“…The thing about Rapunzel is the sorceress is depicted as crone-like and cruel, hoarding her vegetables, terrorizing her neighbors, forcing them to surrender their infant daughter to her, a daughter she locks inside a stair-less tower once she reaches puberty. I can’t help but think about how the sorceress was also trapped, not inside a tower, but behind the high wall that surrounded her property. How she first locks Rapunzel inside that phallic tower, but then exiles her again when she discovers she has fallen in love with a prince, snuck him up to her room, and gotten pregnant.
In the forest, Rapunzel gives birth to twins alone in the woods. Before we even get to interpreting that tower as a representation of the ways we live inside misogyny, we might see those walls as proof society has always needed women to be lonely.”…

Locked in Rapunzel’s Tower: Reflections on the Art Monster and Women’s Loneliness by Amie Souza reilly. lit hub