Confronted with a task beyond her human powers, the lazy daughter weeps and despairs. After hearing of the desperate plight of the girl expected to spin three rooms filled with flax, the three spinsters promise to complete the task upon the one condition that she will invite them to her wedding. When all the flax is spun, the bride honors the three women with an invitation to her wedding. When the bridegroom learns that the spinsters look grotesque because of the flat foot, hanging lip, and broad thumb, caused from spinning flax, he vows that his bride will never touch a spinning wheel. In this story the bride is twice blessed by the three spinsters.
Good fortune comes in strange forms.
Old, ugly, and disfigured, the external appearance of the three women belies the goodness in their hearts. Because the bride valued their spinning enough to invite them to her wedding, she not only benefited from their great talents but also received the special boon of relief from the task of spinning. While the household world in the Grimm folktales depicts the humble background of ordinary lives performing their daily work in modest circumstances, it also portrays the home and family as a rich, copious world abounding in gifts and blessings not recognized by the world. There we do see something of which we have not dreamed before. Our father and mother do lie in wait for us and leap out on us, like brigand from a bush.