Mama's Girl

What does human happiness depend on? On many things. And among these conditions, the most important is the person themselves: what they are like, what kind of character they have. Sometimes a person grows up and turns out to be cowardly. When they are small, it isn’t so terrible. They tease him, laughing, calling him a cowardly little thing, and life gradually teaches him sense and reason. And he stops being afraid of everything, learns to distinguish what needs caution and what is not worth running at full speed with your eyes squeezed shut.

You probably can’t say something very gentle about lazybones and clumsy people either—about pampered hands and messy ones. That’s why, ever since ancient times, it has been customary to mock couch-loungers. But if, in a fairy tale, the story is about a bride-to-be girl who isn’t greedy and is good-looking, yet can’t do anything and doesn’t want to—because she was never taught from childhood—then the fairy tale is ready to come to her rescue.

It happens that such a girl has simply been spoiled by loving parents. And when the time comes for her to begin her independent life, she doesn’t know how to approach housekeeping, how to cook a tasty meal for her husband, or how to iron her clothes. And after laughing to her heart’s content, the fairy tale pairs her with a husband who—out of kindness and love, with wisdom and tenderness—teaches her firmly and relentlessly how to live by the work of her own hands.

In one of the best-known German fairy tales, a capricious princess is described. She chose a suitor for a long time, mocked everyone who wanted to marry her, and finally angered her good father—the king. And he swore that as punishment for her defiance she would be married off to the first man she met. And it turned out to be a poor musician. The princess had to endure much and learn many things: to forget both her high origin and her pampered hands. She collected kindling in the forest to light the hearth in a poor hut, and fired clay to sell dishes at the market and earn at least a little money by her own work, and washed dirty plates in the castle. All because the princess wholeheartedly loved her husband and herself wanted to get rid of her whims and laziness.

In the Slavic fairy tale “Mammy’s Little Girl,” everything is simpler: there are no castles or kings here. But the story that happens to a pampered-handed girl resembles, in some way, what happened to that capricious princess. Let’s listen to this funny tale: it will certainly teach her—and you—something good.