Brave – or – “It Takes a Lot of Courage to Live WITH Your Mom”

*There will be spoilers for the movie, so if you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want to know all that happens, stop reading.*

Most fans of Disney princess films have probably realized by now that they are notorious for absent mothers. A lot of this is because the fairy tales on which they are based have main characters who are either motherless or outright orphans. Snow White, Cinderella, Belle (from Beauty and the Beast), Ariel (The Little Mermaid), Jasmine (from Aladdin, and also Aladdin himself), Jane (from Tarzan, and also Tarzan himself), Pocahontas, and Esmerelda (from The Hunchback of Notre Dame) are all at least motherless. Aurora (from Sleeping Beauty) and one of the newer princesses, Rapunzel, are separated from their mothers at birth and do not re-unite until the end of the story. As a matter of fact the only Disney princesses I can think of, before Brave‘s Merida, who have contact with their mothers during their teen years are Tiana from The Princess and the Frog and Mulan. Yet even they get separated from their mothers rather quickly in the course of their films.

Merida is thus the only Disney princess who has to spend AN ENTIRE FILM with her mother, a Scottish queen named Elinor. And this, in the end, is what the movie is about–growing up with a mother who is very much alive, present, loves you more than life itself and Never. Stops. Criticizing.

I’m not ashamed to say I cried five times during the movie, and all of them because the film so perfectly presents the relationship between a mother and her daughter. The first was when Merida manages to climb to the very top of a huge rock and drink from the “fire falls,” a huge waterfall. The image of the young girl reaching such a pinnacle, on her own, was as beautiful a metaphor as any mother could hope for her child. Reach that height, my love. Soar. Leave me to go out on your own and be who you are. What mother doesn’t want that for her child?

Then Merida returns home. And, to be honest, most mothers want that, too. Reach that height, but then come home safely.

When Merida gets home, flushed with excitement about her achievement, Elinor praises her, but then immediately starts in on her about her lessons, her responsibilities, and her future as a princess. Granted, I didn’t cry at that part, but I did feel a small twinge of guilt for every time I praised either of my daughters for some exhibition of talent–a beautiful drawing, a nice song, a good report card grade–but then twisted that praise into an order to clean their room or straighten their clothes or stop leaving wet towels on the floor.

And to make it worse, lately all of my criticisms of particularly my oldest daughter (who is 8) have been couched in terms of, “because you are growing up and need to take more responsibility for yourself”–the exact same justification Elinor uses when reprimanding Merida. I’m not wrong in this, just as Elinor is never presented as being unreasonable or evil or utterly misguided in nagging Merida. The filmmakers make it pretty clear that Elinor and I are right in trying to get our daughters to learn what they will need to be successful. But the film did make me wonder if I could be a little kinder, a little more appreciative of my daughter’s talents rather than dwelling on her shortcomings.

Because ultimately that’s what Brave is about: mothers and daughters learning to appreciate each other’s talents while also accepting they are not and never will be dopplegangers. As many times as my friends and I refer to our kids as “mini-me’s,” they are their own people and will not grow up to be exactly like us. We will have similar qualities: Merida and her mother are incredibly strong women. But where Merida’s mother is dainty, Merida is wild–something for which her mother consistently censures her, until some magic kicks in.

Merida, angry with Elinor for trying to make her marry one of the sons of the Scottish clansmen, goes to a witch and asks her for something that will “change her mother.” While Merida is speaking metaphorically, the witch takes her quite literally and, as the witch has an almost disturbing obsession with bears, creates a magic tart that, when eaten, turns Elinor into a bear. Merida’s father, King Fergus’s leg was bitten clean off by the unkillable bear Mor’du, and his hatred for bears and desire to kill every last one of them makes Merida and her mother decide to flee the castle.

And here’s the second time I cried. Elinor, unable to fend for herself in the wild, at first has to rely on Merida for everything from finding out what is safe to eat to finding shelter from the rain. A day will come when I will have to depend on my daughters for something, when I will be utterly out of my element and in theirs. When they will know more than I do, when they will be more in control than I am. And I will have to accept that, to both my great pride and great sadness.

This happens in Brave in a scene where Merida gives Elinor a fish, and Elinor, who is now a bear, tries to eat the fish with a hastily carved fork and knife before getting frustrated and tearing into it. Elinor is clearly “hungry as a bear,” and wants more and more fish, but Merida decides that her mother should catch her own fish–something the demure bear-woman finds utterly distasteful. With Merida’s help, Elinor does learn how to fish, and the animators at Pixar do an amazing job expressing, in Elinor’s brown bear-eyes, both the horror she feels in being out of control and out of her comfort zone, but also the admiration she develops for her daughter’s outdoor survival skills. Elinor finally sees Merida in her element, and comes to appreciate her daughter’s mastery.

Merida and Elinor learn from the witch that the curse on Elinor will become permanent within two days and will only be broken if they “mend the bond that was torn.” Merida immediately assumes that the witch is referring to a tapestry of Merida, Elinor and King Fergus that Elinor had carefully embroidered for Merida’s betrothal day and which Merida ripped with an arrow during a fight with her mother. Elinor and Merida thus go back to the castle to retrieve and mend it.

Once at the castle they find all the men of the kingdom have degenerated what was supposed to be a collegial gathering into the beginning of a clan war. While Merida’s mother could have easily defused the situation because she is a woman who, though soft-spoken, can tame a room full of burly men, Elinor is now . . . a bear. So Merida has to take command of the room and convince the men to stop fighting. To do this she draws on every skill her mother had ever taught her, from how to command a room to how to recite the history and stories that will touch the hearts of men and guide them to do the right thing. As Merida does this, she realizes the value in all that her mother has taught her and comes to appreciate the training her mother forced on her. Merida realizes Elinor is not an evil stepmother or a witch or a fairy. She’s a good woman who was just trying to teach her daughter what she needed to learn to be a successful ruler.

