Society creates Fairytales to teach people to have certain morals, and values. One Fairytale in particular is Hans Christian Anderson’s Thumbelina. Thumbelina is a story about a little girl who is underestimated because of her size. However, Thumbelina exceeds the expectations of the people she meets along the fairytale. However, this fairytales is filled with bias and negative stereotypes that society has developed to certain individuals. The idea that People frequently use demographic characteristics to categorize others and predict their likely behaviors, is the reason for people being out casted (Jennifer A. Chatman; Jeffrey T. Polzer; Sigal G. Barsade; Margaret A. Neale Administrative Science Quarterly ).
In Hans Christian Andersen's story of Thumbelina, a tiny sized girl goes on the adventure of a lifetime. The story was originally written in 1835 in Denmark, and first translated to English in 1846. Thumbelina is a magical story, with both positive and negative messages for viewers. On the surface it is about true love and accepting who you are, but seems to contradict those messages if looked into a little deeper. The opinions of other people temporarily persuade her, leading her to accept a marriage based on comfort rather than true love, because she thinks her prince is dead. However, Thumbelina finally stands up for herself and says no.
This Fairytale addresses the issue of how society portrays women as the weak gender. In the story Thumbelina is carried from one place to another by her friends, and seems to always be belittled. She relies heavily on friends, which can be seen as both positive and negative. The creatures she meets up along the way always address her as weak, and that she can’t do anythi...
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...h herself. She is the epitome of self – confidence, because she was small which was a disadvantage for her in the obstacles on her journey. The thing that made her confident was that she believed in herself, and she knew that she was small but her size didn’t matter in the end to her, her happiness did. Size doesn’t matter in the end because you can always prove people wrong, you can’t let other people tell you that you can’t do something just because you’re small. Thumbelina exemplifies that even though you are different than other people, your looks don’t define you, and your character defines you.
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Folktales can be used to share morals or a lesson using symbols, and this is true of the classic “Cinderella” story. Madonna Kolbenschlag, a feminist, writes “A Feminist’s View of ‘Cinderella,’” explaining the Cinderella story in a more sexist view. Bruno Bettel-heim, a distinguished psychologist, centers his article, “‘Cinderella’: A Story of Sibling Rivalry and Oedipal Conflicts” very specifically on the sibling rivalry exhibited in the classic “Cinderella” story. He also writes about the oedipal period of a child’s life. Both authors agree that “Cinderella” is most likely the best-known and best-liked fairy tale. Although, according to Stith Thompson, folktales have been passed form country to country and through different time periods,
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In present day society, where political correctness and equality are at the top of the priority list, by reading essays such as the one by Karol Kelley we find that this might not have been the case in earlier days. Fairy tales such as Cinderella have been found guilty of possessing subliminal socialization traits. Classifying genders as inferior and molding young girls into the female that society expects them to be. In Charles Perrault’s version, which is considered the most common, Cinderella is seen as passive, limited, dependent and inferior. As critics argue, these traits can hinder a child’s self esteem. Karol Kelley states that the “expectations and the promises
...g. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 12th ed. New York: Pearson, 2013. 549-51. Print.
In a society unbridled with double standards and set views about women, one may wonder the origins of such beliefs. It might come as a surprise that these ideals and standards are embedded and have been for centuries in the beloved fairy tales we enjoyed reading as kids. In her analytical essay, “To Spin a Yarn: The Female Voice in Folklore and Fairy Tales”, Karen Rowe argues that fairy tales present “cultural norms which exalt passivity, dependency, and self-sacrifice as a female’s cardinal virtues.” Rowe presents an excellent point, which can be supported by versions of the cult classics, “Cinderella” and “Snow White”. Charles Perrault’s “ The Little Glass Slipper” and the Brothers Grimm’s “ Snow White” exemplify the beliefs that females are supposed to be docile, dependent on the male persona and willing to sacrifice themselves. In many cases, when strong female characters are presented they are always contradicting in these characteristics, thus labeled as villainous. Such is the case of the Cinderella’s stepsisters in Perrault’s “Cinderella” and the stepmother in the Brothers Grimm’s “Snow White.” These female characters face judgment and disapproval when they commit the same acts as male characters. With such messages rooted in our beloved fairy tales it is no wonder that society is rampant with these ideals about women and disapprove of women when they try to break free of this mold.
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 ...
With that, I feel that Thumbelina is really an oddity of a fairy tale. It really does play by a different set of rules, yet it manages to play by certain tropes and establish its own motifs very well. Propp's model may not be entirely suitable for analyzing Thumbelina just because of how off-the-wall it is.
...., 1994), pp. 73-89. Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. http://www.jstor.org/stable/124865 Retrieved November 8, 2013
Men are always stronger and smarter than women; all teenagers are rebels and rarely follow parents’ instructions; all Chinese are good at math—all of these statements are spread through the entire world although most people know they are not completely true. On the opposite viewpoint, when we evaluate those statements, it is controversial to judge and blame the individuals who spread these kinds of information out and keep saying them over and over again, because most of these things are partly true. This is that we call stereotypes, “which are types of generalizations, or assumptions, that people make about the characteristics of all members of a group, based on an image about what people in that group are like” (Burgess).Also, Chimamanda Adichie, the famous renowned writer, scholar, and the speaker of “The Danger of Single Story” in Ted Talks, once said, “stereotypes are created by single stories, the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but they are incomplete.” At this point, single stories are the pattern of the lack of understanding, uncorroborated assumptions, and some special cultural myths. Thus, at a certain level, stereotyping is an approach where people show their misunderstanding with each other based on their own personal, regional, and cultural perspectives, which is the consequence of the institutionalization and socialization of their environmental backgrounds.
Siegel, L.J., Brown, P., & Hoffman, R. (2013).CRIM 2nd edition. Toronto, Canada: Nelson Publishers. pp. 203-205
In conclusion, the development of the folktales leads to the obtaining of ideas about gender. In many ways our society supports the idea that women seem underestimated as well as physically and mentally weak in comparison with the men who is portrayed as intelligent and superior. This can be shown in many ways in the different versions of this folktale through the concepts of symbolic characters, plot and narrative perspective.
Disney and old fairytales threaten gender politics and ideal women roles by giving certain stereotypes for domestic and personality traits. Fairytales that have turned into Disney productions have sculpted domestic roles for women that consist of cooking, cleaning and caring for the children. Disney has also created these princesses with personalities that are shy, passive, and vulnerable. The cause of these stereotypes are making individuals obliterate their own identities and becoming clones from the mold that was prepared for