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DividedSelf
Registered User
(7/10/05 5:10 am)
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Wicked Stepfathers?
This feels like the edge of a minefield, and hope people might share their ideas.
There seem to be a number of explanations as to why there are so many wicked stepmothers in fairy tales, but (as far as I know) no wicked stepfathers. The most satisfying reasons I've found so far revolve around the stepmother/witch as a symbolic device with which to deal with negative feelings about the mother figure and/or nurturing instincts within oneself. But it also seems deeply tied up with sociological factors such as stepmother relations being a common problem when death in childbirth was frequent.
The main reason I'm asking this question is the apparent prevalence in modern children's fiction for wicked stepfathers. ("Prevalence" may be too strong a word, but I'm thinking of Mr Dursley in Harry Potter, Count Olaf in Lemony Snickett, Lord Azrael in the Philip Pullman trilogy.)
Presumably this has something to do with sociological factors too, but I'm wondering where this leaves us on the symbolic level. For instance, is it possible now for male figures in stories to stand for nurturing figures (positive or negative)? Or is a wicked stepfather representative of something else? If so, what's happened to the wicked stepmother?
Help - some light needed here.
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Writerpatrick
Registered User
(7/10/05 10:37 am)
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Re: Wicked Stepfathers?
I think it's more common for fathers to be absent than wicked. The wicked stepmother would be using the father for support, but a wicked stepfather could walk away from the family. There was also less expectation for men to show their emotions in the past.
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Helen
J Pilinovsky
Registered User
(7/10/05 8:59 pm)
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Re: Wicked Stepfathers?
I don't know if you saw this thread, which touched on wicked stepfathers somewhat ... it might provide some food for thought.
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(7/11/05 5:06 am)
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Re: Wicked Stepfathers?
Helen - thanks for that. I knew Donkeyskin, but isn't that quite unusual in placing evil directly onto the character of an actual parent figure? Or has a lot of bowdlerisation been involved in stepmother stories?
The three recent children's stories I mentioned, which all feature wicked stepfathers, happen to be some of the most hyped or most successful stories of the children's literature explosion. Is it a coincidence?
The structural divide in the roles of men and women in fairy tales must reflect their different roles in real life - either biologically or economically. Since economic gender roles have become blurred, would this be enough to blur the meaning of gender in modern stories?
For instance, do you think it's possible for a man to symbolise nurture, while a woman symbolises power? (A queen seeking to choose her successor from three daughters, etc...) Obviously, this can be done rationally, in a way that would make sense to an adult audience, but do you think such symbols could ever carry unconscious or pre-rational force, as could be immediately understood by a small child, for example?
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Heather
KT
Registered User
(7/11/05 1:15 pm)
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Re: Wicked Stepfathers?
DividedSelf, I'm not sure that the stories you mentioned actually fit into that shape-- as I recall, Mr. Dursley is Harry Potter's uncle, Lord Asriel is Lyra's uncle, and Count Olaf is the Baudelaire orphans' guardian, but not married to their mother. I was struck by this point at the Wiscon panel, and have been trying to think of "wicked stepfather" stories, without much success!
There are plenty of evil uncles, though, and in addition to the Donkeyskin example of a wicked father, another I came up with was the "misguided" father, who disbelieves his child's love, as in King Lear or "Like Meat Loves Salt" or "Cap o' Rushes."
Heather
Edited by: Heather KT at: 7/11/05 1:16 pm
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(7/11/05 5:17 pm)
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Re: Wicked Stepfathers?
Heather - God, yes, you're right... Shows you what a dustbin my mind is...
If the relevant variables are (1) the gender of the villain, (2) their family relationship to the hero/heroine, (3) their mariage relationship to a parent of the hero/heroine... there are examples of (1, male) and (2, paternal) but not (3, married to mother) - So I guess it's this marriage relation that's the tricky one and not directly to do with nurturing at all.
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catja1
Registered User
(7/18/05 1:54 am)
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Re: Wicked Stepfathers?
As Heather said, there are a zillion "wicked uncles"; perhaps this is the male version of the "wicked stepmother" displacement.
And then there's Hamlet: a wicked uncle who's ALSO a wicked stepfather.
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(7/18/05 12:52 pm)
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Re: Wicked Stepfathers?
I'm just interested as to why the asymmetry concerning evil parental figures.
I know a lot of explanations turn on economic divisions of labour and/or the bowdlerisations of some written versions. But in that case, why aren't we seeing more of a reversal in modern stories? The women's movement has done a lot to re-evaluate the roles of women in fairy tales, but shouldn't there an equivalent re-evaluation of men's roles? (Someone must have already done this, though, I'm guessing.)
