further unpick how blindness is used as a punishment for sinful and evil characters and how good characters, when blinded, are cured by God. *** In this section, I shall examine the emphasis the 1819 edition of Aschenputtel puts on religion and morality when compared to the 1812 version and how the act of blinding, in addition to the stepsisters' self-mutilation, changes the dynamic of disability. We shall see that the inclusion of blinding acts as a paradigm for the religious model of disability, and self-mutilation as an architype for the moral model.
It is safe to say that morality and religion are present in both versions of the tale, but the 1819 edition puts these themes at the forefront of the reader's mind for the purposes of setting up a clearer moral dichotomy. In the 1812 edition, the tale details a speech of Cinderella's dying mother: liebes Kind, ich muß dich verlassen, aber wenn ich oben im Himmel bin, will ich auf dich herab sehen, pflanz ein Bäumlein auf mein Grab, und wenn du etwas wünschest, schüttele daran, so sollst du es haben, und wenn du sonst in Noth bist, so will ich dir Hülfe schicken, nur bleib fromm und gut.
(1, I, 89) Religion and morality are front and centre here, with the concept of the mother watching over her daughter from heaven being a reason for planting the tree on her grave and her instruction to Aschenputtel to be pious and good. Following this statement, Cinderella grieves and plants the tree, and the stepmother and stepsisters enter the narrative. In the 1819 edition, this initial speech is changed somewhat: 'bleib fromm und gut, so wird dir der liebe Gott immer beistehen und ich will vom Himmel herab auf dich blicken und um dich seyn' (2, I, 114). This shortened version not only leads with the instruction to be pious and good but also shows that God rewards and supports moral goodness from the outset of the tale. In the rest of the paragraph, Aschenputtel plants the tree, but she also 'ging jeden Tag hinaus auf ihr Grab, und weinte und blieb fromm und gut' (2, I, 114). Setting her up as a definitively pious and moral character in the 1819 edition means that the introduction of the stepsisters as characters 'die schön und weiß von Angesicht waren, aber garstig und schwarz von Herzen' (2, I, 114) also foreshadows the moralistic dichotomy that is to permeate the rest of the narrative. The culmination of this dichotomy is the trial of the golden slipper, leading to an excellent demonstration of the moral model at work via self-mutilation. In the 1812 edition, the stepsisters chop off certain areas of their feet to fit inside the golden slipper. Laxdal remarks that they 'disable themselves in an attempt [to] reach their idealized goal, and yet not as a way to intentionally Other themselves' (p. 61). The concept of Othering refers to the fact that in undertaking this self-mutilation, the stepsisters are rendering their bodies 'abnormal' and are willing to forego the stigma of having a physical impairment in the interest of socio-economic improvements to their lives, such as marrying into royalty. Indeed, the concept of overcoming stigma, which discredits an individual, by ameliorating the socio-economic situation around them, is a typical response to stigma, as noticed by Erving Goffman. 32 While I certainly agree with the premise of Laxdal's reading, I would argue that there is a more complex dynamic at work, namely the involvement of morality and the stepmother. The stepsisters do not act alone in their self-mutilation. The idea is given to them by the stepmother when she tells one of the sisters to hack at her feet because becoming queen is worth the sacrifice (1, I, 99). Not only does this statement strengthen Laxdal's argumentation by highlighting the concept of stigma erasure through social and economic betterment, but it also shows that the stepsisters follow these instructions; without ever questioning their mother. This moral failing is their downfall in terms of the moral model: their avarice supersedes rationality and causes them to self-mutilate. Each time, their attempts at deception are thwarted by two doveswhich the Grimms note should be read as holy birds (1, II, LXIII)which provides religious impetus to making sure that moral paucity does not win out in the tale, and that the morally good character receives her dues. The stepsisters, now Othered but unable to avoid the stigma due to no social advancement, consequently suffer the social stigma of being seen as an immoral and thus unwise choice for brides, which in the patriarchal world of the marriage market means spinsterhood. 33 While they are left to endure humiliation in the last few lines of the tale (1, I, 101), the able-bodied, good, and beautiful Aschenputtel is the one who benefits from the riches and societal advancement by being taken as the prince's bride.
