Fairy Tales:
A Perpetuation of Patriarchy
Amanda Kusnick
Seminar 1
5/12/16
Final Research Paper
Fairy tales are predominantly associated with the early developmental stages of human education, the period when the human mind is more impressionable than at any other point in juvenile or adolescent development. Classic fairy tales are harmful on the development of young women and men for many reasons that many don’t consider when recounting the stories. Parents use fairy tales to teach children basic morals and character values, but the stories also teach more subtle lessons about gender equality. The seemingly innocent stories subtly continue centuries of patriarchy’s influence on the human demographic with the most potential for altering a society opposed to change.
The primary faults found in fairy tales are evident in the stories “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood,” “Vasilisa the Beautiful,” and “Little Snow White.” The stories are, respectively, adapted by Charles Perrault, Alexander Afanasyev, and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Each of these stories is invaluable for analyzing gender inequality and its presence in the genre. Perrault’s story is one of the most well known fairy tales with a female protagonist and its ability to affect gender bias is often overlooked by parents. Afanasyev provides a different perspective on fairy tales’ power to impact gender bias because his story is a less known fairy tale in American culture and does not include a strong male character. Snow White is a definitive fairy tale that demonstrates the conventional role of women in patriarchal society. Three main questions are raised when analyzing these stories and considering the implications for gender roles. Why do female protagonists appear reliant on external solutions for their problems while perpetually embodying society’s ideal womanly virtues? The male characters often have relatively little trouble overcoming the central obstacles in fairy tales; is this justifiable? Lastly, why are the only females strong enough to try to solve their own problems predominantly evil? Understanding the implications of each of these questions begins to clarify the issues of gender equality present in fairy tales as a genre.
The most apparently damaging facet of fairy tales is outlined by the first question. Why would an intelligent society wish to perpetuate the concept that an ideal woman should need anyone else to overcome her own obstacles? “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood” is the most definitive example of a female protagonist being trapped in a passive role. At her birth, good fairies gift her with beauty, dance, goodness, grace, song, and wit. She is then kept in ignorance by her parents under the guise of safety due to a curse from the evil fairy. The scenario is almost directly a metaphor for society’s propensity to pedestalize its concept of an ideal woman. Modern versions of the story often end with Prince Charming rescuing Sleeping Beauty, but Perrault’s version continues on after their secret marriage. After relocating to his kingdom to ascend to the throne, Prince leaves Beauty and their two children to attend to his kingly duties. This situation paints an all too common picture of the trends that have surrounded the institution of marriage for centuries. Beauty is left to be a housewife and mother in a foreign kingdom. She is alone at the mercy of the new king’s mother who attempts to eat both her and the children. The only option given to Beauty is to sit and wait for the return of the king, thus fulfilling a life of passive action and helplessness.
“Little Snow White” was born after her mother wished for a daughter embodying the qualities she found most beautiful: the pureness of snow, the contrast of darkness, and the brightness of blood. The good mother dies and the father remarries a cruel woman, a common motif that resurfaces repeatedly in fairy tales. After Snow White’s stepmother has her removed from the kingdom, only her beauty saves her from death. The huntsman is unable to bring himself to harm something he sees as perfect. The dwarves take her in because a woman would have been unable to survive the wilderness alone, but allow her to stay only on the condition that she does all of their housework. They warn her to stay hidden while they are out because she won’t be able to protect herself from danger. After learning Snow is still alive, her stepmother tries to kill her three times before succeeding in putting her into a perpetual state of sleep. Snow is shown to be unrealistically trusting, kind, and innocent after each attempt on her life and doesn’t appear to learn anything. The story confirms the dwarves’ assertion that Snow cannot protect herself, but also further demonstrates how society has long been unwilling to accept a strong female.
