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Comment
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OKCMuffin
Unregistered User
(7/7/01 12:11:48 pm)
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Domination/submission if folklore......an English paper??
I am taking an English Lit class where our focus is on folktales, and for my research paper I am wanting to discuss issues of domination and submission. Wny insights?? I would appreciate any and all comments......esp the ones that are NOT being rude.....
OKCMuffin@aol.com
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Midori
Unregistered User
(7/7/01 6:55:14 pm)
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clarification
It would help if you narrowed the focus a bit more. What do you mean by domination and submission? As acts that actually happen in the narrative? (in which case "transgression" should be part of youdiscussion since characters oftenforced to submit to unhappy circumstances work to get out of them and there in hangs a tale). It might be also easier to give more insights if you decide about a group of folktales: hero narratives, heroine narratives, trickster narratives (where domination and submission are also part of disguise and deception as a trickster appears the weaker but actually through the trick sometimes reveals the stronger hand).
So what folk tales would you like to spend some time writing about? Which one, or three in particular are you interested in and would be willing to investigate a little deeper?
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Lotti
Unregistered User
(7/8/01 2:52:24 am)
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Thrushbeard
Hi there, just to get it off my chest: If you had browsed through the threads on this page before posting yours, you'd have found that there are no rude contributions (except this one, I guess). The wonderful people on this board are very courteous and friendly!
But to answer your question/ or better: to give you my ideas on the subject: The first thing that came to my mind is the story of King Trushbeard. Maybe because I always feel so angry at the end... I always felt that making the Princess do real work and adjust to poverty was one thing. Temporary at that - his high and mightiness wouldn't live in a hut all his life either, would he?! But in the ballroom scene at the end the story very clearly states that the Princess is deeply humiliated by her husband. It is not enough that she changes, she has to be humiliated. I always choke on the condescension of the king at the end... ;-)
Of course, this refers to the Grimm version. In a Norwegian version (Asbjoernson?!), the story does not have the humiliation scene as far as I remember. Here the Princess sees the hut on fire while dancing with the King at the ball (not recognizing him) and wants to rush off to rescue her child and husband. While this is a cruel test, it is not humiliating to the Princess.
Might get you started?!
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okcmuffin
Unregistered User
(7/9/01 8:20:32 am)
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how was i being rude?? your highness??
I was speaking I guess about male dominant/female submission........not humiliation as it was suggested..... NOW HOW WAS MY POST CONSIDERED RUDE?
I am exploring the Beauty and the Beast type tales.....
Sleeping Beauty type tales......... and Snow White type tales.......
I am not interested in reading perversion comments or stories such as the Beauty triology by Ann Rice....... or rude comments.......... but about the issues of the male being the dominant factor in life/society and the female being the submissive in life/society......
And thank you SIR..but I did read the whole list of posts before I posted my own......
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OKCMuffin
Unregistered User
(7/9/01 8:24:31 am)
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Thanks.......and I tried to clarify somewhat
I am focusing on male domination/female submission in the lives and society as a whole..... My focus is the Beauty and the Beast type stories, the Sleeping Beauty type stories, and the Snow White type stories.....
Thanks for your questions, that helped somewhat anyway..... hope you have a chance to answer me now......
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Midori
Unregistered User
(7/9/01 10:32:15 am)
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what do you think?
It seems that you have your own point of view already. Rather than us shooting in the dark why don't you suggest how you see submission and domination working in Beauty and the Beast? Do you see Beauty as submissive to the Beast? Or is the Beast, whose very life depends on Beauty's strength, submissive to Beauty? Don't the female figures in this narrative hold a lot of power? So within this particular power structure of male/female relationships how do you read submission and dominance affecting the characters? Sleeping Beauty also has a quite lively tradition that is much more interesting than the modern Disneyfied. Take a look at www.endicott-studio.com and go to the Forum. There is an articleon the history of the early Sleeping Beauty's....here Beauty insists that the Prince (who has raped herin her sleep) now submit to her conditions before she will accept him. one of those conditions is being buried alive.
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Kate
Unregistered User
(7/9/01 10:41:29 am)
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Ideas
Dear OKCMuffin,
To go back to an earlier question--I'm sure Lotti was merely reassuring you that you need not worry about rudeness on this board, as it simply does not occur, and when it does, it's quite implicitly discouraged.
As to your subject, you might look at Francine Prose's essay on
"Sleeping Beauty" in a collection I edited, called Mirror,
Mirror on the Wall (Doubleday 1998). In it she talks about the lure
of female passivity as presented in some versions of the tale, and
the political/emotional implications of such. And Midori's questions
and suggestions are, as always, comprehensive and excellent. The
Endicott site would be a great place to start.
Kate
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Lotti
Unregistered User
(7/9/01 10:51:26 am)
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oh-oh
My, are we touchy? Just for the record, I was referring to my own e-mail as rude, because I was critcizing you. No need to go off like that, really. And rave and rant at me all you like, I still think Thrushbeard is a good example - the Princess is outspoken in a world dominated by males, and the males in the story try to make her into a submissive female. I mentioned the Grimm's humiliation scene because in their world, the female is a strictly at-home person, and completely subject to her husbands wishes. Therefore, the Princess has to be punished and ridiculed for trying to play a role in the predominatly male society (it is she who is choosing a husband, not her father doing it for her, after all). The Norwegian tale is set in a different society, I guess, and so it is enough to reform the Princess, not humiliate her.