I guess I tend to read the existence of a married couple in a story the way it is in real life - if it's an enduring relationship, there must be equilibrium. Therefore, if the mother/stepmother in Hansel and Gretel is evil, then so is the father. So if the stepmother is reassessed, so should the father...
(Aside: On the other hand, this story is strange because the father is ultimately the sole representative of nurturing parenthood... on the face of it, H&G annihilate (as opposed to transform) the witch/stepmother figure, and so the family has become symbolically unbalanced. The story tells how the children become more grown-up and self-sufficient, but there's no reason to suppose the father is any less likely to sell his kids out the very next time he's put under the slightest emotional pressure. In fact, you could argue (since the treasure is H&G's) that they have become parents to the father - hardly a desirable state of affairs.)
...I know I keep blathering on, and simply demonstrating how little I've read on the subject, but I'll get there eventually... Just confusedly jumping ahead of myself...
Edited by: DividedSelf at: 7/18/05 12:57 pm
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Dark Siren
Unregistered User
(7/18/05 1:27 pm)
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Re:Wicked Stepfathers?
Heather,can I point out that it turns out that Lord Asriel IS Lyra's father?
(Or have I just riuined that for you?Sorry!
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DerekJ
Unregistered User
(7/18/05 1:54 pm)
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Re:Wicked Stepfathers?
Given that my own opinions of Philip Pullman are a matter of public
record ( tinyurl.com/ajwbk
, tinyurl.com/cjkre
), let's just say that a "Luke..."-warm cliche' like (above
spoiler) COULDN'T ruin it for me--
Just a sad, slow, sinking feeling of "Why, why didn't
I see that one coming while he was at it...? "
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Lamplighter
Registered User
(7/20/05 4:26 am)
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Re: Legitimacy and The Scrappy-Doo Effect
Perhaps the modern influence of sexual politics clouds our appreciation of the importance of legitimacy on inheritance at the time when many fairy tales were being compiled?
"Wicked" step-mothers directly interceded in the line of inheritance in a way that step-fathers simply did not. An abandoned mother in many cases would have sparse claim on her errant husband's estate, and therefore the man she remarries would not block the inheritance of the powerless children due to there being none in the first place.
Also there is the question of de-sexualizing stories for children over time, epitomised in the paternity of Scrappy-Doo. Originally planned as Scooby's son, his lineage eventually skipped a place in the family tree to avoid certain unfortunate mental images. “Uncle”-Scoob can still exhibit paternal instincts within the narrative (if you’ll excuse the grandiose use of the term to refer to a cartoon), but is freed from direct fatherly duties.
In broader literature, the paternal-substitute, “uncle” figure is free to woo other women without offending the child, whilst similarly being excused from spousal duties towards the “mother” figure. In effect, the “father-by-proxy” figure is free to have his cake and eat it should the narrative so desire.
The de-sexualizing of children’s literature is a huge subject for debate, touching as it does on many taboos and uncomfortable questions on all sides. Just to take the example of Rapunzel would probably stretch us over many forum pages…
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(7/20/05 8:35 am)
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Re: Legitimacy and The Scrappy-Doo Effect
Lamplighter - Not happy with the introduction of that odious animal to this thread!
I still don't understand the asymmetry though. What do people feel about the suggestion that there's a biological element to this - that many fairy tale symbols may refer to the physical connection of child to mother through pregnancy, birth and breast feeding? It would explain the asymmetry and why it seems to be persistent, but also feels like a bit of an armoury for reactionary extrapolations...
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MusicOfTheNight
Unregistered User
(7/20/05 1:48 pm)
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Evil StepMen's absence
You have to remember that the versions we hear of fairy tales have mostly been recorded by males. This is a big factor in why so many woman in fairy tales are passive or evil and the men valiant or simply not there. And, in the end, is the Cinderella's stepmother the more evil for the abuse, or is Cinderella's father for allowing his wife to abuse his daughter?
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(7/20/05 3:34 pm)
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Re: Evil StepMen's absence
Not sure about this. There were female writers of the traditional tales - Mmes d'Aulnoy and de Villeneuve... Also, while I absolutely agree that the weak fathers in these tales are as culpable as their wives, the distinction between sins of commission and omission is still a distinction we want to make. The asymmetry is still not clear to me.
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DerekJ
Unregistered User
(7/20/05 3:38 pm)
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Re: Evil StepMen's absence
>> And, in the end, is the Cinderella's stepmother the more evil for the abuse, or is Cinderella's father for allowing his wife to abuse his daughter?<<
Well, you've got two versions:
One, in which the abuse didn't start until the father died also and the stepmother took over the management, and a few rare offshoots (usually the stage/movie adaptations) where the father has been teddy-bear reduced to being too blinded by marriage/contentment to see two feet past him...
...Either way, no "evil" motivation seems to be in play, sorry.