The last story, “Vasilisa the Beautiful,” demonstrates a different approach to the same idea of female protagonists being helpless, but does so without the presence of any male character to save the protagonist. Vasilisa is the daughter of a merchant and his wife; she is said to be beautiful from birth. The mother is known to be ailing and bestows a blessing upon Vasilisa before she passes. The blessing is a doll, which cements the image of Vasilisa as a stereotypical young girl. After the death of her mother and her father’s remarriage, the father leaves. Vasilisa’s stepmother and stepsisters are envious of her beauty and treat her like a slave. The doll helps Vasilisa and does the chores tasked to her every night while the family is sleeping. Yet again, the protagonist needs assistance with her problems. Her stepmother eventually sends her to the hut of Baba Yaga, a witch, to seek fire to light and warm their cottage. Baba Yaga tasks Vasilisa with impossible ordeals, such as separating poppy seeds from grains of sand, but the doll helps her while the witch is out. The girl succeeds in bringing fire back to her cottage and the fire destroys the antagonists. Vasilisa’s problems are resolved without her taking any direct action. While the story takes a different path, the protagonist is still unable to escape her suffering by her own strength. The merchant returns home, ignorant of everything his daughter experienced, and settles into a happy life with her without any trouble or effort on his part.
The men present in the other stories also find success with little to no opposition. The prince in Perrault’s tale fully embodies the lack of challenge male protagonists encounter in fairy tales. The prince appears for the first time one-hundred years after Beauty’s parents put the entire kingdom to sleep and surrounded the castle with a sea of thorns and briars. Upon seeing a castle hidden in the thicket, the prince decides to explore and try to reach it based on curiosity. The plants part before him like the parting of the red sea, almost a divine intervention. He reaches the castle without incident or effort and just happens to show up as the spell of stasis over the kingdom is ending. There is no opposition to the prince achieving his goals and he finds a queen based upon a whim. When he eventually brings his wife and daughters to his newly inherited kingdom, he leaves. He comes back to find that his queen has been terrorized by his mother, the ogress, and simply kills her without deliberation because she shows herself to be ambitious beyond her given station. The prince resolves Beauty’s problem without any real trouble and is relatively unaffected.
The prince in the Grimm brother’s tale equally demonstrates a male protagonist’s lack of challenge in the genre. He doesn’t appear until almost the end of the story and falls in love with Snow White for her beauty almost instantly upon seeing her in the glass coffin. He decides he wants to take her with him and the dwarves make no move to stop him. He doesn’t even carry the coffin himself, he has his servants carry it for him. When one of them trips, the coffin falls and the impact dislodges the poisoned apple from Snow’s throat allowing her to regain consciousness. All he has to do is declare his love and they’re married, indicating that a woman’s proper station in life is to be saved and become a wife. This instance exemplifies the statement made by Steven Swann Jones in his work The Fairy Tale: The Magic Mirror of Imagination: “the world views of these tales is quite narrow: marriage is the only appropriate option available to the heroine” (Jones 1995, p. 82-83). Snow’s stepmother attends their wedding and is punished by dancing in a pair of hot iron shoes until dead. The prince isn’t even questioned when committing an act which should be appalling and thus indicates an internal character who is undeserving of sympathy or a happy life. He shows himself to be every bit as cruel as the antagonists present in fairy tales, but he is lauded for his actions as a great king.
One of the most common tenets of fairy tales is the presence of an evil queen or stepmother that embodies qualities implied to be negative in women. These characters are often beautiful in their own right, but that beauty is tainted by vanity and pride. Additionally, the women characterized as evil display cruelty, selfishness, a competitive spirit, and spite. Many of these qualities are, arguably, essential qualities for finding success in a patriarchal society that is unwilling to compromise or accept an authoritative woman. In Fairy Tales and Society, Torborg Lundell declares, “…folklore may reflect ideals of female independence and strength” (Bottigheimer 1986, p. 149-150). The characters occupying this role embody Lundell’s assertion and there are abundant parallels between these characters in fairy tales. The solution is almost unilaterally the destruction of the evil character in the story.
