Fairy tales aim to reflect the human condition by explaining problems and conflicts in family life as well as contradictory phenomena in society. These stories remain more or less connected to a distant past - both in content and origin - and still persist in various forms today. Within them, certain sexual expressions are also embedded, such as marriage ordained by divine will, the custom of levirate (nối dây), forms of group marriage, and incest.
The concept of marriage ordained by divine will appears most clearly in the tale of Chử Đồng Tử. The story tells of a poor father and son who share a single loincloth. When the father dies, Chử Đồng Tử chooses to bury his father with the cloth and accepts living in complete nudity. Because of this situation - combined with divine will - the storytellers created a unique narrative scene in which Chử Đồng Tử encounters Princess Tiên Dung while she is bathing: “She took off her clothes and poured water to wash. As the sand drifted away, Chử Đồng Tử’s body gradually revealed itself.” Tiên Dung interprets this encounter as heaven-sent and decides to marry him. This detail shows that, at that time, Vietnamese folk narratives were not yet influenced by the later Chinese idea of marriages arranged by Ông Tơ Bà Nguyệt (the Matchmaker God). If the tale of Bà Tồ Cô is the first folk story involving nudity, then in Chử Đồng Tử, the storytellers offer one of the most vivid, dramatic, and engaging depictions of nudity - another form of sexual expression related to ancient bathing motifs.
The custom of levirate, though no longer reflected in later fairy tales, appears to some extent in Tấm Cám. In this custom, when a wife dies, the widower wishing to remarry must take a girl from his late wife's family - typically an unmarried sister. In all versions of Tấm Cám, after Tấm dies, the stepmother brings Cám into the palace to replace her sister as the king’s wife. Although details vary among versions, they share the motif of Cám taking Tấm's clothing and entering the palace in her place. Here, the king does not actively seek remarriage; rather, the fact that he “must marry a girl from his wife’s family” indicates a trace of the levirate custom.
Fairy tales also contain remnants of group marriage - a system in which all men of one phratry or clan may have marital relations with all women of another. Such traces appear in “The Origin of Betel and Areca” and “The Origin of the Evening Star and Morning Star.” In the first tale, the wife of Lang mistakenly embraces his twin brother, Tân, because the two look identical. In the second, the younger brother cuts a hole in the wall and places his hand on his sister-in-law’s belly to check on her, leading to her pregnancy and the birth of a hand-shaped child. In both stories, the central issue is the husband's suspicion or jealousy - implying that the husbands did not accept sharing or contact between their wives and younger brothers. Monogamous marriage is presented as the most progressive form, and the storytellers acknowledge this. However, by creating these stories, they also sought to rationalize remnants of earlier marriage systems.
A more explicit case of incest appears in “The Origin of the Vọng Phu Stone.” The story recounts how an older brother accidentally injures his younger sister by throwing a knife that hits her head. After many years of wandering, he marries - only to discover that his wife is his biological sister. Shocked, he leaves without returning. The sister, longing for her husband, eventually turns into stone. Besides the Bình Định version, many similar variants circulate in Lạng Sơn, Thanh Hóa, and elsewhere, under titles such as “Tô Thị Vọng Phu,” “The Tale of Mount Vọng Spirit,” “Hòn Vọng Phu,” and “Nàng Tô Thị.” The incestuous marriage in this story results from ignorance after a long separation. Other forms of incest also appear in voluntary marriage (where the individuals choose without outside interference), marriage after probing or trials guided by deities (common in Southeast Asian flood myths, previously studied by Đặng Nghiêm Vạn and Nguyễn Tấn Đắc), and forbidden marriage - condemned by the community and harshly punished when violated.
Although most marriages in Vietnamese fairy tales are monogamous, some tales mention polygamy, and notably, two recount polyandry (đa phu - one woman with multiple husbands): “The Origin of the Kitchen Gods” and “The Chaste Wife with Two Husbands.” In both tales, a woman takes two husbands, and remarkably, both husbands remain alive. This situation contradicts Confucian ethics, which holds that a chaste woman should have only one husband. Yet through logical and sympathetic storytelling, the folk justify these women. One becomes a deity worshipped as part of the Kitchen Gods, while the other is praised as a symbol of chastity. These stories reflect, to some extent, a proto-feminist spirit in Vietnamese folklore.
Thus, along with legends, fairy tales depict the historical progression from consanguineous marriage to monogamous marriage. Nevertheless, traces of other sexual expressions - marriage ordained by divine will, levirate, group marriage, incest, and even polyandry - still remain in the narrative tradition.
Written by DuongDQM