> I wonder if the original German is equally ambiguous...
The translation is good and authentic. Those who can read Low German[1] can compare the slightly different versions here[2]. In their comments[3 (German)], the brothers Grimm state that the storyline of a woman who pushes her husband for too much is ages old and known in many cultures. They have picked the richest German version.
If a Straussian reading is needed, then it should be considered that a Low German story from a coastal - hence Protestant - region rates the pope higher than the king.
[1] Low German was a way of getting crap[4] past the radar for the Grimms. Compared to the Juniper Tree[5] (Van den Machandelboom - Low German, again), this fairy tale is harmless.
[4] What he translates as "filthy shack" is literally a "pissing pot", i.e. a chamber pot. He seems to have a hard time telling it as it is. Maybe, the Straussian reading makes sense.
In the New Testament, Jesus had a lot to say about wealth and power being bad. This feels like a reference to all that.
In my head, all that Sunday school I had internalized as a kid makes me think, "This is not the kind of church Jesus would preach at" when I see a really nice church where wealthy people attend.
Some Christians talk about "mammonites" or "the cult of mammon":
Old too: But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, “No! but we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”
I don't think it's as simple as "wealth and power being bad". More that
- wealth and power are not reliable proxies for favor and righteousness (as many in Jesus's day thought)
- wealth and power come with unique temptations
Jesus also said "make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings" and there's a bunch of proverbs that talk about how the diligent prosper.
The punchline left me wondering why the wife didn't simply ask for something else after being returned to the filthy shack. Had she finally found contentment or enlightenment? Did the flounder finally call time?
Maybe she spent a near-eternity in agony with all that power and responsibility, and wished it all away. "Genie...er, Fish, make me an all-powerful fish!!!"
Some people are greedy and don't know when to stop when they have enough. The fisherman is notably not one of those people.
Older generations might have been most offended by the "becoming like God" part. The enchanted fish was willing to grant any wish that is in principle achievable by a human being, even the most ridiculous wish of becoming Pope.
But the moment the wish transcends that human realm it is turned down and punished.
I guess the theme of "becoming like God" resonates with the story from Adam and Eve's fall.
My interpretation is that the fish didn't actually turn down and punish, but fulfilled the wish. It's just that the fish thought: to be like God means to be humble. She asks to be like God, true godliness is humility. So she did get what she wanted, but not in the way she thought. (BTW I'm not religious in the sense I go to church a lot, and don't even necessarily believe in God, but I do share many of the values of religion.)
But surely humility is only one attribute of God, and not the most relevant one. Omnipotence and omniscience are typically listed as more important aspects of the divine.
It depends on the religion. In Christianity, Islam, and some "the universe is a simulation" theories: yes. In other religions, god is not all that powerful.
I don’t think of it as punishment. She gets her wish granted, she just did not understand that God does not care about the kind of shallow riches the fisherman’s wife is aiming for.
I think the point is that when one believes that having their desires fulfilled will bring them happiness, or an end to desire itsself, that the material circumstances in which that person lives are completely irrelevant. In the case of the wife, the suffering she experiences from not having her desires fulfilled is the same whether she is living in a filthy shack or whether she is god. Her internal state is identical in both situations, so her becoming god and her becoming a poor fisherman's wife are exactly the same from a phenomonological perspective. The same could be said for the man. His satisfaction was the same whether he was living in the shack or the palace. What changed for him was the burden of having these material things and asking for more, knowing it wouldn't ultimately make him or his wife happy.
Or it could mean that due to the transient nature of all material things, anything gained will invariably break down eventually. All desire leads to loss.
I read it as the fish returning her to her God-ordained state, as she was, from her magical-fish-given states of human appointed positions; that is, wealth and status coming from community rather than any kind of divine appointment—which is maybe also a Protestant dig at Papism?
