Enter your email Address

ENTROPY
  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Echoes of Infertility and Stifled Grief

      April 20, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      The Birds: Lost and Found

      April 14, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      The Birds: Elegy for a Tree

      April 12, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Coursing

      April 9, 2021

      Introspection

      The Birds: Little Bird

      April 1, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band

      March 23, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Finding My Voice

      March 9, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Individuation

      February 27, 2021

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      BLACKCACKLE: Fragment One

      April 14, 2021

      Fiction

      The Birds: To Fly Among the Birds

      April 9, 2021

      Fiction

      The Birds: Another Red Ribbon – a nonbinary tale of absented love

      April 5, 2021

      Fiction

      Survivor’s Club

      March 24, 2021

      Fiction

      BLACKCACKLE: Fiction by Matt Goldberg

      March 24, 2021

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      an Orphic escape-hatch from the Hades of Literalization — Review of John Olson’s Dada Budapest

      April 19, 2021

      Review

      Claiming Space in Muriel Leung’s “Imagine Us, The Swarm”

      April 15, 2021

      Review

      Review: Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz

      April 12, 2021

      Review

      Review: Some Animal by Ely Shipley

      April 8, 2021

      Collaborative Review

      Attention to the Real: A Conversation

      September 3, 2020

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      F*%K IF I KNOW//BOOKS

      April 13, 2021

      Small Press

      Tolsun Books

      March 16, 2021

      Small Press

      Inside the Castle

      March 9, 2021

      Small Press

      OOMPH! Press

      February 24, 2021

      Small Press

      Dynamo Verlag

      February 17, 2021

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC

        February 12, 2021

        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Video Games

        HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC

        February 12, 2021

        Video Games

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Video Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch

ENTROPY

  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Echoes of Infertility and Stifled Grief

      April 20, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      The Birds: Lost and Found

      April 14, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      The Birds: Elegy for a Tree

      April 12, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Coursing

      April 9, 2021

      Introspection

      The Birds: Little Bird

      April 1, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band

      March 23, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Finding My Voice

      March 9, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Individuation

      February 27, 2021

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      BLACKCACKLE: Fragment One

      April 14, 2021

      Fiction

      The Birds: To Fly Among the Birds

      April 9, 2021

      Fiction

      The Birds: Another Red Ribbon – a nonbinary tale of absented love

      April 5, 2021

      Fiction

      Survivor’s Club

      March 24, 2021

      Fiction

      BLACKCACKLE: Fiction by Matt Goldberg

      March 24, 2021

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      an Orphic escape-hatch from the Hades of Literalization — Review of John Olson’s Dada Budapest

      April 19, 2021

      Review

      Claiming Space in Muriel Leung’s “Imagine Us, The Swarm”

      April 15, 2021

      Review

      Review: Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz

      April 12, 2021

      Review

      Review: Some Animal by Ely Shipley

      April 8, 2021

      Collaborative Review

      Attention to the Real: A Conversation

      September 3, 2020

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      F*%K IF I KNOW//BOOKS

      April 13, 2021

      Small Press

      Tolsun Books

      March 16, 2021

      Small Press

      Inside the Castle

      March 9, 2021

      Small Press

      OOMPH! Press

      February 24, 2021

      Small Press

      Dynamo Verlag

      February 17, 2021

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC

        February 12, 2021

        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Video Games

        HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC

        February 12, 2021

        Video Games

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Video Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch
Creative Nonfiction / Essay

Knitting Shirts of Nettles

written by Guest Contributor January 6, 2017

In “The Wild Swans” by Hans Christian Andersen, a widowed king remarries, so (we know) here comes trouble. Somehow the king misses all the red flags—it’s as easy to do in a fairy tale as in real life. But we, the readers of the story, possessors of a privileged point of view, a talisman of protection given to us by the author who is a kind of fairy godmother—we see it right away: this new wife is an evil bitch/witch. The king has children, eleven princes and a princess, who live a beautiful life. They love each other, do their homework with diamond pencils, and despite the early loss of their mother, exhibit almost no emotional impairment. They don’t stand a chance against the queen’s occult firepower and mind of want. Fuck these brats, she says. She turns her husband against his own children. She transforms the eleven princes into dumb white swans and drives them off. She robs the princess of her royal identity and exiles her to the countryside to live in anonymity and isolation. Things stay that way, the way the queen wants it, for a long time.