All of the above happens in the 1819 tale, although the stigma applied to the stepsisters comes from religious sources as well. Once again, the holy doves point out the blood flowing from the shoe, and Cinderella is found to be a perfect fit. However, there is a wedding for her and the prince this time, which the stepmother and the self-mutilated stepsisters must attend: Als es nun zur Kirche ging, war die älteste zur rechten, die jüngste zur linken Seite, da pickten die Tauben einer jeden das eine Aug aus, hernach als sie heraus ging war die älteste zur linken und die jüngste zur rechten, da pickten die Tauben einer jeden das andere Auge aus und waren sie also für ihre Bosheit und Falschheit mit Blindheit auf ihr Lebtag gestraft. (2, I, 123; my emphasis) In addition to the stepsisters being forced to attend the wedding they could not have, the religious symbolism of the doves being the deliverance of punishment during a union under God indicates a divine intervention element to their lifelong punishment. This punishing blindness is also meted out under specific circumstances because they were wicked and deceitful, and the fact that it happens at the end of the tale means that there is no resolution and no chance of redemption for them; they are stuck in limbo. Of equal importance is that the stepsisters are punished, and yet the stepmother, who actively encouraged the self-mutilation, is not. This punishment is reserved for the characters who committed 'morally blind' actions, and the blindness serves not just as physical punishment for wickedness but also for acting on a lack of moral foresight. The fact that this punishment is not doled out to the stepmother also shows that God is not penalizing a broader societal moral trend. While their impairment of self-mutilation inflicts an ableist stigma of false bridehood, 34 which is located in society as per the moral model, the blinding demonstrates their non-Christian actions and their moral and spiritual paucity is made manifest with their lack of physical sight. This religious punishment is thus located in their bodies, as per the religious model. Consequently, the two physical disabilities in the 1812 and 1819 editions demarcate the religious and moral models by where the disability is located. In the case of self-mutilation, the stepsisters attempt to render the disability of their forthcoming impairment null and void by socio-economic advancement and fail, thus rendering them ineligible for marriage. In the 1819 edition, this societally located disability is compounded by an individually located damnation in the form of religiouslydeigned punishment by blinding. *** In addition to blindness serving as religious punishment in Aschenputtel, it is also used as a physical and metaphorical signifier for wickedness and moral paucity in the witch in Hänsel und Grethel. Going further than the narrative descriptions of wickedness, however, I shall draw on the religious model of disability to exemplify how physical disability is used as a metaphor to demonstrate Christian perceptions of wickedness in the tale and how the witch's visual impairment leads to her downfall.
The Christian symbolism in this tale indicates that the witch is not just a symbol of wickedness but rather a demonic creature of evil linked to the devil. 35 This is exemplified by her supernatural house (2, I, 84), which she uses as a trap to lure hungry children. Hänsel and Grethel fall into this trap, finding it on the third day of erring through the woods and satiating their hunger by beginning to eat the roof and windows of the hut. As Ronald Murphy comments, '[t]he test is old: the food is forbidden' (p. 59). Just as the serpent tempts Adam and Eve in Eden, the witch also tempts the siblings. This temptation quickly turns into deception when she takes the two children in and promises to look after them. Hänsel and Grethel cannot believe their luck: 'sie meinten sie wären wie im Himmel' (2, I, 85). That illusion of paradise quickly gives way to reality; the witch locks Hänsel in a cage, and forces Grethel to do manual labour as well as fatten Hänsel up for eating. From the narrative alone, the witch has no redeemable qualities. Any generosity she shows the children is in the interest of deception so that she can fulfil her selfish (and gluttonous) interests, and she shows no remorse for her maltreatment of them and proposed cannibalism.
