The Handless Maiden
DES 3515 Design Research Studio 1
Assistant Professor Elpitha Tsoutsounakis | Spring 2020
Design Sophomores in the Spring 2020 research studio each drew a translation of scenes from the Handless Handmaiden as told by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Click here to see the supporting research pin-up.
Rikki Price | Scene 1.03
“Oh, my husband!” wailed the woman, and she looked as though she had been struck dead. “The man in the black coat was the Devil, and what stands behind the mill is the tree, yes, but our daughter is also there sweeping the yard with a willow broom.”
And so the parents stumbled home, weeping tears on all their finery. Their daughter stayed without husband for three years and had a temperament like the first sweet apples of spring. The day the Devil came to fetch her she bathed and put on a white gown and stood in a circle of chalk she'd drawn around herself. When the Devil reached out to grab her, an unseen force threw him across the yard.
Michael Heggie | Scene 1.13
The old mother was shaken by her son’s command and sent a messenger to confirm. Back and forth the messengers ran, each one falling asleep at the river and the Devil changing messages that became increasingly terrible, the last being “Keep the tongue and eyes of the queen to prove she has been killed.”
The old mother could not stand to kill the sweet young queen. Instead she sacrificed a doe, took its tongue and eyes, and hid them away. Then she helped the young queen bind her infant to her breast, and veiling her, said she must flee for her life. The women wept and kissed one another good-bye.
Megan Petit | Scene 1.15
During this time the king returned from the war, and his old mother wept to him, “Why would you have me kill two innocents?” and displayed to him the eyes and the tongue.
Hearing the terrible story, the king staggered and wept inconsolably. His mother saw his grief and told him these were the eyes and tongue of a doe and that she had sent the queen and her child off into the forest.
Megan Petit, a Design Sophomore in the Spring 2020 research studio, presented her process, research, and drawn translation in a lecture to students in our admissions studio the following summer.
Research and translations from each of the 17 passages were displayed in sequence in the Bailey Gallery for critique. The Handless Maiden project can be viewed in full here.