Feminist Re-reading of ‘Happily Ever After’s’

Thesis Statement:

With children as the target audience, the fairy tales project a world of magic, fantasy and wish fulfillment, even while effecting/succeeding in an early conditioning of both sexes into the expected roles of patriarchal norms.

Fairy tales are folk-lores that consist of characters like fairies, elves, dwarfs, witches or magical enchantments. Fairy tales are found in oral or literary forms. Due to its existence as an oral form, the history or the origination of this particular genre is difficult to trace. Fairy tales have existed for thousands of years. Many of today’s fairy tales have evolved over centuries-old stories that have appeared with variations and multiple cultures around the world. Fairy tales and stories derived from fairy-tales are still written today. The target audiences of this particular genre were not only the children but also the adults. Literary fairy tales appeared in works intended for adults, but in 19^th and 20^th century the fairy tales became a part of children’s literature.

The fairy tales chosen for this research are ‘Little-Snow White’, ‘The Beauty and The Beast’ and ‘Cinderella’. These stories have several sources and versions that resemble their respective culture of their origination. Like, the Grimm’s version of Cinderella is adapted from Charles Perrault’s (Italian writer) ‘Cinderella’. Therefore, the version chosen for this essay is of the Brothers Grimm which is very well known and more established today.

The two brothers Wilhelm and Ludwig Grimm were determined to preserve Germanic folk tales in the early 1800’s. They were highly influenced by Clemans Bretano and Schim von Arnim (German writers and novelists), they began collecting the folklore. Grimm Brothers then went on to publish Kinder-und Hausmarchen (Children’s and Household Tales) in 1812. This was first volume of 86 folk-tales. Two years later, second volume of 70 stories was brought out. The work was so well received that its six editions were subsequently printed. This book was the most popular and influential in German language. By 1818 the Grimms had also published two volumes of Deutsche Sagen, a collection of 585 German legends, and Altdeutsche Walder (Tales from Old German Forests). A year later they received honorary doctorates from the University of Marburg, and continued their studies and writing, resulting in several more publications. Their early work began in somewhat severe, harsh style; but the tales gradually got softer, sweeter and primly moral.

“The polishing, however, never rubbed the golden heart of the stories that are now lovingly read and treasured universally.”^[1]

Traditional fairy tales fuse morality with romantic fantasy in order to portray cultural ideals for human relationships. For many centuries, adolescent young girls have paid homage to these romantic visions aroused by the faith in fairy tales. Even in modern times, the disguised forms of fairy tales transmit romantic conventions through the medium of popular literature.

“Subconsciously, women may transfer from fairy tales into real life cultural norms which applaud passivity, dependency and self-sacrifice as a female’s cardinal virtues. Fairy tales perpetuate and propagate patriarchal norms by making female subordination seem a romantically desirable, indeed an inescapable fate.”^[2]

Feminist criticism and re-visioning of fairy tales is essential to expose the gender ideology that is propelled in the tales. Criticism has focused on the passivity of the young girls waiting to be rescued, the subtleties of equating beauty with goodness, the representation of evil step-mothers and the girl’s dependency on a prince. The main interest of Feminist Critique is to explore the extent of patriarchal ideology in literature and discrimination of women. The Feminist Critique challenged the ideas and conventions laid down in the canon or ‘Andro-Texts’ (writings by men). This sort of challenge offered the perspectives of literature being universal, objective in the portrayal of a character and literature being neutral.

According to the Feminist Critique, text is a product of a particular culture; they challenged the New Critics. According to the New Critics, the text had an objective approach and had nothing to do with the emotions of a reader or an author. For Feminist Critiques, literature is not completely universal interpretation. It challenges the canons. It questions literature, men’s writing and the portrayal of female characters by male writers. Woman were conditioned by reading ‘Andro-Texts’ that were “universal” and “humane”. Fairy tales were majorly written by men. They portrayed women as extremely feminine, subservient, soft and beautiful. For example, ‘Beauty’ in ‘The Beauty and the Beast’ which suggests something beautiful, was named because of her beauty, ‘Snow White’; her name has a lot to do with the fairness and her physical appearance. These little girls stereotyped woman’s character and modeled a ‘good’ behavior for them. This conditioned female readers to be ‘good’ and reinforced patriarchy and condemned woman to be ‘bad’ who did not conform.

