In the tale of The Girl without Hands the girl faces trials from having her hands cut off, to being banished under false pretenses along with her children, all because the Devil was denied her after her father promised her as collateral. The Devil features prominently in this tale alongside helpful angels and God himself, with the mother-in-law character being good and kind rather than evil and spiteful. Through the girl herself, two fairy tale archetypes are represented, with her first story arc functioning as the maiden, as she is innocent and beautiful and alone. After which she is discovered by the king and married, usually the end of the story for many other Grimm maidens, but the girl without hands is made queen and bears children which places her more in the role of matron, or mother, than maiden. And the queen mother functions as the crone, a kinder crone than the many jealous stepmothers of other fairy tales, with the villain role of this particular tale occupied by the Devil himself. For my purposes, this is particularly interesting because it shows the clear progression of maiden to matron to crone and its cyclical nature within one character rather than three. Though the girl without hands is not a crone herself, the presence of her husband's mother presents a clear image of her future as that particular archetype.

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This tale also carries a particular powerlessness to its heroine, with her being dependent on others to assist her rather than taking charge of her situation and saving herself. While the maiden wins her initial freedom from her father's promise of her own power, the rest of the story happens to her rather than being controlled by her actions. And even then her own power is her role as a maiden, her innocence, her tears washing her hands clean so that the Devil cannot carry her off. Then the handless girl is assisted by angels and discovered by a prince, saved once again by that essence of the maiden archetype, her beauty earning her a safe place in a palace and her husband. Assuming at this point that her role shifts to that of a matron with her status as a mother, she is now spirited away by the king's mother upon some trickery by the Devil that confuses letters sent between the new queen and king calling for the death of queen and child. After which ensues the "search" which is common to Grimm's fairy tales, in which the king, or other kind of male lead, must find their lady after some trial or misfortune. The girl makes no attempt to search for her husband on her own, instead sitting, waiting, hands restored, with her child for the king to find her himself. It is particularly frustrating that her hands be restored after symbolizing the single independent act she takes in the whole story, with no more explanation than "God has restored them to me". The girl's shallow characterization and lack of independence is a prime example of the way in which fairy tale archetypes can be so harmful to societal perceptions of women. She functions more as an object that things happen to rather than a living person who does things and feels emotions and exists outside of the bounds of "beautiful girl" or "dutiful wife" or the purity or innocence the religious elements of the story represent.

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Regarding design choices, I mainly based them around conveying innocence and a sense of helplessness. Her features are fine and conventionally attractive, with wide eyes to convey the aforementioned innocence and a direct gaze so as to attract the viewer's eye. Her head is slightly off center, to better center her teardrop, with the circle of the frame around the head drawing further attention to both the face and the teardrop. While the girl of the story has no hands, she is restored them at the end of the fairy tale, so I chose to include her hands prominently, as both an irony and to signify their significance to the story. The posing of her body further serves to convey innocence and a feeling of timidness, with hands held close to her body and shoulders held unevenly as though hesitant. Her clothing reflects her state at both the beginning and end of the tale, as the daughter of a miller and living simply in a forest cottage when her husband finally finds her. The background gives the vague impression of branches but is mainly left as blurred values of light and moderate shadow so as to not distract from the far more detailed figure in the foreground.