The Thirteenth Tale

Throughout The Thirteenth Tale, Setterfield raises the motif of the rule of three, a storytelling strategy in literature, and especially fairy tales, in which events, characters, or actions are grouped into threes for the greatest impact.

The rule of three first comes up in Margaret’s early conversations with Vida. When Margaret asks for three verifiable facts that will support Vida’s story, Vida replies, “Ah, the rule of three…The magic number. […] Miss Lea, if you had asked me two questions or four I might have been able to lie, but three…” (49). Vida’s comment shows her understanding, as an author, of the rule of three. Later, in the same conversation, when Vida is about to deliver her third verifiable fact, Margaret thinks, “In the stories with the wizards, it is always with the third wish that everything so dangerously won is disastrously snatched away” (50). By raising the specter of the rule of three early on in the novel, Setterfield establishes a connection to fairy tales and their magic.

When Margaret first visits Angelfield, she discovers Aurelius behind the third door that she opens; when John-the-dig is teaching Vida to trim the topiary, “Three times he let me rest the ladder against the tree before he was satisfied it was safe. And then I took the shears and went up. I worked for three hours…” (261). In one of the most significantly fairy-tale aspects of the novel, when Mrs. Love turns the heel of the sock she is knitting, the first two times she is faced with the death of a loved one, but the third time, she discovers the baby Aurelius on her doorstep.

Beyond creating a parallel between the novel and the fairy-tale world, Setterfield effectively uses the rule of three to foreshadow the key to Vida’s mysterious story: that there are not two girls living at Angelfield, but, as Margaret says, “once upon a time there were three” (349). Setterfield uses this rule in Margaret’s own story as well: “On the third day, feeling as frail as a newborn, I got up. As I pulled the curtains apart, my room was flooded with a fresh clean light” (305). At the end of three days of suffering, Margaret has grappled with her deep emotion and damage around her twin’s death and has emerged at the end of her illness, newborn.