In most fairy tales, the female plays the role of being naïve and always ends up getting into danger, and then man comes and saves her life. Woman can never really protect herself. In the story of “Little-Snow White”, it is observed that it is the huntsman who spares Snow White’s life. When she lands in the house of the dwarfs, they only let her in with one condition; if she were to keep the house, they would protect her. The roles of the gender are clearly stereotyped. The woman is supposed to cook, clean and tidy up everything while the man goes out to work and protect the woman. The role of the Queen is stereotyped too. She is given a typical female role of jealousy, self-centered and beauty loving. The Queen is obsessed with her own beauty and feels threatened by Snow White, hence she keeps on asking the same question to the magic mirror,

“Mirror, mirror upon the wall, who is the fairest of all?”^[3]

Snow White falls for the same trick lay down by her step-mother thrice, it reinforces the typecast of how woman are naïve and gullible. She questions herself before letting her evil mother in,

“Surely I might let this honest woman come in?”^[4]

This shows how woman are susceptible to fool and are incapable of doing what they are told to do. This fairy tale is a perfect example of how woman are labeled and portrayed in literature.

The Brothers Grimm version of “Snow White”, also present the male image as honorable, noble and the saviour. Every man in this story shows the trait of compassion and honor. The huntsmen saved her life by not killing her. The dwarfs serve a parental figure and remind her of what to do and what not to do. The good little dwarfs warned her to be careful to let no one into the house. They are also protecting her by doing so. Towards the end it is observed how a noble Prince rescues her from death.

The portrayal of Snow White’s character is good one which in foil to the Queen’s character. Her evil qualities portray what woman should not be. The over obsession resulted into bad consequence for her; therefore, it preaches the woman specifically that disobedience leads to punishment.

Fairy tales rarely display realistic circumstances. In “The Beauty and the Beast”, Beauty wants to take punishment for her father’s fault because he was doing it on her behalf. Beauty sacrifices herself for the good of her father. This is to teach young girls that it is their duty to do what they can do for their family even if it means sacrificing themselves. She constantly threatens the beast to either commit suicide, run away, but “The Beast” knows that she won’t go through these actions because she is “a woman of honor” who will remain because of her sense of obligation to her father. Beauty was not there to make the readers think, but to teach young girls that “being good” is more important. Also it is important to put values above intelligence to secure a happy marriage.

Fairy tales constantly reinforces ‘good’ behavior for women. In “Cinderella” the traditional feminine roles states that if a woman despite adversity and is grateful, kind, sweet, passive, submissive, non-rebellious she will attract a husband. The shoe that only fits Cinderella shows that only her character is worthy of being fit into the role of a prince’s wife. Cinderella is portrayed as the ‘good’ girl who deserves the just reward of a marriage will which remove her from her ill-situation.

Unlike Cinderella’s stepsisters, she is taught what is needed to achieve a good husband. If it were not for the stepmother’s demands, she would not have achieved those goals. She is obedient to orders, works with grace and silence. Her step sisters are falling behind the ideals that Cinderella possesses and conforms to.

The transformation of Cinderella from rags to riches involves enslavement of herself; it is not a blessing without bondage.

Cinderella’s stepsisters are so desperate for the hand of the prince that they are willing to cut and slice their bodies in order to meet their physical criteria. The price that both the sisters attempt to win is that of subjugation. In the original version of the Grimm Brothers fairy tale, the two sisters get their eyes plucked out as punishment. This shows how non-conformity to the norms leads to severe punishments. The forms of punishments were purposely made violently gruesome and severe to imbibe strong patriarchal norms into women. The punishments dealt with harming the physical beauty of a woman which is very important to her.

Women are portrayed as puppets with foolish desires, simple character with virtuous and superficial emotions to be controlled by men for their own good. In reality women are trapped within the cycle that has been set up by men so that they will always remain the puppeteer. Like it is observed in the story of “The Beauty and the Beast”, Beauty has to unwillingly submit herself to the beast. She gives up herself for her father. A socialist feministic reading of these stories reveals that the men always have the upper hand over the women. This idea can be observed in “Little Snow White”. All the male characters of the story have been the saviours for ‘poor little’ Snow White and it also propagates the idea how women cannot do without the protection of the men in the society. The roles carried out by the female are very domestic and submissive in nature. They ought to do jobs that are feminine. The chores carried out by Snow White, Cinderella and Beauty are domestic in nature. Hence, the power is concentrated in the hands of men always, while women are subjected to indirect slavery and dependency.