The witch's visual impairment is metaphorically and literally vital to this narrative of evildoing and sin. The witch begins to miss important information or details because of her weak eyesight, with a prime example being when she asks Hänsel to stick out a finger to test whether he is fat enough to eat. The test, however, does not work: 'Hänsel streckte ihr aber immer ein Knöchlein heraus, da verwunderte sie sich, daß er gar nicht zunehmen wolle' (2, I, 86). The only explanation for the witch not realizing that Hänsel is not sticking out his finger is that she could not see it properly. Laxdal interprets this example of visual impairment as an ironic situation, in which the witch is 'left triply disabledvisually, tactilely (touch), and mentally (unsound judgment [for example, the witch's desire to eat Hansel and Gretel])and therefore triply marked as a villain for readers' (pp. 88-89; square brackets original). She then describes the witch's visual impairment as a metaphor for ignorance (pp. 95-96). I agree with Laxdal's argumentation vis-à-vis the witch's visual impairment leading to sensory disability and her conclusion that these disabilities demarcate the witch as a villain. 36 However, I would argue that the witch does not so much have a mental disability; rather her visual impairment is metaphorically linked to her inherent wickedness. The witch's inability (or lack of desire) to fully comprehend the evil she is doing means that she is morally and physically blind. Her visual impairment, thus, does not represent ignorance so much as it does her sinful soul.
This lack of moral and physical sight means she is killed by the same type of deception she inflicts on Hänsel and Grethel. However, Grethel's act of deception is justified because she is morally worthy and able-bodied. The witch attempts to encourage Grethel to go into the oven to check if the bread is baked correctly, explaining that her eyes are too weak to check the loaves' colour properly. At this point, Grethel has a moment of inspiration: 'Gott gab es aber dem Mädchen ein, daß es sprach: "ich weiß nicht, wie ich das anfangen soll, zeige mirs erst, und setz dich auf, ich will dich hineinschieben"' (2, I, 87; my emphasis). The witch does so, and Grethel shuts her in the oven. Whether God literally inspired her to deceive the witch in this way is debatable, but the mention of His name here implicitly informs the reader that Grethel's feigned inability to check the bread due to inexperience is justifiable here. As Hans-Jörg Uther notes, this battle of deception is part of the fairy tale style: 'Die Polarisierung charakterisiert den Extremstil des Märchens: "Das Böse muß vernichtet werden, damit das Gute weiterleben kann"' (p. 35). In the case of Hänsel und Grethel, one might pair 'disabled' with 'evil' and 'ablebodied' with 'good'. The entire conception of the oven scene is what blindness and visual impairment scholars call ocularcentric. It is a situation in which the only way to succeed is to have some semblance of sight. The witch would never have needed Grethel's aid in this way if she could check on the bread herself. According to this moralistic logic, her visual impairment, brought about by her being a wicked demonic figure, means that she literally cannot see the bread's colour and lacks the internal foresight to predict the obvious deception 36 See also Schmiesing, levied against her. The morally good and able-bodied Grethel exploits the witch's disability to simultaneously save her own and Hänsel's life as well as punish evil, and she is rewarded for doing so. *** I have analysed blindness as a divine punishment for and representation of evil in characters; however, these are not its only uses in the KHM. In 'Der Königssohn, der sich vor nichts fürchtet', the prince, who exemplifies couragewhich has been long considered a virtue in religion, philosophy, and ethics, dating back to Aristotle and Plato -37 is blinded and then subsequently cured by divine means. Using the religious model of disability, I shall demonstrate how his blindness hinders his ability to be courageous and why his cure is an ableist necessity in the tale.
