This is Chase013.
Types ATU0124 Blowing the house in [first part only]
Motifs K0714.2 Victim tricking into entering box
Notes. Gerber makes the Type 124 comparison, even though there is no blowing the house in, just a series of stronger houses. Baer also reports versions where "Fox persuades Rabbit to jump into the chest to evade pursuit, pours in boiling water, and scalds and eats Rabbit!"
Baer comments: "It it interesting that before 1880, Rabbit, the Afro-American trickster, maintains himself over all but Terrapin by superior cunning, yet by 1917 he has become teh victim. It is as if the hopes of psot-slavery days had finally succumbed to the reality of the American Negro's role in southern society."
She notes a similar shift in the imitation decapitation stories: "While in the African versions Hare was usually the victim, Rabbit was the perpetrator of the fatal hoax in the Uncle Remus tales. In the 1920s the tale was still popular but had reverted to the African model with Rabbit the victim."
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My Notes
I'm not sure the evidence is complete enough to generalize about changes over time as Baer speculates, but the way that the Rabbit can be the winner or the loser in any particular story is part of the ambivalence of the trickster in general, right?
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