The Marxist reading of these stories shows that it is clearly evident how these women are enslaved, directly or indirectly. Snow White is a slave to the dwarfs, by offering her services. She knows that without her services dwarfs won’t let her stay in their house. Cinderella, too, is abused by her step mother and kept in confinement as she in a non-rebellion. Out of obligation, Beauty, too, has to surrender her wishes to an ugly looking beast. These voiceless women are exploited as they have no independence and class of their own. Their voluntary service was beneficial to the men. Hence, it is noticeable that women in these tales were exploited economically. The only outcome of such exploitation was marriage which appears to be an appropriate happy ending, but Marxist feminist critics won’t agree to this idea because marriage again leads to the exploitation of women on the basis of gender and class.

The tone of the story is oral and conversational. The stories start with a conventional way, that is, ‘Once upon a time…’ This style makes the reader believe it is a work of fiction and immediately the course of imagination is rendered. The language is kept simple and lucid for the better understanding of a child. The use of dialogues gives a dimension to the character and the story as well. In spite of such simplicity, we come across the binaries and disparity in the usage of language. The adjectives used for feminine beauty, female helplessness and her other qualities differ from the ones used for male characters. Words like prideful, brave, hard working, smart are barely seen to be used for females and words like naïve, decent, innocent are hardly used for males.

Rarely, one observes the use of symbols in these stories. The major symbol used by the writer is the name given to the characters. The idea of naming ‘Snow White’, ‘Beauty’ and ‘Cinderella’ links beauty to these characters and emphasizes the importance for women to be beautiful. The stories definitely mention the reason behind giving such names. Snow White’s mother desired a beautiful child with skin as white as snow, lips red as blood and hair dark as ebony. On the birth of the child, looking at her fairness, the child was named Snow White. ‘Beauty’ itself suggests beauty. Cinderella was given her name by her step mother. She was always covered with ‘cinders’. The word ‘ella’ comes from the Italian word ‘bella’ which means beautiful. Therefore the word was coined and named her Cinderella.

Snow White’s character can be compared to Eve who brought the fall of man by indulging herself into the temptation of evil. Similarly, Snow White too was tempted by a poison apple given by her evil step-mother which resulted in her death. The symbol of apple, equates the recurring mistakes that a woman can indulge in and it is only a woman who plays a part in committing a sin. One can draw comparison of how woman are unable to follow orders (by God in case of Eve and by dwarfs in case of Snow White) and their behavior can lead into a punishment (fall of man in case of Eve and Death in case of Snow White). This suggests women’s need to listen to men and obey their orders (God and dwarfs).

The Beast in “The Beauty and The Beast” represents men who are ugly, not only physically but also by their nature. The idea suggested is that no matter how ugly the man is, woman has to submit herself to him and accept him for what he is and that is the idea of an ideal woman. The rose symbolizes love, completion, perfection, beauty, female sex organs, and the heart. On the other hand, Thomas Mintz (geriatric pyschiatrist) views the rose as "representing the Beast's masculinity and Beauty's femininity, the thorns signifying the former, and the seeds and color of menses/defloration the latter.” ^[5]

The glass shoe worn by Cinderella, towards the end of the story, symbolizes her conformation to the patriarchy and submits herself to the society as an ideal woman. The wearing of the shoe indicates her binding into a marriage which later results into the conditioning of the woman. The beautiful and the attractive pair of shoes that fascinates every little girl is a symbol of patriarchy.

The liberation of the female psyche has not matured with the movements witnessed in the last few decades. The society still conforms to patriarchy and its norms very strongly. As a part of folk lore, fairy tales preserve rather than challenging patriarchy. Today, women are caught between the cultural set up and the feminist movement, between the preservation of values and adjustment with the same, between romantic fantasies and contemporary realities. The metamorphosis of women over the period of time has been gradual yet challenging. Fairy tales cannot be seen only as a source of entertainment, but also as a mode of inculcating patriarchal norms.