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clancygirl
Unregistered User
(4/27/05 3:28 pm)
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FT's with Active Heroine - Why not more popular?
I'm working on a research paper where I'm trying to uncover the reason(s) why fairy tales that feature an active female heroine aren't more popular.
The stuff I've found so far only suggests that editors/publishers choose not to include these types of stories in their books. Instead we're stuck reading the traditional "damsel in distress" fairy tales.
Anyone have any suggestions/ places to look for more info?
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Rosemary
Lake
Registered User
(4/27/05 5:25 pm)
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Re: FT's with Active Heroine - Why not more popular?
I think that premise needs some narrowing down. Which segment of the publishing industry does it apply to?
In quite a few markets (including D****y movies) active heroines are becoming standard. Many books have such a theme also; here are a few examples.
Not One Damsel in Distress: World Folktales for Strong Girls by Jane Yolen
Clever Gretchen (Amazon misspelled it :-) edited by Alison Lurie.
Fearless Girls, Wise Women, and Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World
The Woman in the Moon: And Other Tales of Forgotten Heroines
The Serpent Slayer and Other Stories of Strong Women
Folktales of Strong Women (Audio Cassette)
Tatterhood and Other Tales: Stories of Magic and Adventure
Cut from the Same Cloth: American Women of Myth, Legend and Tall Tale
Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales (Coretta Scott King Author)
The first volume of Bruce Lansky's Girls to the Rescue #1 has tales which omit the magic and magical helpers, as well as the romance, but keep much of the form of the folktale/fairytale.
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Caerdroia
Registered User
(4/28/05 9:51 am)
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Re: FT's with Active Heroine - Why not more popular?
Seconding these selections, especially The Serpent Slayer. 'Clever Marcella' from this book is one of our favourite Cinderella alternatives. I also love their illustration for "The Crone and the Djinn" (Folk tales with older women as heroines are among the rarest of all.)
To answer your question, I don't know why so many girls, or at least so many publishers with an eye toward the girls' market gravitate toward stories with more passive heroines or less conflict.
It is NOT that girls do not want or need strong role models, though a number of authors have suggested that it is because a girl has an easier time relating to a sympathetic male protagonist than a boy would to a sympathetic female one. (To me, this says something rather sad about the scope of role models available to boys in our culture.)
While PBs that emphasize active heroines (The Paper Bag Princess, The Princess Knight, Princesses are Not Quitters) are marketed towards girls, it seems like in the middle grades and beyond, action/adventure plots for girls become a tougher sell.
There is also pressure to publish items that are of "high interest" to boys, who are often unfairly assumed by teachers and publishers to have a more limited attention span, and to be at a lower reading level, than girls of the same age.
For this reason, tougher heroines in children's books, including folktale retellings, that are marketed to both genders tend to be relegated to supporting roles, even if they demonstrate as much or more competence than the lead (male) character. Fiona from Shrek and Hermione from Harry Potter are popular examples of this.
By contrast, the books that use softer themes and less aggressive heroines (The Cinderella/Beauty and the Beast types, as well as stories about Victorian-type fairies, like the whole 'Barbie's Fairytopia' thing) are the ones marketed exclusively to girls, and promoted as having a special understanding of girls' needs, as it is largely assumed that boys will have no interest in them.
That said, there are many folklore-based novels with strong
female MCs, on the market (After Hamelin, The Forestwife, etc.), but the constant promotion of the "Beauty" type as the definition of feminine makes it difficult for these stories to have much impact on the mass culture's concept of a "fairytale heroine".
Edited by: Caerdroia at: 4/28/05 9:58 am
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Caerdroia
Registered User
(4/28/05 9:54 am)
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Re: FT's with Active Heroine - Why not more popular?
*Deleting comment about "edit post" feature not displaying, because it's working for me now. Weird.*
Edited by: Caerdroia at: 4/28/05 9:57 am
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Rosemary
Lake
Registered User
(4/28/05 1:33 pm)
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Re: FT's with Active Heroine - Why not more popular?
In some marketing segments, there's a sort of weight of tradition effect. For an expensive production (high-quality animation or illustated book), investors tend to back stories with high name recognition, such as "Beauty and the Beast." Those stories became well known from Perrault et al, which puts the question of choice back somewhere around the 1700s-1800s.
Much has been written about socio-economic reasons for the choices Perrault and the Grimms and others of past generations made. But I wonder if there's a literary reason also, that made the passive-heroine stories more viable in British/US culture -- at least for expensive productions.
