Puss in Boots is a strange little folk tale in which a talking cat performs deeds of heroism in order to further his master's lot in life. It is saddled with a moral which implies that through hard work and ingenuity one can rise above his station. This hardly seems to be the case, however, when we look at the contributions made by the miller's youngest son and master of the puss himself. Furthermore, the symbolism peppered throughout the tale would seem to indicate that there is more going on.
The tale begins with the death of a miller, who leaves his sole possessions to his three sons. The youngest of the sons winds up with nothing but what he believes to be a lowly cat, which he is convinced will be good only for a meal and a muff. The young man begins the story in a passive hopelessness, bemoaning the fact that he received the least of his father's goods in his inheritance, and he retains this passivity throughout. He never makes any contribution to his own well-being, beyond his initial decision not to eat the cat, and to let the cat demonstrate his cunning and deceitful skills. He lets the cat do all of the thinking and all of the work. He even becomes the "Marquis of Carabas" at the whim of the puss, and follows all of the cat's instructions, including swimming nude when the cat directs him. He doesn't even ask for an explanation. The moral states that "hard work and ingenuity will take a young man further than his father's money," but the young man certainly shows no signs of hard work nor ingenuity. In fact, he seems to be an icon for naivety and blind faith. This does not, however, mean that the moral is wrong. There are several aspects of this story which take folk tale conventions and turn them on their head. The young man effectively becomes a father figure, threatening the end of the cat and giving him the impetus for his journey. The cat in turn becomes the son and the main protagonist of our story and the only character to go through a transformation. When viewed at this angle, the moral retains its truth.
The deeper story here seems to be a part coming-of-age, part underdog-overcoming-the-odds tale. The story begins with a miller. In a pre-industrial society, the miller would have had an important position, akin to a woodcutter. The miller was responsible for grinding corn into meal, essential in making bread and other staples. His death represents a lack of a provider in his sons' lives. The two elder sons are granted an inheritance that will allow them to make a living, but not the youngest, who gets the cat. The cat, a possession of the miller, also finds himself without a provider, and hatches a plan to prevent the son from eating him. In the course of the story, the son becomes as reliant on the cat as he was on his father. It is at this point that the cat replaces the son as a formal story element. In many respects, the cat and the son are two halves of the same character, their fates interlocked with one another. This is a deliberate device which reflects the medieval superstition that cats were somehow linked to their masters, as Robert Darnton suggests in his article
"The Great Cat
Massacre."
The cat asks for some boots to protect his feet from the thorny undergrowth. Putting boots on the cat reinforces the superstition and creates an air of plausibility that allows the audience to accept its activities within the story. The cat is essentially wearing his master's clothes in order to perform what would otherwise be his master's tasks. The boots also deprive him of his natural weapons, and forces the cat to rely on his cunning. Puss then goes out and smartly catches some rabbits, which he takes to the king as an offering. It is important to note that the king is the father of a princess who will eventually marry the cat's master, and that the rabbits, symbols of fertility, can then be seen as foreshadowing of the impending union. As the cat walks through the king's door, he enters a new realm of possibilities for himself and his master. The king represents a world of easy living ready to be exploited.
Upon learning of the king's plan to take his daughter for a drive, the cat recommends to his master that he should take a swim in the river alongside the road. If a river represents a subconscious change of state, then it is interesting to observe that the master, or the Marquis, never actually crosses it. Despite being prodded by the cat, he does not attain any new insight or advancement in his character. Instead, he splashes about insipidly and nakedly, waiting to be pulled back to the side from which he started.
The puss reaches a castle, the "mountain" that will be the site of his final test. His test comes in the form of an ogre, whom he tricks into changing into a mouse and then devours. The ogre represents a "father" and it has already been established that the cat represents a "boy." Therefore, this scene is indicative of the cat's "coming of age," as well as the Marquis', as the two are part of the same character archetype, and their fates are intertwined. The cat leads his master, and the king and his daughter, to a large banquet that had been laid out and the party eats. The ritual of food is an indication of a transformation taking place both in the cat and his master. They have both achieved their goal. The cat has proved his worth beyond those gifts that had been bestowed upon the older brothers, thereby earning himself a lordship, and the Marquis has won the hand of a princess (who is symbolic of his own happiness and contentment) and inherited the enormous wealth of the deceased ogre (which represents his newfound knowledge, although he did not win this on his own merit).
While this story functions well as a coming-of-age tale, it serves a dual purpose as an underdog yarn. The cat's diminutive stature is easily recognizable as a lack of power as he goes up against overwhelming opponents. Despite his lack of drive, the master starts as a threat to the puss, as he entertains the idea of eating the cat. This is the first event that the cat must overcome and he does it with his quick wits. Surely everyone has had a sense of powerlessness and inferiority at certain points in their life. It is those feelings that are brought into play in this story. Time and time again, the cat must rely on his brain to win the day and serve his master. He traps animals and delivers them to a person of power, displaying his ability to negotiate. He puts a plan into action that will place his master in a position of power and manipulates the peasants to back up that plan. He craftily dupes the ogre into using his incredible powers against himself. In all of these instances we see evidence of the underdog using his wits and cunning to overcome the odds and be in control of the world around him, an idea that must have had appeal to people with little or no control of the events in their lives. Indeed, it is an idea that still has appeal today.
Darnton, Robert The Great Cat Massacre http://www.geocities.com/pashathecat/History/Cat_Massacre.html
Perrault, Charles. "Puss in Boots." Folk & Fairy Tales Comp. Martin Hallett and Barbara Karasek. 2nd ed. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 1996. 94-97.