One night a fairy comes to the lonely sister in a dream bearing good news. The fairy tells the sister that she can lift her brothers’ enchantment. To do so, she must knit eleven shirts out of nettles. She must pick the nettles, break them and stomp on them until they become as smooth as flax, twist them into thread, knit the thread into shirts, and throw the shirts over the swans to turn them back into boys. The work will be very hard and painful; the nettles will sting and blister sister’s hands and feet. But she doesn’t hesitate to commit to the task; she loves her brothers.

***

When I reread “The Wild Swans” recently, I saw in it a metaphor for my writing. I write with the feeling that someone must be helped, that a curse that needs lifting, and that the counter-spell—the writing—is a lacerating labor.

I’ve met writers who say, “Writing is fun! Writing should be fun. I keep it fun. That means a lot of what I write isn’t good—but that’s okay. I’m having fun and that’s what counts.”

What nice people to share the planet with. They make the world go round. The sun, inspired by their positive attitude, gets up in the morning to shine on them and illuminate their fun.

Now back to me.

I just said I write as if trying to lift a curse. But what curse? What is wrong? Who afflicted? The problem seems urgent but is diffuse. There’s nothing as specific as an evil stepmother to take on.

***

Why are there so many evil stepmothers in fairy tales, anyways? If you look into it, you’ll find out that in the earlier versions of the stories, some of these stepmothers were actually blood mothers. But seventeenth- to-nineteenth-century transcribers, editors, and other transmitters/emitters of culture believed that mothers shouldn’t be shown committing violence against their own children, so they turned the mothers into stepmothers—as easily as a witch turns children into swans.

I wish we had the original tales in their full bloodiness, with parents persecuting their own flesh and blood. The scenarios more sharply crystallize existential/religious concerns. The question, “Why did my parent make me, only to harm and devalue me?” maps neatly to the question, “Who made me, and why must I suffer?”

***

Which gets me back to the other question: if I feel like I write to lift a curse, who is cursed?

I think the cursed person is everyone, and the curse is the human condition: our loneliness and confusion, our awareness of death, our ability to form certain questions matched by an inability to ever answer those questions.

In “The Wild Swans,” the dream fairy gives the sister one additional instruction for the counter-spell: she must remain silent the whole time she is knitting the nettle shirts. If she utters just one word before the shirts are done, the curse on her brothers will set permanently, like bloodstains in cloth. The fairy says, “Even if it takes years, you must be mute!”

The steely sister says not another word and begins the work of the counter-spell. She gathers nettles, breaks and stomps on them, twists and knits them. During this time she meets a young king, and he falls in love with her, carries her off, and marries her. She knits in silence throughout. People begin to fear that she’s practicing black magic, and since she can’t speak in her defense, they keep on thinking that. This will be important later.

The sister’s prohibition against speaking during the time of her painful labor; this too, makes me think of my writing life. Although writing is powerful speech, perhaps the most powerful speech there is, there’s much I’ve declined to do in order to write. I didn’t become rich, will never be a mother, am a ghostly friend. On national holidays, during celebrations and festivals and inaugurations, I’m usually alone with the prickling, blistering labor of writing. According to the fairy tale, a loving husband is waiting for me in bed, but here I am, up late, knitting.

***

In the third act of the fairy tale, a suspicious archbishop convinces the sister’s husband that she’s a witch, and she’s condemned to burning at the stake. Even as she’s being carried to the pyre in a cart, she’s working on the knitting, hurrying to finish her task. As the executioner drags her from the cart, eleven huge white swans fly down. The sister throws the shirts over them—and there they stand! “Eleven princes, handsome and fair. But the youngest of them had a swan’s wing instead of an arm, for the sister had not been able to finish one of the sleeves of the last shirt.”

As with the knitting of the shirts, the work on my text remains incomplete. Sometimes a story or poem or essay is published, in which case I’m forced to cease my effort, like the sister in the tale, but the work never feels done. I write, revise, and revise, but the transformation is never complete.