For some audiences, istm that a simple beautiful plot is more important than an active protagonist. I feel quite a difference between the mood of Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, etc -- and the mood of Jack and the Beanstalk, or the various Russian dragon-slayers. And between the prototype where a clever sceptical Red Riding Hood faked out the monster by saying she had to go to the bathroom -- and the later Perrault passive dreamlike version.
Maybe what tended to survive, in some segments, was passive-protagonist, dreamlike stories, and it was cultural (or psychological) factors that assigned those stories to female protagonists rather than to male.
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Jess
Unregistered User
(4/28/05 2:28 pm)
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I think too
that popularity begets popularity. In other words, a version of a tale becomes popular and so it is replicated by other author/illustrators more. The female is not always passive in these - one of the traditional Vasilla stories often used as the prototypical Baba Yaga tale has an active heroine. Obviously, Sherzade is "active" in a sense in saving not only herself, but others and is always included as a key component in every version of TAN. There is a fairly commonly told tale, the name eludes me at the moment, about a sister that saves her three brothers who stray on a journey to find a fountain of youth for thier father.
It would be interesting to see what tales really are published most often, but excluding those with Disney versions, i.e., Cinderella, LLRH, Beauty and the Beast and Little Mermaid, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, etc.
Jess
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Rosemary
Lake
Registered User
(4/28/05 4:24 pm)
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Re: I think too
One younger sister who rescues her brothers is in a variant of "water of life"; one version is in Lang's TAN, another in Calvino. Not as simple as the Perrault/Disney classics. Youngest as rescuer of elder siblings occurs in Northern European tales quite often with a male as youngest, in stories I'd call complicated.
"The Seven Ravens" is closer to the very simple sort of tale that Perrault made popular in British culture. That heroine begins with simple action (setting out to find her brothers), but it ends with her rather passively sewing and keeping quiet -- and a lovely tableau of the ravens coming to her rescue. Do you think the story would work with a male protagonist, even if he were crafting something other than a shirt? If he were making swords for the ravens, maybe ... especially if it also ended with a good swordfight when the ravens showed up for them. :-) But I think the progatonist would have to be much younger, and/or less athletic, than the brothers. If there weren't a contrast between passive/quiet service enabling seven active/strong rescuers, it would be a different story. As long as the rescuers are strong male fighters, a quiet young female protagonist is the greatest contrast.
(Hm, interesting if the seven rescuers were powerful females, grandmotherly witches or fairy godmothers, somehow transformed, perhaps by a spell they fumbled. The protagonist could be either sex, but I think there would need to be a contrast between young/awkward/needy and the powerful elegant rescurers. And it's becoming less simple.)
A passive male protagonist story is "The Twelve Dancing Princesses", and it's mostly wonderful tableaus. The motive and outcome aren't so nice and simple as in SW, Cin, etc, tho.
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DerekJ
Unregistered User
(4/28/05 4:37 pm)
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Re: FT's with Active Heroine - Why not more popular?
>>For this reason, tougher heroines in children's books, including folktale retellings, that are marketed to both genders tend to be relegated to supporting roles, even if they demonstrate as much or more competence than the lead (male) character. Fiona from Shrek and Hermione from Harry Potter are popular examples of this.<<
I take it you mean the movie, as, of course, there is
no humanoid "Princess Fiona" in William Steig's book-"Shrek"...
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Caerdroia
Registered User
(4/28/05 6:01 pm)
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Re: FT's with Active Heroine - Why not more popular?
Yep- I'm referencing the movie Fiona here. I think her image and characterization in the movie, while certainly not what was presented in the book, has actually had quite a positive influence on the pop-culture concept of the princess/fairytale heroine.
(I'm guessing that movie references are ok in this discussion. Frustratingly, movies have an unduly large impact on the public concept of what a fairytale is, and which tales are considered marketable, at a given time.)
On the topic of films, another active heroine who is now reaching a wider audience is Sophie from DWJ's Howl's Moving Castle. I've seen the preview of the film version, while some elements of the story have been altered quite a bit, I don't think that Sopie's toughness has been compromised in the transition to film.
While she is not an actual folktale heroine, Sophie has the some of the same attitude and resourcefulness that we admire in Vasilisa et al. If the film is as well distributed as the past Studio Ghibli projects have been, I think that it could open the door for more fantasy media with stronger, less glamorized female leads.
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