Calumniated Wife

The Calumniated Wife is a motif in traditional narratives, numbered K2110.1 in Stith Thompson's "Motif-Index of Folk-Literature". It entails a wife being falsely accused of, and often punished for, some crime or sin. This motif is at the centre of a number of traditional plots, being associated with tale-types 705–712 in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index of tale-types.
Overview.
The mother falsely accused of giving birth to strange children is in common between tale types 706 and 707, where the woman has married the king because she has said she would give birth to marvelous children, as in "The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird", "Princess Belle-Etoile", "Ancilotto, King of Provino", "The Wicked Sisters", and "The Three Little Birds". A related theme appears in Aarne-Thompson type 710, where the heroine's children are stolen from her at birth, leading to the slander that she killed them, as in "Mary's Child" or "The Lassie and Her Godmother".
Stith Thompson remarked that the core narrative action of tale types ATU 705, ATU 706, ATU 707 and ATU 710 seemed so uniform as to transfer from one type to the other. However, he glanced a possibility that these types may be further related to each other.
In the same vein, scholar Linda Dégh suggested a common origin for tale types ATU 403 ("The Black and the White Bride"), ATU 408 ("The Three Oranges"), ATU 425 ("The Search for the Lost Husband"), ATU 706 ("The Maiden Without Hands") and ATU 707 ("The Three Golden Sons"), since "their variants cross each other constantly and because their blendings are more common than their keeping to their separate type outlines" and even influence each other.
Tale types.
ATU 705: Born of a Fish.
Comparative mythologist Patrice Lajoye remarked on the similarity between the initial part of the tale type ATU 705, "Born of a Fish", with tale type ATU 303, "The Twins or Blood Brothers": a fisherman catches a fish in the sea and brings it home to his wife to eat. Through the ingestion of the fish, a miraculous gestation occurs and a child is born.
Professor Stith Thompson described that the tale type involves a male pregnancy caused by the ingestion of the fish. The pregnancy is carried on the father's thigh (knee). The child born of this unusual pregnancy, a girl, is carried off by birds and raised in a nest. The maiden, now an adult, is found by a prince in the woods.
At the end of the tale, after the maiden is expelled from the palace, she is summoned to the king's presence and narrates her tale in the form of a riddle or a story-within-a-story, by which the king recognizes her. Scholar Anna Angelopoulos sees the storyline as a process of humanization for the heroine of the tale, albeit with participation of an evil female character (the king's stepmother).
Mythological paralells.
The unusual circunstances of the hero's birth from a male body part are noted to resemble the births of Athena and Dionysus of Greek mythology.
When analysing an Egyptian variant, "The Falcon's Daughter", scholar Hasan M. El-Shamy saw that "basic parts" of the tale type found resonance with Ancient Egyptian religion: the falcon represented solar deity Horus, and the maiden on the tree Hathor, a deity with solar traits "believed to dwell in a holy sun tree" (the sycamore).
ATU 706: The Maiden Without Hands.
This tale type is also known in folkloristics as belonging to the "Constance-cycle".
Distribution.
Scholar Jack Haney stated that the tale type is "widely distributed throughout Europe", with forty-four variants found in Russia. Researcher Hélène Bernier, in her 1971 book about the tale type, listed 48 variants in France, 30 in Canada (18 in Québec and 12 in the Provinces Maritimes), and 5 in the United States.
An early version of the tale type is said to be found in the compilation of "The Arabian Nights". Versions of the tale were also known in medieval European literature since the 13th century, such as "Manékine" and "Roman de la belle Hèlene de Constantinople", from the 13th century. The tale's origins, according to the historical-geographical study of Alexander H. Krappe, point to Eastern Europe; more precisely, the tale is "a migratory legend of Oriental, i. e. Byzantine, origin".
Analysis.
Professor Jack Zipes states that the motif of the mutilation of a woman harks back to Antiquity, and the mutilation of a daughter by a father occurs in tales about incest. As such, remark scholars Anne Duggan and D. L. Ashliman, in many variants of type ATU 706 the heroine is mutilated because she refuses her father's sexual advances. 
The female protagonist may lose her hands at the beginning of the story, but regains them due to the divine intervention of a holy character, such as the Virgin Mary. After the handless maiden is found by the prince/king and marries him, she is pregnant with child or with twins, but her wicked mother-in-law writes her son his wife gave birth to a monster or to animals. She is then banished to the forest with her sons.