***

“The Wild Swans” was written in 1838 by Han Christian Andersen, a frustrated writer who wanted to write great novels and acclaimed plays rather than stories for children. In this tale he embedded a vision of the power of the author. After transforming her brothers, the sister faints, right there on the pyre. While they’re trying to revive her, her oldest brother tells the assembled crowd the full story of her courageous work. As he speaks, “a fragrance of millions of roses spread from the wood that had been piled high around the stake. Every stick, every log had taken root and set forth vines. They were a hedge of the loveliest red roses, and on the very top bloomed a single white rose. It shone like a star.” The brother picks the white rose, places it on his sister, and she is revived.

So this fairy tale contains not only a magic textile (the shirts of nettles), but a magic text: the brother’s story, which causes the dry pyre wood to burst into fertile life, producing a vital talisman that brings the sister out of her swoon and commutes her death sentence.

There are many kinds of writers, many motivations to write, many experiences of writing. Maybe not many writers are as sentimental as Hans Christian Andersen and I. I can’t write an actual magic story, one that restores us all decisively to our original forms, and strength, but I do want to write a story that enacts a transformation, even if the transformation lasts only as long as a flicker, and goes no deeper than the footsteps of a dragonfly into the tense surface of water. It’s this desire/ambition/illusion that keeps me knitting the shirts of nettles.


Cybele Knowles writes nonfiction, poems, and stories that have appeared in Devil’s Lake, Fairy Tale Review, The Destroyer, and Diagram, among other places. She’s the founder and editor of All-Girl All-Comedy Reviews, a blog reviewing comedic art by women, and Feminist Nikki Sixx, feminist Instagram account for rocker girls and women. You can find more of her writing at cybeleknowles.com.

Knitting Shirts of Nettles was last modified: January 6th, 2017 by Guest Contributor
0 comment
1
Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest
Avatar
Guest Contributor

Entropy posts are often submitted to us by our fantastic readers & guest contributors. We'd love to receive a contribution from you too. Submission Guidelines.

previous post
“We Run Away, But We Don’t Know Why”: The Songs That Shaped My First Book
next post
Thoughtcrime Press

You may also like

Education in Resistance

April 13, 2018

The Bent of Light

December 3, 2019

Paper Cuts

May 21, 2018

WOVEN: Say Uncle

February 12, 2020
Facebook Twitter Instagram

Recent Comments

  • parri Loved the article. Beautifully captured..stay strong. Something must await for you at the end of this path..

    How Bodybuilding Ruined My Life ·  April 2, 2021

  • Waterlily Heartbreaking, real, and often so vivid. Parents, family, the pain and the damage we carry for them and from them. There is a black void where bits and pieces of our soul take leave to as we watch our...

    Descansos ·  April 2, 2021

  • Neo G I hsve to check this out! Is that doom on the cover!!

    Dskillz Harris & Chile_madd – The Next Episode ·  March 28, 2021

Featured Columns & Series

  • The Birds
  • Dinnerview
  • WOVEN
  • Variations on a Theme
  • BLACKCACKLE
  • COVID-19
  • Literacy Narrative
  • Mini-Syllabus
  • Their Days Are Numbered
  • On Weather
  • Disarticulations
  • The Waters
  • Session Report series
  • Birdwolf
  • Comics I've Been Geeking Out On
  • Small Press Releases
  • Books I Hate (and Also Some I Like)
  • The Poetics of Spaces
  • Tales From the End of the Bus Line
  • Fog or a Cloud
  • 30 Years of Ghibli
  • Cooking Origin Stories
  • Food and Covid-19
  • YOU MAKE ME FEEL
  • Ludic Writing
  • Best of 2019
  • The Talking Cure
  • Stars to Stories
  • DRAGONS ARE REAL OR THEY ARE DEAD
  • Foster Care
  • LEAKY CULTURE
  • Jem and the Holographic Feminisms
  • D&D with Entropy

Find Us On Facebook

Entropy
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

©2014-2021 The Accomplices LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Read our updated Privacy Policy.


Back To Top