Perrault’s tale’s first version of this character is the evil fairy who curses Beauty. She is angry with the seven good fairies and the kingdom for not inviting her to the birth of the young princess and curses the princess to spite the others. Realistically the only reason the fairy is viewed as evil is because she wanted more than to be subservient to the needs of others, which the good fairies were happy to accept as their role. Jones echoes this concept by declaring that a woman’s, “‘natural’ and appropriate role is to be subservient to and guided by male authority. When they act on their own, they are perceived as being self-serving and destructive” (Jones 1995, p. 65). The evil fairy fades from the story after her initial curse and her role is taken over by the prince’s mother, the ogress. The ogress feels threatened in her station by the introduction of her son’s new wife, whom he kept a secret. His mother’s reaction is extreme, but also understandable. Regardless, she is simply destroyed without an attempt at understanding when the new king returns home.
Snow White’s stepmother occupies the same role in the Grimm fairy tale. Jealousy of Snow’s beauty is the queen’s initial motivation for attempting to have her killed. The queen then shows herself to be resourceful and clever when she utilizes magic in her later attempts to kill her stepdaughter. Her vanity and competitive spirit prove to be her downfall because she is unable to accept the existence of anyone who might threaten her position as queen. She was a hard woman out of necessity and did only what she deemed necessary to hold onto everything for which she’d worked, but her initial envy began her fall. She was not a man; nothing was given to her and that was the obstacle that proved too much for her to overcome.
Afanasyev’s main antagonist, Vasilisa’s stepmother, also displays a great degree of jealousy. Her cruelty towards Vasilisa stems from her jealousy and forms the central conflict of the story. Vasilisa’s stepsisters demonstrate the main difference between this story and “Little Snow White.” The daughters heavily mirror their mother and display many of her flaws in the story. While the mother victimizes them as heavily as she victimizes Vasilisa, they do not have the same chances as their stepsister. They would have grown into strong and assertive women had Vasilisa not brought the flame which destroys them along with their mother, but they pay for their mother’s envy. Vasilisa’s stepsisters demonstrate how fragile and impressionable young minds are and warn against the danger of allowing unregulated influences to make our youth victims of the society that raises them.
Classic fairy tales are an outdated method of instructing children because the harmful implications for gender equality outweigh the value of the moral lessons present throughout the genre. The common motif of beautiful women being born from kind-hearted, motherly women is as damaging as the implied helplessness of women, the advantage of being born a man, or the threat of a strong and independent woman. This motif suggests that a woman is, above all else, meant to be a mother and that is what makes her a good woman. The emphasis on a beautiful woman being born of a good woman is contrasted with Perrault’s Prince Charming being born of an ogress.
While a woman must come from purity to remain pure, a man is pure and good simply because he is a man. Men are shown to be infallible, even when deceptive or cruel or clumsy, and successful beyond their means in impossible endeavors. Time and again, the genre paints a picture of life being unrealistically difficult for women while laughably simple for men. Even when a woman is shown to be strong, she is depicted as evil. This character type’s depiction in fairy tales is a result of a patriarchal society’s fear of a strong woman upsetting the balance of power that has characterized life in a majority of anthropocentric existence. The role of these characters is one of the greatest examples of hyperbole present in literature and demonstrates an ideology almost as twisted as the characters fairy tales portray as evil. There is no simple remedy for the complex problems ingrained in the fairy tale genre. There must be a retelling of the stories through a lens inspiring gender equality for the genre to remain a useful tool for the moral instruction of children.
Bibliography
Jones, Steven Swann. 1995. The Fairy Tale: The Magic Mirror of Imagination. New York: Twayne.
(Jones 1995, 65, 82-83)
Bottigheimer, Ruth B. 1986. Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion, and Paradigm. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania.
(Bottigheimer 1986, p. 149-150)
Perrault, Charles. 1697. The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood. France.
(Perrault 1697)
Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm. 1812. Little Snow White. Germany.
(Grimm & Grimm 1812)
Afanasyev, Alexander. 1855. Vasilisa the Beautiful. Russia.
(Afanasyev 1855)