According to scholar Denise Paulme, European versions of the tale type deal with the motif of the mother accused of giving birth to a monster; in African variants, the main theme involves the wrongdroings of a jealous co-wife. This view is also suppported by S. Ruelland, who published a study of 19 African variants of the tale type, most of which contained the rivalry between cowives.
Professor Linda Dégh stated that, due to the proximity of the tales, some versions of ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children", merge with episodes of type ATU 706, "The Maiden Without Hands".
ATU 707: The Three Golden Children.
Ethnologist Verrier Elwin commented that the motif of jealous queens, instead of jealous sisters, is present in a polygamous context: the queens replace the youngest queen's child (children) with animals or objects and accuse the woman of infidelity. The queen is then banished and forced to work in a humiliating job. As for the fate of the children, they are either buried and become trees or are cast in the water (river, stream). 
In the same vein, French ethnologue Paul Ottino () noted that the motif of casting the children in the water vaguely resembles the Biblical story of Moses, but, in these stories, the children are cast in a box in order to perish in the dangerous waters. In addition, by analysing similar tales from Madagascar, he concluded that the jealousy of the older co-wives of the polygamous marriage motivate their attempt on the children, and, after the children are restored, the co-wives are duly punished, paving the way for a monogamous family unit with the expelled queen.
According to Daniel Aranda, the tale type develops the narrative in two eras: the tale of the calumniated wife as the first; and the adventures of the children as the second, wherein the mother becomes the object of their quest. 
ATU 708: The Wonder Child.
In this tale type, the heroine gives birth to a child with monstruous appearance. The birth of the monster is due to an enchantment.
ATU 709: Snow White.
This tale type is widespread in Europe, in America, in Africa and "in some Turkic traditions". A primary analysis by Celtic folklorist Alfred Nutt, in the 19th century, established the tale type, in Europe, was distributed "from the Balkan peninsula to Iceland, and from Russia to Catalonia", with the highest number of variants being found in Germany and Italy.
In regards to the Turkic distribution of the tale, parallels are also said to exist in Central Asia and Eastern Siberia, among the Mongolians and Tungusian peoples.
ATU 710: Our Lady's Child.
In this tale type, a poor peasant couple give their daughter to the Virgin Mary (in more religious variants) or to a kind fairy. When the girl is under the tutelage of the magical or religious character, the girl's curiosity impels her to take a gander inside a forbidden chamber, against her benefactor's wishes. Her godmother discovers the child's disobedience and expels her to the forest, where she is found by a king.
In the second part of the tale, when the girl is found by the prince or king, she cannot utter a single word, either because she has made a vow of silence or because the shock of her experience with her caretaker has left her mute. Under this lens, the tale type shares similarites with ATU 451, "The Maiden Who Seeks her Brothers" (e.g., The Six Swans), wherein the heroine must promise to not say a word for a specific period of time as part of a spell to save her transformed brothers.
Scholarship suggests that the ambivalent character of the Virgin Mary, "both as a guardian and a merciless punisher of a girl", may be due to Christian influence, which superimposed Christian imagery onto the role previously held by fairies and other supernatural beings.
In some Slavic variants, the role of the Virgin Mary is taken by a character named "Jezibaba", a variation on Baba Yaga, the witch of Slavic folklore.
ATU 712: Crescentia.
The story shows an Eastern origin, with ancient literature attesting the episode, such as the "Book of Daniel" and the "Ramayana". The theme has also inspired tales and novellas about women's fidelity and chastity in the Middle Ages, in highly fictionalized accounts of historical personages, such as Bertrada, Charlemagne's mother. Other tales involve fictional queens and empresses.
In this tale type, the king's wife is acused of infidelity and abandoned in the woods (with her sons, in some variants). She receives a magical plant of gift from the Virgin Mary and uses it to heal people. Her husband finds her and they both reconcile.
Scholar Ulrich Marzolph points that the tale type ATU 712 is often connected with tale ATU 881, "Oft-Proved Fidelity". In addition, the tale type is also connected to tale ATU 883A, "The Innocent Slandered Maiden", one of "the most frequent tale types" in Turkey, being also found in Greece, Turkestan, Palestine, Egypt and the Balkans.