As I said, I still believe this fits your question. Maybe I still get it wrong and you are not looking for a tale with domination/ submission being the theme, but the background?
Lotti
P.S. Actually, it is MADAM, not SIR. :-)
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Lotti
Unregistered User
(7/9/01 11:00:26 am)
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The passive female
Kate,
seems we wrote at the same time - thanks for defending me! I think you found the operative word: passive. I agree that in Sleeping beauty, as in Snow White, the females are very passive persons, rather than subdued by a male society. Of course, they may be passive because the men rule their world, but then, in both stories, the males (taking action) are mostly absent. We have of course the dwarfs in Snow White, but do they really count? (I know, this is not politically correct!) And there are the princes, but they kind of stumble into the story, don't you think?
Regards,
Lotti
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Benjamin
Registered User
(7/10/01 12:28:11 am)
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The Sleeping Beauty
I was interested to hear of this version of Sleeping Beauty in which the fair maid is raped in her sleep & then exacts her revenge by playing on the prince's guilt. It reminded me very much of Richardson's novel Clarissa, in which the same scenario pretty much happens; the heroine is drugged & raped, but although she has no physical or social power throughout the novel, she exerts tremendous moral power on everybody.
Is it the moral high ground that empowers these heroines, and allows them to triumph over their dominant aggressors?
The good thing about virtue is you can be submissive and powerful all at once.
Cheers
Benjamin
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janeyolen
Unregistered User
(7/10/01 8:06:37 am)
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Book to check out
You might also want to check out MIRROR, MIRROR: 40 FOLKTALES FOR MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS TO SHARE/ Viking Penguin (sorry, but we had the same title by accident) by my daughter and me. There is a mention of Beauty and the Beast in which my daughter--who has done counseling with battered women among other things--rants about the Disney version of the story. She calls it a primer for battering wives.
Jane
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Helen
Registered User
(7/10/01 9:14:29 am)
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Thousand-Furs
For issues of domination and submission, you might take a look at these tales; "DonkeySkin," "Thousand-Furs", and "The Armless Maiden," all of which deal with the potential abuses of power in a society where one gender prevails over another. Robin McKinley did an excellent modern interpretation of such a theme in _Deerskin_, and, of course, Angel Carter dealt with similiar issues in _The Bloody Chamber_, particularly in the title story. It would help if you could narrow your topic down a bit ... but it sounds quite fascinating, potentially.
Helen
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okcmuffin
Unregistered User
(7/10/01 5:34:10 pm)
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hmmmmmm
Thanks for the thoughts from all of you. We have studied Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White- from early to new versions of them all. We are also reading Red Riding Hood, but right now I dont think that will fit into my term paper.
My personal feeling at this time is that Male Domination and female submission were put into these tales to make young girls aware that this was "her place" in society. I view Beauty as being submissive to family, not really to a male figure; Sleeping Beauty is forced into submission by one that takes her in her sleep; Snow White learns submissiveness from the dwarfs in preparation for marriage.
Further personal opinions are that one cannot force submission, it must be given (one taken by force is taken into slavery, a different term); also that dominance is something that comes from inner, not physical strength.
I know that none of these thoughts are politically correct at this time, but I think that folktales such as these had hidden messages for the young readers.
Beyond all of the domination/submission theories I have, I am also exploring how these stories also relate to arranged marriages.
Lotti, sorry Ma'am, yes I am a bit touchy about message boards these days, think it is just AOL'itus...... (laugh with me, ok?)
Thanks for all the suggestions and input folks, I come home from class every day to check this board!
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HisPreciousAngel
Unregistered User
(7/10/01 6:47:59 pm)
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Say What?!
As a somewhat not-so-objective passerby, I find that all the previous additions have merit....food for thought, so to speak. Now then: Faery Tales, and Dominance and submission. Obsurd. What an odd idea...that a female could, within the confines of a deep sleep, or of an oppresive family life, or an existance of drudgery, find (or be found BY) her prince. Completely insane. A woman, granted, a thinking, empathetic, socially upright woman...who would DESIRE to be taken by a prince. Ludicrous. This same woman, heretoforth bound, not only by her very existance, but by the norms of society...removed from it, and exalted into a place of which she never dreamed. Bound and cherished, not by what she could do for the people around her, but by the beautiful additions she made to the new "oppressors" life. Then again, that's just my opinion. To think you thought I was talking about a faery tale. <smile>
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Karen
Unregistered User
(7/10/01 10:08:35 pm)
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long bow
This might be a long bow to draw, but maybe you could consider the domination/submission opposition in terms of the orality- literacy dichotomy. If you take into account the fact that many of the folklorists recording the better known tales are male and that many of their informants are female (as is the case with the Grimms, for instance), how does this colour the struggle for authority (or lack thereof) which takes place in the text? Could the domination/submission scenarios in these tales be commenting upon their transmission?
