WHUPPIE

Over the weekend I was trying to partake in the educators discount, being a poor college student who teaches part time that enjoys reading but hates the cost that it takes, and I came across a book that said it was about birth order and how it defines who we are. Upon reading that I tried to decide what my birth order was: birth parents: only child, live with parents: middle child, mother in another state: oldest child. So I have decided maybe I am all in one and buck all trends and should stop reading titles to silly books that think they can define you.

I wonder what the book would have said about the people in the story of Molly Whuppie?
First Woman to think about would be WIFE. WIFE is in the story with no specific speaking, but there is a lot of physiological background in the one line that speaks about her. WIFE is willing to leave her three youngest children behind. Maybe she was a middle child- harm from the older and younger gave her detachment issues allowing her to leave the unacknowledged behind. This wife acted with herself in mind and not as today's image of mom. Mothers in today culture do not like letting people out of their eyesight. We have taken this over loving to the term s"mother'. Wife did not smother.

Then there is the giants wife, afraid of the man. A very typical middle child reaction. 

Molly's two sisters were quite. Both would be considered as middle sisters, but change rolls in the story when the three are neglected and they become the oldest and middle, as defined by the King. Neither of these sisters have voice in the story, and they allow the baby to take control.

Baby Molly Whuppie saves the day. Without Molly, all three girls would have died at the hands of the giant. Molly was selfless multiple times.

Joseph Jacobs, English Fairy Tales (London: David Nutt, 1898), pp. 125-30