Fairy Tales In Western Culture

Fairy tales have been part of our lives ever since we were young children. We all either grew up watching Disney renditions of fairy tales, or we had storybooks filled with vivid pictures of a tale. Fairy tales are so important in our culture that it would be difficult to find someone who has not heard of Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, or other fairy tale protagonists. Interestingly enough, fairy tales have been a very integral part of Western culture since the time they were written. Fairy tale writers, such as Charles Perrault and the Grimm Brothers, revolutionized culture in the 17th and 18th centuries with their writings. Not only did these writers write these tales for entertainment, but they also accomplished to influence the

In her book, Fabulous Identities: Women’s Fairy Tales in Seventeenth Century France, Patricia Hannon explains how Perrault was inspired to write about the female protagonists in his tales by the pompous salon women in France. In her book, Hannon describes the beauty rituals of these women and how the beauty of these women can be seen resonating throughout Perrault’s fairy tales. Specifically, Hannon explains how slimness and waist-to-hip ratios were of high importance to these women, and thus were important to men because these women’s beauty rituals were solely for their “male partner’s sexual pleasure” (45). One way seventeenth century women achieved the ideal body slimness was by wearing tight corsets in order to make their hips appear wider and their waist to appear slimmer. In his book, The Cultural Identity of Seventeenth- Century Women, N. H. Keeble also tells us that these pompous women would hold large gatherings and not eat in order to keep their figures slim. Keeble tells us that the celebration of slimness in women is seen throughout countless fairy tales and was seen by 17th century culture as ideal because women “could be more easily dominated and subdued” (54). D.S. Brewer also gives us some examples of how small waists were valued as beautiful when he relates that in most of the 17th century stories, such as Chaucer’s tales, the “beautiful [woman] had a very small waist” (258). In most fairy tale illustrations, such as those by Arthur Rackham, the female protagonists are shown having really small waists or wearing a fashionable tight corset. Even in today’s Disney adaptations, all the princesses have tiny waists and Belle from Beauty and The Beast is shown with her tight corset. Of course, we know that today thinness and slimness are widely acclaimed in almost every aspect of our culture, as every woman wants