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Author
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Comment
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leah
Unregistered User
(8/6/02 11:45:24 am)
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fairy tale heroins
I thought that most fairy tales have women doing little, but it seems that that is not true. In cinderella, beauty and the beast, the seven swans, the three little gnomes in the forest, and brother and sister, the girls do more than the boys. All the boys do is come in at the end and marry the girl. Is this true of most fairy tales, of just these.
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Gregor9
Registered User
(8/6/02 12:53:10 pm)
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Re: fairy tale heroins
Leah,
I don't think there is a "most" fairy tales position (although for all I know someone else has tallied them up and made a case for one particular story type over all others). The nature of the tale depends a lot upon what message is being conveyed, what life-lesson is being learned, who the individual in the tale is, who is going to grow, and why it was written at all--what if any agenda the author might have had. There are plenty of tales with clever women, and plenty with clever boys, and quite a few with clever animals for that matter. And there are as many of both sexes who are cruel, evil, stupid. Many of the tales do end with that "happily ever after" marriage, which is perhaps reflective more of the world they came from than anything else. In many, the woman is learning something, growing, discovering, and the marriage to the boy who, as you say, comes in at the last moment just to marry her, is her reward. But there are other tales where marriage isn't a reward at all.
There are related tales, too, where the author's opinion shapes the outcome: There's Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard", where the heroine is incapable of rescuing herself and must depend on both a sister and her brothers to come, kill the fiend, and save her. Then there's "Fitcher's Bird", which is simply a variation of Bluebeard, where the heroine is quite capable of tricking the villain and saving herself and her sisters. Perrault's tale reflects his own attitude toward women and marriage and female submission to their husbands--not the message in the more archetypal "Fitcher's Bird."
There are many books that present thematic overviews of fairy tales--many have been mentioned elsewhere on this site, and would give you a great deal more material to work with than the little I've just said.
Greg
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Jess
Unregistered User
(8/7/02 6:36:10 am)
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Two cents
Leah,
I agree with Greg, but if you want some interesting tales - some with more balance, some with disasterous endings, some with men doing more, some with women doing more - don't ignore the Arabian Nights. Then what is interesting is to go find the parallel tale in the French Salon tradition. You can compare the roles of the men and women in the stories and it will tell you much about the culture and the times in which the tales were transcribed (written). I find interesting, for example, that most of the "forbidden door" tales ala Bluebeard involve male characters opening the forbidden door. Often there is no rescue, just consequences.
Jess
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