K.
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Kerrie
Registered User
(7/11/01 1:23:57 pm)
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Rumpelstiltskin
You may also wish to take a look at the tale of Rumpelstiltskin. The reason I am especially pointing out this tale out of all of the many tales is that I just read THE RUMPELSTILTSKIN PROBLEM by Vivian Vande Velde (HMCo), six new tales all based around the Rumpelstiltskin tale. She basically thought the tale made no sense- why does the miller say his daughter can spin straw to gold, why does the king believe him, why does she go along with it, etc. I think it might be a good one to follow up on.
Soft whispers and dandelion wishes,
Kerrie
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Laura
Registered User
(7/11/01 7:30:55 pm)
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Chiming in
>exploring how these stories also relate to arranged
>marriages.
I think this could have real promise. Were you thinking of arranged marriages in the lives of the listeners/tellers, or of marriages within the tales themselves? You could make a great case for both some well-known and many obscure tales as relating to arranged marriage -- particularly some Asian works.
Also, Karen's last comment, from the 10th, makes a _great_ point -- how the recording by straight-laced men altered tales with lengthy histories for both genders, and what that says about your theme of social control.
Laura
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OKCMUFFIN
Unregistered User
(7/12/01 3:42:23 am)
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food for thought
Good points guys (and gals).... seems like men were the ones in charge and the ones that recieved the education. "Control" was the issue I was raising after all wasnt it? I mean, it cant be that every woman enjoyed sitting home and ordering servants around or living like servants themselves, delivering a baby a year for life, and crocheting, can it? (I hate to crochet and hate housework about as much) Seems to me that you would have to start from the cradle with a girl with a mind. In many of the Beauty and the Beast tales anyway, Beauty admits to love of reading. Could it be that she welcomed the chance to appear submissive to family responsibility yet at the same time, just get the heck out of there?
An intersting question...... hmmmmm......
Just for kicks, the paper I am turning in today is dealing with Little Red Riding Hood with the wolf being Ted Bundy-type person....
I will be running in from class to see if anyone has other ideas for me...... (I have two re-writes due next Thursday, this board helps me a lot, Thanks everyone!)
Hugs to all of you helping me get and keep my "A"!
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Gregor9
Registered User
(7/12/01 6:48:18 am)
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Just to get myself in trouble
I'm sorry, but some of this seems to me just dime-store Freud. There's no question that at some point a lot of the raw material of the fairy tales were shanghied into a format to teach young girls their place in society, and no question what was being taught was submission.
However, the sources of many of these stories were women, and to the extent their tales were laced with submissive advice, they were in a sense telling the truth about what a woman could expect given the time and place. Their message is pretty strong, and deeply ingrained in the structure of the tales, else it wouldn't resonate for a modern society where conditions aren't quite the same. But I get nervous when people start extracting the themes from the context and laying them out for vivisection. I guess I feel if you're going to look at the dominant/submissive elements, then you should be looking at whether or not those elements were there from the beginning; if not, then when they got added, and finally why were they added; or contrarily, is there something inherent in male-female relationships being spoken of/to here. For instance, the difference between Perrault's versions of some stories and those of the women from whom he lifted the tales--you'll find different morals to the stories, different points being made. My recollection is that the women's endings are darker.
Greg
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Terri
Unregistered User
(7/22/01 9:15:34 am)
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dominance/submission
I have to agree with Greg.
Okcmuffin: If one is examining fairy tales themes of dominance and submission, then one has to look not only at the tales themselves (for you can *always* find a variant that proves or disproves a fixed theory, which is of course the problem with fixed theories on fairy tales), but at the context of those tales -- or rather, of whatever particular variants of those tales you're examing. Issues of dominance in the Italian 16th century version of Sleeping Beauty are rather different than those in the Grimms' German version in the 19th century or the American Disney version in the 20th, etc. etc. -- so to do justice to the story as it relates to dominance issues, you need to understand the various tellers and the times they lived in. Marina Warner's book From the "Beast to the Blonde" does this beautifully, and may be a good place to start for your paper. As for arranged marriages, I think a look at the salon tales of France would be useful, since many of the 17th century women salon writers seemed to be women running away from disastrous arranged marriages themselves; and they definitely had a *lot* to say on the subject of marriage, within the coded language of the stories. (D'Aulnoy, for instance, the most influential of the writers of the period (Perrault notwithstanding), was married off (sold off) by her father at age 15 to an abusive spouse 30 years older -- a marriage she was so desperate to get out of that she and her mother plotted to have the man executed for treason.) Jack Zipes' collection of French salon tales is a good one, with a thorough introduction and biographical material on the salon writers. There are also other good books on the subject -- I won't list them all here. If you're interested, you can find them in the Contes des Fees article on the Endicott site:
www.endicott-studio.com/forconte.html
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OKCMuffin
Unregistered User
(7/23/01 5:30:53 pm)
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thankya Terri
Thanks for the link, exploring it now. The paper is due Thursday. Have it mostly finished. Thanks for the great input to all of you, it has been a tremendous help.
Betty, aka OKCMuffin@aol.com
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