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Gender representation in fairy tales short article
Gender representation in fairy tales short article
Gender stereotyping in fairy tales
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Beauty and the Beast was published a little after the 17th century. As said, the feudal system slowly disappeared when trade became a more important factor. This is why the social status of the family could change so dramatically, from rich to bankrupt, which was not common when the feudal system was at its peak.
As in most fairy tales, Beauty was the youngest, more beautiful and better than her sisters. Immediately after that is mentioned, you are told that the sisters have “a great deal of pride,” so it is evident that that is a bad characteristic. This is enhanced when the merchant loses his fortune and nobody wants to marry the elder sisters, however, they do want to marry Beauty because they admire her. She is called a “charming, sweet-tempered creature, spoke so kindly to poor people and was of such an affable obliging disposition.” Although this could mean a better life for Beauty, she decides to stay with her father.
Of course, the most obvious moral in this fairy tale is the ‘every beast can have a beauty inside which can come out’ theme. This is shown by the beast turning into a prince who was as beautiful as every girls’ dream guy. However, Beauty already loved him before she saw this metamorphosis. Even though it took some time. Of course, Beauty is the real hero in the story because she goes to the beast voluntary. In the end, Beauty is made Queen and the sisters become two statues because they tried to steal Beauty’s happiness while they were both in unhappy marriages. This also indicates that jealousy is a bad characteristic. These elements create a fun story which contains a real strong moral and every girl can identify herself with Beauty, although there are no girls as good as her.
Cinderella
In the f...
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...beats the girl up, instead of making it public. “Thinking she's found her husband's secret mistress, the jealous baroness cuts off Lisa's hair, dresses her in rags, and beats her black and blue.” This suggests that having a lover was accepted when you were a man, only the wife does not agree, the public does.
The baron, helping the slave girl and buying gifts for all his staff, comes across like a real gentleman, a hero. While in that time, the higher social classes actually thought themselves way above slaves and workers. The doll in the story makes it clear again that Lisa was only a child.
The end of the story, “The girl is then restored to beauty, health, wealth, and heritage — while the cruel baroness is cast away, sent back to her parents.” and her being given a good and handsome husband once again emphasizes on the fact that women are dependent on men.
... need for hard labor but as they move to the country, Beauty has to learn to work alongside her future brother-in-law and do heavy work. She also moves away from her studies and turns to helping her family progress. After her year away from her family, she physically grows into a woman. She also finds herself dependant of the Beast rather than of her family as would a child.
Through the three revisions of Beauty and The Beast, the fairy tales retold share many similarities as well as many differences according to their time period. In all three versions femininity and masculinity are presented in many ways. Femininity is shown through all three main female characters, Belle from the famous Disney film “The Beauty and The Beast”, the narrator in “Tiger’s Bride”, and Psyche in “Cupid and Psyche”. In all three versions, the female characters breaks society’s expectations of a typical woman. In CP Psyche stands up to Cupid’s mother Venus and accomplishes these activities usually performed by males. She shows society that women can overcome male activities and have strength to complete the same tasks. She breaks tradition of the male character fighting for her because in this version she takes on the hero role and fights for Cupid. This was not something ordinarily done by woman characters during this time. In TB the narrator breaks the tradition of the innocent stereotypical woman figure. The narrator exposes and does things most woman would never have the nerve to do. She shows society that women can fault their beauty in other ways. Even if society does not make it acceptable to have sex before marriage, she shows that women can expose their body and beauty in many ways. In DB version Belle is a great example that women should not be looked at as dolls and let males have control over them. She shows society that woman can be independent and educated. She does not get married to the most handsome male in town however she goes after someone who deeply cares about her. She displays a great example of how woman have their own mind and can think for themselves. Woman are allowed to make decisions and have ...
Instead, she takes her burdens as they come. Clare R. Ferrer noted in her article, “heroines are not allowed any defects, nor are they required to develop, since they are already perfect.” At the beginning of the story, Cinderella is described as “remaining pious and good” in-spite of the loss she endured. Cinderella is such a good person, that she takes the abuse from her step-sisters with grace and never asks for anything, nor does she reveal to her father or the Prince the type of life she has succumbed to living. Beauty goes hand-in-hand with being a good woman. According to Parsons, “a high premium is placed on feminine beauty…Women are positioned as the object of men’s gaze, and beauty determines a woman’s ...
Like the Good Other Woman, the Evil Other Woman often spends much of her life hidden away in the castle, secret room, or whatever, a fact suggesting that even a virtuous woman’s lot is the same she would have merited had she been the worst of criminals. The heroine’s discovery of such Other Women is in the one case an encounter with women’s oppression-their confinement as wives, mothers, and daughters-and in the other with a related repression: the confinement of a Hidden Woman inside those genteel writers and readers who, in the idealization of the heroine’s virtues, displace their own rebellious
Hopkinson uses the narrator to spread a moral similar to Perrault's three hundreds year ago. Girls, especially when young and inexperienced, need to be careful when encountering nice and charming men due to its risk to ends in a completely undesirable situation. This is when the grandmother intervenes, she tries to complete her granddaughter's education by notifying her on that special affair and which will provides her advices to avoid the same experience. Indeed, fairy tale has an educational mission in addition of its entertainment. Hopkinson provides a moral to the reader through a modern and revisited tale, maybe more adapted to nowadays reader but without weakening its quintessence.
