As a child I loved the Goldilocks story. Above and beyond my well-documented soft-spot for petty theft, I love the moral of the story – the moral being that one should never nap inside the house one has just robbed.
Imagine my surprise at a folktale symposium at the Harvard Institute for Unchallenging Subject Matter where I discovered that very few academics shared my view of the story’s deeper meaning. Rejected were my comments about the valuable lessons for children who aspire to breakfast theft and clandestine napping. Ignored were my incisive comments about the stern anti-vegetarian themes of the tale. Derided was my thesis that if the bears had been eating meat instead of porridge maybe they would have the strength to catch Miss Locks and go Ursa Major on the thieving little toe-head.
The other “scholars” had their own “views” on the “story.” Here for the moral betterment of petty felons everywhere I present some of the lesser-known interpretations of the story that were suggested by the Center for the Over-Interpretation of the Painfully Obvious.
American Psychiatric Association
Goldilocks is rebelling against overly restrictive or overly permissive parenting (take your pick). She is compelled to test boundaries by engaging in high-risk eating, sitting, and sleeping behaviors. Her immediate nap after such a stimulating disregard of law and order is a sign of bipolar disorder.
Moral: Children need less/more moral guidance from parents and caretakers. Start patient G. Locks on 500mg Lithium, if this does not help, up the dose or put her on something more expensive.
Womyns’s Studies:
Goldie is unable to self-actualize inside a patriarchy that denies a young girl agency and empowerment. She escapes the town (which was built by men) where Eurocentric visio-dominant attitudes have fetishized her blonde hair. In the woods she hopes to find personhood in a gender neutral society. M. Locks exposes the latent sexism of the animal kingdom as a world where the subjugated “Momma” Bear is given the coldest food, and is locked in the “Golden Cage” of heteronormative femininity by a bed and chair that are uncomfortably soft.
Moral: Concepts of right and wrong are constructed by male hegemony in order to impose phallocracy on the gynosphere.
Note: Any suggestion that Papa Bear sacrificed his own chair or bed stuffing so that his wife might be more comfortable will result in a lower grade.
Scientific American:
The variation of the porridge temperature is an example of heat retention as a function of mass. The father’s portion retains the most heat because of its larger size. The mother’s portion, being the smallest, cools fastest. [The mother is clearly on a low-carb diet.]
Moral: Put the father’s porridge in low flat bowl to increase surface area and exposure to cooling air.
Communist:
Goldilocks is a metaphorical representation of the international bankers and factory owners with their “gold” that “locks” the workers in perpetual servitude. The capitalist intrude into the Workers’ house, defiles and consumes the food of their labor, destroys the chair of their child’s repose and eventually steals their very sleep by co-opting their beds. The workers, who live a “bear” existence, can no longer “bear” the un”bear”able oppression and cast Goldie into the forest of the Worker’s Revolution.
Moral: Action must be taken! Re-educate blonde girls, redistribute porridge, and make all beds and chairs equally uncomfortable.
Conservative:
Goldilocks represents the wayward youth created by out-of-control government entitlement programs. The “gold” that is redistributed by confiscatory progressive income tax “locks” the productive bears into a world where they can no longer protect their homes, furniture and breakfasts from liberal lay-abouts like Miss Locks. Miss Locks in turn, who has been on the dole all her life, has no understanding of private property rights. She uses the precedent of the Kelo Supreme Court decision to co-opt the house of the hardworking bears who have been outcast to the woods for their refusal to stop wearing fur.
Moral: Make Goldie get a job. The free market and lack of government intervention will challenge Miss Locks. She will be forced to struggle until her natural talents blossom and she makes a fortune designing a quick-cooling porridge that is always “just right!”
Liberal:
Goldie is pushed to steal food because she is hungry due to Bush’s cruel government school-lunch-program cut-backs (“cut-backs” in that a smaller than expected increase in funding was granted).
Moral: No Blood for Porridge!
Are those the only six ways to look at Goldilocks? Well, maybe the moral of this story is that the reader must wrest away from the author the creative process of interpretation and create his own meaning from the cultural buffet of modern life. Or maybe the moral is that life, like my column space, is limited – best to make the most of it, and if you don’t reach your goal then it must a lousy goal that you didn’t want in the first place. Wait, isn’t that the moral of the fox and the grapes?
