Abstract
The Hungarian folktale “Woman with Hair of Gold” is a part of what Nina Auerbach calls feminine mythos in Woman and the Demon. It is a story about the murder and revenge of a “very strange but beautiful woman with golden hair as fine as spun gold.” This paper explores how Bram Stoker’s short story “The Secret of the Growing Gold” reworks this folktale, stripping away its uniquely feminine voice, to create a story expressing British Victorian racial anxieties. The message of Teutonic superiority, which Stoker links with Hungarian folklore, is this author’s most dangerous and nefarious fiction.
Highlights
The Hungarian folktale “Woman with Hair of Gold”1 is a part of what Nina Auerbach calls feminine mythos in Woman and the Demon
Since the Middle Ages, there has been a long tradition of blond hair that extends the power of women beyond the grave
As an Irish author, Stoker would have been familiar with the ballad “The Cruel Sisters,” a popular Scottish-Irish version of this traditional tale
Summary
The Hungarian folktale “Woman with Hair of Gold”1 is a part of what Nina Auerbach calls feminine mythos in Woman and the Demon. This essay utilizes Clarissa Estes’ version of “The Woman with Hair of Gold” from Women Who Run With Wolves (1992) because it is a short, simple telling of the basic folktale with traditional Hungarian roots (Estes 377-79).
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