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Notes -
Epistemic status- schizopost
There are western legends and folk tales which follow the following pattern- uncommonly beautiful, but poor, girl meets a mysterious, tall, and wealthy man, who marries her and as she moves into his house, there are some commonalities: it’s a mansion located someplace that can’t be accessed by means comprehensible to premodern societies(walking, boats, horseback, climbing ladders etc are all insufficient to get there), often said to be vaguely in the air or involve flight. The mansion is full of invisible servants and has uncommonly rich foods easily available every night, but it’s isolating and lonely; her only company is her husband, who’s often described as a bit of a weirdo or maybe a pervert once they’re isolated. Sometimes she begs to go back home, having aged supernaturally little despite remembering years, and sometimes she is visited by sisters or friends from back home(arranged by her husband- he’s usually not a bad person, he isn’t violent or cruel or anything. Just odd or strongly implied to have unusual sexual preferences)- but there’s always an explanation of how we’re finding out about it.
This is an indication that the ancient aliens theorists are wrong. It’s time travelers, not aliens, these are the accounts of time traveling mail order brides who divorced or failed to adapt. Do you think a medieval peasant woman would describe suburban McMansions as something other than ‘an manour house with unseene servants and a grayte feaste every night’?
Now, data on integrating primitive societies into modern, urbanized wealthy societies actually does tell us what peasant women as mail order brides experience- they tend to be amazed at appliances, take to the housewife role very readily, and find suburban western societies lonely and isolating. There’s some interesting ethnographic work I once read but can’t find right now on Eskimo women who married US military personnel- they learned to bake and already knew how to sew and loved thé western homemaker role, they thought it was the best thing ever, but wanted to get to know their neighbors and have denser social connections. Eskimo men given job training did not integrate nearly so well.
I can't immediately think of a folk tale like this. Examples?
ATU 425
It's got some of the elements, but not necessarily a beautiful husband (see 425C) and certainly not an inaccessible house, rich foods, etc.
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