The pre-blinding narrative of 'Der Königssohn' is constructed to reward the prince's fearlessness and courage, even in religious ways. Soon after he leaves his parents' home, the prince encounters a giant who needs help securing an apple from the tree of life. The latter cannot even find the tree, let alone sneak past the menagerie of wild beasts guarding the tree to put his arm through the magic ring to pick the apple (2, II, 165-66). The prince, however, completes this quest with relative ease. Whilst he is doing so, he puts his hand through the magic ring and it latches onto his arm, giving him the gift of supernatural strength (2, II,166). Considering that the ring had done this for nobody else, it may be compared to similar magical items such as Excalibur in that only the chosen person, of good moral standing and courage, may wield it. Following this, the prince rips apart the gates securing the garden where the tree is to exit, and the lion, sleeping in front of them, awakens and then proceeds to bond with the prince, promising to serve him and remain forever at his side. Uther remarks that the lion's symbolism represents it as a grateful animal which is seen as exotic in the context of the tale (p. 258), however, I would add that the lion has long been analysed as a Christian symbol. Ready examples are the medieval bestiaries and the second-century physiologi (classifications of animals and their biblical exegesis), in which the lion is linked to Judah, Salomo (Solomon), and Jesus. 38 In one of the Oxford bestiaries, it is stated that they are strong and courageous creatures. 39 The lion as a Christian symbol here adds a religious view to the tale; the courageous and strong beast understands and respects its master's courage and strength, and bonds with him. Christian virtues are on the prince's side, and he exemplifies them, which renders him a powerful and able hero of the tale.
The prince brings the apple to the ogre, and the ogre's wife convinces her husband that he should take the ring from the prince by force. This leads to a combat in which the ogre blinds the prince (2, II, 167). As soon as the giant gouges his eyes out, however, the prince's power and ability all but vanishes. Just after the blinding, the first description of the prince is: 'Nun war der arme Königssohn blind und stand da und wußte sich nicht zu helfen' (2, II, 168). In one short description, the Grimms explicitly link the inability to see with the inability to act for oneself. This helplessness is exemplified by the fact that the giant attempts to steal the ring off the prince twice by leading him by the hand to the precipice of a cliff, in the hope that he will take a few steps forward and fall to his death. Both times the prince nearly does step off the cliff but is saved by the lion, which during the second time kills the ogre by leaping onto him and crushing him (2, II,168). This series of events reveals two important elements: firstly, there is the harmful myth that the prince's visual sensory deprivation leads to total sensory ignorance. He cannot tell that it is the giant who is leading him to a location (a giant's hand would certainly be discernible by touch), and he is also completely unable to tell where he has been led. Rendering his sensory experience irrelevant is a hallmark of 'aesthetic blindness', i.e. the concept that blindness is characterized by the sighted in terms of aesthetics, which are inevitably ocularcentric. 40 Secondly, the lion lives up to its description in the bestiary and courageously puts itself in danger to save its master twice over and then uses its strength to crush the giant. Without its aid, the prince would have certainly perished, no longer capable of defending himself at all.
The lion does not stop there. In fact, it drags its master to a river and sprinkles some healing water from the river in his face. The water restores his sight just enough to see a bird, evidently blind, fly into a tree, fall into the river, and then continue to fly, renewed and now sighted. The prince takes this as a parable: 'Da kam es dem Königssohn in das Herz, dies wäre ein Wink Gottes, also daß er sich herabneigte zu dem Wasser und sich darin das Gesicht wusch und badete' (2, II, 169). The water cures his blindness, and his moral strength is returned to him. This miraculous cure is permissible because his blinding is not justified compared to his previous actions and moral qualities. He is good and thus does not deserve punishment or damnation in this way. With the prince's sight restored, he continues to wander the realm with his lion, and eventually comes across a princess in a castle, both of which are cursed. He undertakes three punishing tasks, further demonstrating his fearlessness and courage, and lifting the curse. When compared to his blinded self, the prince is now capable of proving himself as the active hero in the tale once more, and according to the Christian morality presented in the tale, justifiably so. *** 'Die Krähen' is the culmination of my analysis thus far because it includes both the religious and moral models of disability, and indeed blindness as cure and punishment. I shall demonstrate how the religious model prevents stigma from the moral model via a miraculous Christian cure, how blindness is used as moral punishment, and how Christian values permeate the tale to demonstrate moral justifications for the infliction of punishment and curing of blindness. The tale begins with a description of its hero as a righteous and hardworking soldier who is tricked by some of his evil comrades (2, II, 107). Their wicked acts begin with them leading him out of the town, beating the good soldier senseless, taking his money, and then blinding him while tying him to some gallows (2, II, 108). Further confirming his moral status as well-intentioned and righteous, the now blinded soldier thinks he is tied to a cross and comments that it was good of the soldiers to leave him there because God is with him. He then prays to God for help (2, II, 108). Once again here, the moral dichotomy is evident: the irredeemable evil soldiers do considerable harm to the irreproachable heroic soldier.