When Merida realizes this she starts to offer to end the conflict by choosing a husband and agreeing to marry. Her mother prevents her from doing this by gesturing to her to stop, and guiding her to demand a break with tradition to allow the sons and daughters of the clan rulers to marry for love and choose their own spouses. Merida manages to convey this as her mother would have, and the men all agree. Peace reigns again among the men, but more importantly, among the women. Elinor has realized that Merida has learned well but possesses a spirit that will not hold up well under an arranged marriage. She shows, in releasing Merida from the requirement to marry, a newfound respect for her daughter. Merida, in turn, recognizes that she did, indeed, need to use much of what her mother taught her, and is truly grateful.

And this, of course, is the third time I cried. I truly hope that one day my daughter will be able to overlook all the nagging, all the criticism and all the demands to see that I only want her to be competent, free, smart, and commanding. I also truly hope that one day I will be able to see my daughter for who she really is, and guide her to choose the path that’s right for her, independent of my feelings about the path I chose for myself.

Merida and Elinor then run off to retrieve the tapestry, but before it can be mended King Fergus discovers the bear in the castle and tries to kill it. Though Merida tries to explain the bear is Elinor, Fergus believes the bear killed Elinor and that Merida is out of her mind with grief. Bear-Elinor runs from the castle, hunted by all the ruling clans, and the king locks Merida in her room. She is soon freed by the antics of her three brothers who had also eaten the tart and had turned into three adorable bear cubs. They rush to the circle of stones where the clans have cornered and captured Bear-Elinor, but before her father can slaughter her Merida arrives and throws herself in front of her mother.

No, I didn’t cry at that part. I could have, but I didn’t. The idea of my daughter jumping in front of a sword to save me goes against everything I am as a mother. I would die to protect my children, but I wouldn’t ever want them to risk their lives protecting me.

Elinor is saved when the bear cubs jump on Fergus. Merida calls them “boys” and Fergus, seeing three identical bear triplets, realizes that Merida is telling the truth:  that a curse has indeed turned half his family into bears. At that point Mor’du appears and threatens to kill the entire family. Merida’s mother, though bound by ropes and surrounded by spear-wielding men, breaks free and fights the larger, meaner, almost un-killable bear.

And there my tears started again. The ferocity of the fight between the bear and Elinor could not have seemed more TRUE. How many times have my friends and I talked about being a “mama bear” in defense of our families? I believe any mother watching that film could imagine herself doing the exact same thing to protect her children. Watching it animated, on a big screen, tore at my heart. If we mothers ever do seem to be beasts, it’s because we are trying to protect our children. Where we are misinterpreted and condemned is when we seem like monsters because we are trying to protect our children from themselves.

In the end, Bear-Elinor’s strength and ingenuity kill Mor’du, and it is confirmed that the bear is actually a man who, years earlier, had been turned into a bear–just as Elinor was–by a curse cooked up by the same witch. Merida, who had hastily mended the tapestry on horseback while riding with her brothers to save her mother–proving she could be both a seamstress and a wild adventurer at the same time–throws the tapestry over her mother, thinking this will break the curse in much the same way as the princess from The Six Swans threw her brothers’ shirts over them to turn them back into boys. Of course, it doesn’t work because the rip that needed to be mended was not in the tapestry at all–it was between the women.

As the sun rises in the horizon and Merida realizes she is out of time, she starts saying a tearful good-bye to her mother. And while this is the fifth and final time I cried, it’s also the time that both my girls flanked me, put up the movie armrests, and threw themselves around me. Merida tearfully apologizes, and for the first time in the film takes responsibility for what she has done to her mother. Throughout the film Merida kept asserting it wasn’t her fault that her mother had been turned into a bear. It was Elinor’s fault for driving her to it; it was the witch’s fault for misunderstanding Merida and giving her the wrong curse; it was the universe’s fault for being so unfair. But standing there, realizing that she is about to lose her mother forever, Merida breaks down and says she’s sorry. “It IS my fault,” she asserts, and throws herself, weeping, over her mother’s tapestry-clad form.

“We promise we will never, ever turn you into a bear,” my six-year-old whispered into my ear as tears rolled down my face. “No matter how much you yell at us about cleaning our rooms,” my eight-year-old added. This only made me cry more because it showed that they GET it. Maybe not to the extent I do, maybe not with the understanding of fairy tales I have, but on a very visceral level they understood that they are Merida, and I am Elinor. Daddy did NOT like being cast in the light of goofy King Fergus, but I explained to him later that the movie really wasn’t about fathers, and he should let it go.

Of course, as with all good fairy-tales, the ending is happy. Merida’s words in taking responsibility for the curse mend the bond that was broken between her and her mom. The mother rises from the tapestry as a human again, though a bit of a wilder one for the experience. Her always-tightly-wrapped hair is unbound, and she points out to her husband that she is “naked as a baby” underneath the tapestry. The boys come bounding out of the crowd equally naked but utterly uncovered, and the weep-fest resolved at the sight of three sets of naked baby butt cheeks (yes, I promise I will write a post that does NOT have that phrase in it. Someday).

The movie ends with Merida and her mother out riding on a cliff. Merida’s mother’s hair is still unbound, and Merida’s red locks are as wild as ever. They have come to a peace with each other. The mother has become a little more like the daughter, and the daughter is much closer to the mother. It is as happy an ending as any we are going to get. The princess doesn’t get a prince at the end. She doesn’t have to. She gets her mom.