Essay: The Significance of Shape-Shifting Women in Turkish Fairy Tales

In this week's reading unit, Turkish Fairy Tales, I noticed the recurring motif of shape-shifting women (usually in the form of birds) who usually become the love interests of the main characters. This pattern is seen in The Wizard-Dervish, The Fish-Peri, and The Crow-Peri. Once I recognized the similarities, I couldn't help wondering what the reason was behind them. Why was it pleasing to spin tales about coming across a magical bird-woman creature and then marrying it?

I think the story that holds the answer to that question is The Imp of the Well. In this narrative, a man is burdened with a nagging, overbearing, obnoxious woman as his wife (the narrator describes her as cantankerous). She spends all the money he makes and if he keeps any back for himself, he gets berated for it. If he makes a negative comment about a dinner she has prepared for him (e.g. it is too salty), she makes it badly the next night but in the complete opposite way from the previous night (e.g. not enough salt), and when he complains about this too she goes back to making it badly the other way. With help from a magical imp (as well as letting the woman's faults get her trapped in a well), the woodcutter is able to marry the daughter of a Sultan and live out his life much happier than he was before.

The woman, the imp, and the woodcutter from The Imp of the Well
Forty-four Turkish Fairy Tales by Ignacz Kunos and illustrated by Willy Pogany (1913)

Just look at that illustration! This is how people literally picture marriage to a typical Turkish woman based on the detailed description of such a marriage in The Imp of the Well. The magical bird-women are always beautiful, usually intelligent, and help the man obtain his fortune, not spend all of it. In a way, I think shape-shifting bird-women are much like the charming princes from the fairy tales we grew up with. When our dating pool is not stocked with quality, we imagine some sort of magical intervention affording us the opportunity to obtain a better quality (and usually the best possible) mate. In our popular fairy tales, this usually means a woman finds her Prince Charming; in Turkish fairy tales, it can happen in the form of an animal that a man has recently come to possess actually being a beautiful shape-shifting woman.