From there, the soldier's blindness becomes part of a blindness narrative that is contingent upon his strong Christian moral compass. After praying to God, he hears three crows talking to each other, and they disclose three essential pieces of information. The princess is ill, and the king has betrothed her to the person who can provide the cure, which is to burn a toad from the pond and for her to drink the ashes; the dew on the grass is miraculous and will heal blindness; the town well is drying up, and the new well should be dug under the large square stone in the marketplace. Every time the crows speak, they begin with: '"ja, wenn die Menschen wüßten, was wir wissen!"' (2, II, 108-09). Leaving aside the healing dew for now, the rest of the events depends on the soldier being blind or sighted. The fact that he can hear the crows, when other people cannot, represents the old and ableist myth that one's other senses heighten once blinded. 41 In addition to the added insight, the cure to his blindness is available to him almost instantaneously, which means his visually impaired identity is erased almost as quickly as it developed. As the Grimm brothers explain in their 1815 notes on tale: 'der frischgefallene Thau, der das Gesicht wieder gibt, ist das Reine, das alles heilt, der Speichel, womit der Herr dem Blinden das Gesicht wieder gibt' (1, II, XXV; original emphasis), thus explicitly stating the Christian nature of the miraculous cure. The religious model again demonstrates that God rewards good characters, who have been blinded unjustly, by assessing their moral qualities and redressing the injustice with miraculous healing. The soldier's soul is pure, and thus blindness is an unreasonable blight on it.
Furthermore, this cure demonstrates the fact that the remaining tasks will require sight. The implication is that attempting to undertake these tasks while blind would not be successful due to certain societal problems, which indicates that his healing avoids moral model stigma. Beyond the physical limitations of the soldier's impairment, it is implied that society would not deem him trustworthy enough to believe him, especially when giving directions for digging the well. Further evidence of this is provided when the soldier is no longer blind and cures the princess, and the king is unwilling to let her marry him 'weil er so schlechte Kleider an hatte' and decrees that a new well for the town must be dug in addition to curing his daughter, should anyone wish to marry her (2, II, 109). As Eleoma Bodammer (née Joshua) argues in her article on disability in E. T. A. Hoffmann's Klein Zaches, genannt Zinnober, clothing can be as significant a social marker as the body, as 'it also communicates the relationship between individuals and establishes whether norms are being challenged or not'. 42 In this case, even when his clothes let him down, he is able to overcome the difference in social standing with the crows' information. Further, it should be noted that if he were blind, he certainly would not have been allowed to marry her, as according to the KHM, the blind do not make good spouses (cf. my Aschenputtel analysis). Consequently, the religious model (divine cure) functions as a way to mitigate the stigma from the moral model entirely. Now that he is sighted, he can complete his tasks and complete his socio-economic advancement by marrying the princess.
Nevertheless, the story does not end with the marriage. It ends with the punishment of the wicked and the reiteration of the soldier's moral qualities. Sometime after the good soldier marries the princess, he comes across his two evil comrades once again and directs them to sit by the gallows as he did. The crows also appear again, remark that someone has been listening to them, then independently locate the two evil soldiers and peck out their eyes until they are dead (2, II, 110). This execution by blinding is perhaps one of the most gruesome in the KHM, precisely because the birds would inevitably draw the entire process out. 43 The evil perpetrators receive their dues in the form of punishment via blindness, but unlike the doves of Aschenputtel, the crows also condemn them to death for their wickedness. This scene is directly juxtaposed with the good (Christian) soldier finding his old comrades' bones