'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

victimization of another through her silence. The miller‟s daughter is a victim in the
sense that she lives in a male-dominated society which gives her no control over her
choice of marriage partner. She finds herself at the mercy of male interest and
disenfranchised from the right to speak with her own voice (Cook 115). She is promised
in marriage by her father although she is terrified of her bridegroom. Moreover, the
bridegroom pressures her to visit him (because they have been engaged for such a long
time) and she does so despite her fears. The miller‟s daughter yields to pressures exerted
on her by masculine figures who control her life and her sexuality and who disregard her
fears. Thus the fairy tale elucidates power structures of a patriarchal society that subjects
women to men‟s control and that governs women‟s bodies and sexuality (Smith 249).
While confined in “the murderer‟s house,” she silently witnesses the slaughter of
another young maiden and does nothing to intervene. Although it is not clearly stated in
the story, it seems fair to assume that the miller‟s daughter rationalizes not to assist the
other maiden and hardens herself to the other woman‟s slaughter out of fear. Had the
miller‟s daughter intervened in the band‟s murder of the Other bride, she would have
likely precipitated the same gruesome fate upon herself.
The position of the fairy tale heroine as victim of her society as well as a
bystander in the murder of the young maiden refracts and underscores Lene‟s dual status
as a victim of an oppressive regime and as passive accomplice in a Jewish acquaintance‟s
abduction by a group of unknown men. Lene is a victim of a tyrannical system in both a
general and a specific way. Generally, she is victimized by Nazi policies and by the
results of those policies, including war, bombardment, and invasion. Lene‟s husband is
taken from her when he is drafted as a soldier to serve in Hitler‟s Wehrmacht, and Allied
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