In both stories, Cinderella and Zozella are basically rescued by man from their hard, sad life, who then marries them and makes them his queen. This is sending a strong message to not only females but males also that women cannot save themselves and that they need to be “rescued” by a rich man who will marry them and provide them with a luxurious life. However, in Perrault’s “Cinderella” there is a theme which is not present in Basile’s “The Cat Cinderella”, this theme is the idea that beauty equals kindness of character. Cinderella is shown to be good of heart and also incredibly beautiful, unlike her less beautiful, mean spirited sisters, Perrault describes her as “a hundred times handsomer than her sisters, though they were always dressed very richly” (Perrault, 16). This sends the message that if you’re kind you are beautiful and if you are not beautiful then you do not have a good character. This theme is even seen in today’s society where women are judged and judge others based on appearance. This theme is not present in “The Cat Cinderella”, Zozella is beautiful as well but her beauty doesn’t make a good hearted person and this is evident when she commits murder to get what she wants. Creating the stereotypical view of women being cunning and sly in order to get what they want, and sending a message to young girls that women are heartless selfish
This modern fairy tale contains diverse characters but none of them is as important as the grandmother. Through her narration, the reader gets all the information needed to understand the story. Indeed, by telling her own story she provides the reader the familial context in which the story is set with her granddaughter and her daughter but even more important, she provides details on her own life which should teach and therefore protect her grand-daughter from men, and then save her to endure or experience her past griefs. This unnamed grand-mother is telling her life under a fairy tale form which exemplify two major properties of fairy tale, as mentioned by Marina Warner in “The Old Wives' Tale”: “Fairy tales exchange knowledge [through the moral] between an older [most of the time feminine] voice of experience and a younger audience”. As suggested in the text, fairy tales are a way to teach insights of life through simple stories directed to, most of the time, younger generations. Most of the time because fairy tales work on different levels of moral which are directed to categories of people, for instance in “Little Red Riding Hood” the moral ...
Many parents read fairy tales to their children. Young people are able to use their imaginations while listening to these fantastical stories. Filled with dragons, witches, damsels in distress, and heroes, these tales stay in the mind children for years to come. However, these young listeners are getting much more than a happy ending. Fairy tales such as "The Goose Girl", "The Three Little Pigs", "Cinderella", and "Snow White" one can find theories of psychology. Erik Erikson's theories of social development as well as Sigmund Freud's theory of the map of the mind and his controversial Oedipal complex can be found in many fairy tales. Within every fairy tale there lies a hidden lesson in psychology.
A prolific exemplification of the ideal female virtues portrayed in fairy tales is Charles Perrault’s “ The Little Glass Slipper”. Perrault presents the ideal female fairy tale character through his portrayal of Cinderella. Cinderella is a tame and forgiving individual who subjects herself to the will of her father, stepmother and s...
...ndency on the fairy godmother and the prince encourages a meek and inactive behaviour to achieve a rewarding future (Robbins, 104). Overall, Cinderella’s behaviour is “...weak, silent and passive...” (Trousdale & McMillan, 12) which is unacceptable for a modern western woman.
Throughout the history of folklore and fairytales, many interpretations of tales have been created and introduced. When exchanged, many details have been lost in translation, only to be redistributed as a similar tale following a certain moral. But throughout the life of the tale “Cinderella,” one objective has never been misconstrued; the social structure and the status Cinderella falls and rises to. Many fairytales display a rise and fall of a protagonist, often in the case of social classes. The many versions of “Cinderella,” including Ever After, exhibit a definite, strong, monarchical settlement with a defined arrangement of classes that create and develop the beloved character of Cinderella, or Danielle De Barbarac, herself.
In the “Beauty and the Beast” by Madame Leprince de Beaumont she talks in her fairy tale how money was very important for the characters within the story. She also talks about how people could fall in love with another and that it does not matter if a person is not a good looking person that their feelings were more important. In my new adaptation of “Beauty and the Beast”. I put the character of the Beast from Madame’s fairy tale in my adaptation he is a man because I want to show how a good looking man can be a bad person and that it does not matter how you look outside. In my adaptation I also change Beauty to Bonita, and I show how a woman can be different than the others in the way of the things that they like to do. Bonita prefers to
I chose to research the genre of fairytales because the genre retold by Grimm’s caught my attention. Fairytales in modern day usually have a happy ending after the good versus evil concept. Rapunzel specifically, isn’t told in its original form.Theres much more darkness and even though happily ever after is in play, not all fairytales end that way. Fairytales have much more depth than people realize in modern day. It portrays the real struggles we face growing up. In Rapunzel, her mother gave her away and she was raised by an enchantress who locked her away. This very much explains child abandonment or a child that has been given up for adoption and the things they face growing up.Theres a connection between these fairytales and real life situations .Fairytales have a way of expressing real life situations in a way that uses a few elements that help tell the story in a way children can understand. Some of the elements include: magic, morals, royalty and love.
The one thing that separates Beauty and the Beast from all the other fairy tales is that Beauty gets to know the Beast before marrying him. She lives with him for several months and gets to know him for what he is inside. He is not a prince that rescues her but she is a woman that rescues him. It is only when she professes her love for him that he is transformed. If it wasn’t for her love of the Beast from the inside he would have never been transformed and they would not have been wed. Yes, he helps her mature and become a beautiful, young women but it is her that causes the transformation.
How do changes in society reflect the changes in the commercialization of the story? They answer how society views certain issues, class, race, status and gender all of these come into play when the story is being crafted. For example in the earlier renditions of Sleeping Beauty such as The Sun Moon and Talia both the main love interest and central antagonist of the story are both female. BUT the central players Talia FATHER and the wise MEN at the beginning are the ones who dictate Talia's fate at the beginning. The queen presents herself as a villain’s interests and the King is the hero who holds both women’s fate in his palms this first edition of the modern sleeping beauty debuted in 1634. A time of kings and absolute monarchy’s but as time went on by 1697 the sleeping Beauty according to Perrault changed certain things such as the queen being an ogress. A mother who took the throne from her s...