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(7/20/05 3:48 pm)
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Re: Wicked Stepfathers?
Well, that does depend on your definition of evil. Being too stupid and self-centered to pay attention to whether or not your daughter is turned into a slave counts as evil in my book.
Quote:
"Wicked" step-mothers directly interceded in the line of inheritance in a way that step-fathers simply did not. An abandoned mother in many cases would have sparse claim on her errant husband's estate, and therefore the man she remarries would not block the inheritance of the powerless children due to there being none in the first place.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. At least in pre-modern England, stepmothers were far more likely to be widows or single women than abandoned women, and widows in England had considerable property rights, and a well-off widow could make or break her children, not to mention any man she took a fancy too. That was not the case in Italy, I believe, though.
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DerekJ
Unregistered User
(7/20/05 4:25 pm)
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Re: Wicked Stepfathers?
Evil implies motivation (as I'm sure most of the "avengers" would wishfully hope there was)--
Sins-of-omission without motivation, or any power to affect the situation in the first place are simply classified as "Pathetic", in either sense of the word...
And Cindy is certainly not the only teenaged girl in history to have dads who "just don't her problems!"
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Helen
J Pilinovsky
Registered User
(7/20/05 7:05 pm)
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Re: Wicked Stepfathers?
Well, you know, I think that the Scarlet Witch (of the Avengers) would disagree ...
On a more serious note, though, sins of omission are no less pertinent then sins of commision (see, the Church): you would also do well to consider the earlier versions of the tale in which the father *does* take an active role in the degradation of his daughter (i.e., destroying the tree growing from her mother's grave in huis belief that she has chosen to hide there).
The ambiguity of the father, and the close relationship between this tale-type and its close cousin "Donkeyskin" (Antii Aarne, Stith Thompsen, Bruno Bettelheim, et al.) imply, to me at least, that father-figures *do* represent a definite threat to the health of their female offspring, and not through a "lack of understanding," but through a damaging sense that their daughters' circumstances matter only in how they reflect upon their own positions within the community ... their treatment within the privacy of the home is immaterial, but their potential public rebellions are stifled forthwith to avoid the appearance of a lack of paternal control.
So, "pathetic" or not ... consider the means as well as the ends, eh?
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(7/20/05 7:14 pm)
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Re: Wicked Stepfathers?
As I said, Derek, it depends upon your definition of evil. Yours
seems to put a priority upon motivation. Mine does not necessarily
consider that the be-all and end-all. Nor am I the only one to come
to that conclusion. Hannah
Arendt, for one, made a similar argument in her work on Eichmann.
Patheticness does not preclude evil, nor does evil preclude patheticness. A parent's allowing his or her child to be abused, neglected, and maltreated strikes me as evil whether or not the parent in question wakes up in the morning thinking "Today I'm going to laugh with glee as my daughter grovels in painful slavery" or not.
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Lamplighter
Registered User
(7/21/05 3:02 am)
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Asymmetry
These are interesting threads, and it would take some time to follow them all to their conclusion. To return to the question of asymmetry, I seem to recall Nancy Friday has developed similar ideas in an accessible way through the books “My Mother, My Self” and the more contemporary “Women on Top”. Much of this author’s work reflects on fantasy’s relationship with public persona, albeit personal fantasy as opposed to story telling.
In (most likely over-simplistic) summary (and please do correct me if necessary), one of Friday’s most important themes surrounds the nature and effect of a mother’s approval of her daughter’s actions. This seemingly innocuous element of the personal relationship may cause much strife later in life when the daughter finds herself interacting with the wider world. Far from proposing a “one idea” solution, or leaning on modern Freud, Friday goes on to explore examples where grown women seek to replace this approval relationship, and the effects on their fantasy lives – and consequently their public lives – that result from this displacement.
She probably has a website. Err… www.nancyfriday.com Well, there we go then, she can explain it herself.
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(7/21/05 4:19 am)
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Re: Asymmetry
DerekJ - Defining evil in terms of motivation is riddled with problems. How do you account for actions by someone intending to do harm, but which turn out to be good? Conversely, how do you account for someone sincerely believing they're doing good, but are actually doing terrible harm? - E.g. equate morality with motivation and you have a hard job not condoning the various manifestations of "moral cleansing" - the serial killer, the idealistic dictator, the suicide bomber...
In any case, I'm not sure how you can argue the father's actions aren't motivated. An unmotivated deed is essentially an accident. Where someone fails to fulfil an obligation, or where love is not accompanied by care, there is always a motivation, though buried beneath layers of denial, no doubt.
Again, in any stable family unit where a child is suffering, all parents/parental figures are equally implicated in my view. A bad parent of either sex is a threat to the health of a child of either sex, which is a lot to do with why this question of asymmetry bothers me.
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