A CRITIQUE OF THE SNOW CHILD, TAKEN FROM ANGELA CARTER’S THE BLOODY CHAMBER.

When examining Little Snow White from a post-colonial perspective, it becomes clear that a class system must remain true in every aspect of life – including appearance. It is evident in the strict hierarchy displayed by the queen’s obsession with her beauty, the huntsman’s slave like practices, and the dwarfs’ rule over Snow White.

As a child, I was told fairytales such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs every night before I went to sleep. Fairytales are an adventurous way to expand a child’s imagination and open their eyes to experience a new perspective. Modernizations of fairytales typically relate to a specific audience, such as adolescence, and put a contemporary spin on the old-aged tale. Instead of using whimsical themes heavily centered in nature, the contemporary poems connect with the reader in a more realistic everyday scenario. Also, many modernizations are written in poetic form to help reconstruct a flow in the piece and to develop or sometimes completely change the meaning from that of the original fairytale. Comparing Grimm’s Fairytale Snow White

In The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey, an Alaskan setting in the 1920’s contributes to the atmosphere of isolation, harsh conditions, and quiet.

The Snow Child, another short story within The Bloody Chamber, is ambiguous. In this small story there are two victims, both of them women, in this case the bloody chamber could relate to the hole in the snow that the countess and count ride past, or it could relate to the vagina and virginity of the girl. This expresses how the role of the women within the gothic genre is ultimately as victims, sometimes through their naivety and innocence and sometimes through male authority. The count sees both of the bloody chambers present as objects for his pleasure, therefore

While Psychoanalysis has provided many psychological breakthroughs in the field of mental health, it has also created great issue in relation to gender equality. Freud’s Psychoanalytic theory has contributed to the solidification of female oppression, and to the inferior status of women in the twentieth century. Psychoanalysis had become so intwined into the constructs of a male dominated society that it creates further barriers in attempts for gender equality. While many people have established their point of view through scholarly journals or scientific writings, Angela Carter uses an artistic approach by contesting Freud’s psychoanalytic theory in her

Few people can grow up within today's society without knowing the tale of Snow White. From the Grimm Brothers to Disney, it has been told and retold to children throughout the ages. However, what is often overlooked are the true meanings within the story. Fairytales typically have underlying messages that can be found written between the lines, generally in terms of the key themes. Snow White discusses the themes of envy and beauty, and shows how humans' obsessions can lead to their own downfall as well as the harm of others. When focusing on the relationship between Snow White and her step-mother the Queen, it is evident that the combination of these two themes results in a power struggle in which beauty

Within the collection of fairy tales, one of the most prominent is Snow White. The tale conjured up by the Brothers Grimm keeps to what one would expect with fairytale stereotypes. However it also plays the part of ancient myths of Aphrodite. The fairytale is simplistic in reasoning, and holds to the ancient goddess’s petty reasoning. Thus, other authors have taken it upon themselves to rewrite it with different plots, once such author being Angela Carter. In her story, The Snow Child, the queen is transformed into a Hera figure. This change rewrites the story’s meaning as well as one’s view point on the villain.

Snow White is a fairy-tale known by many generations; it is a beloved Disney movie, and a princess favoured by many kids. But did you know the fairy-tale was made to teach young children, especially little girls, their duties in life? It also values beauty over knowledge, portrays women to be naive and incompetent, and assumes that women cannot understand anything other than common household chores. Throughout this criticism, I will be using the feminist lens to analyze the fairy-tale, Snow White, through the perspective of a feminist.

The old version of Snow White contains dark and violent stories and harsh elements that were not proper for kids. However, the Snow White that is familiar today is very friendly and well adapted for children. The original story of Snow White is written by the Grimm Brothers in the 19th century at German. In several of the Grimms’ stories, it contains various odd scenes and violent parts. According to the Disney version of Snow White the queen tells the huntsmen to bring the heart of Snow in order to check whether she is dead or not. However, in the Grimm version of Snow White, the queen, which is the witch, sells a corset to Snow and makes her try on the corset and squeeze her by tightening it. Also, in the original version, it is not the prince’s

The Grimm brothers, in their short story, “Hansel and Gretel”, illuminate the idea of vulnerability, innocence, and determination through two children’s eyes, and how in time, they become who they need to be in order to overcome their obstacle. The two words, “vulnerability” and “innocence” are known adjectives when one thinks of a child, thus fitting almost perfectly when describing Hansel and Gretel. With these natural childlike traits instilled within the two, they have no choice but to become dependent upon one another. These two brothers have constructed a great deal of imagery throughout the story which represents the innocence of a child. The authors develop symbolism throughout the story which in return, helps support my thesis. Unless one takes a closer look within the text, they just might overlook what it actually represents. There is a great use of diction throughout this short story which simply helps describe the two children, Hansel and Gretel. “The white pebbles…glistening like silver coins” is a complete depiction of a young child (Grimm 15). White as we all know represents purity, and the comparison of the pebbles to silver coins creates represents a childlike view of excitement and innocence. This excitement and vivid imagination of Hansel occurs just in time after overhearing the parents plan. There’s a white(purity) cat that the boy mentions when leaving home. Both objects are white, the pebbles and the cat. These two things also represent hope that the

In her transformation of the well-known fable "Little Red Riding Hood," Angela Carter plays upon the reader's familiarity. By echoing elements of the allegory intended to scare and thus caution young girls, she evokes preconceptions and stereotypes about gender roles. In the traditional tale, Red sticks to "the path," but needs to be rescued from the threatening wolf by a hunter or "woodsman." Carter retells the story with a modern perspective on women. By using fantasy metaphorically and hyperbolically, she can poignantly convey her unorthodox and underlying messages.

When imaging the ideal audience of fairytales, children are quick to come to mind, although, our perception of Little Red Riding Hood as an innocent fable is far from the truth. Alternatively, the origins of this story are derived from Italo Calvino’s “The False Grandmother”, a story immersed in symbolism and metaphorical symbols intended strictly for a mature audience. The preceding tale was “Little Red Cap “written by Charles Perrault and then later the “Little Red Riding” written by the Brothers Grimm. Although the details of these tales vary, they all maintain similar storylines. The stories revolve around the young female character Little Red Riding Hood who is sent off on a mission to bring her grandmother a basket of goods. During her adventure she encounters a wolf who engages in a hot pursuit to eat both the Grandmother and Little Red Riding Hood, only to succeed in the earlier rendition of the story. In this essay I will prove that when the Grimm’s Brothers and Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood stories are critically analyzed, it becomes evident that they are inappropriate tales for children as they exemplify the consequences of a minor transgression by Little Red Riding Hood as being the misleading cause of the violence and seduction that occurs thereafter.

In Carol Ann Duffy’s “Little Red Cap,” taken from her collection The Worlds Wife, Duffy incorporates her feminist views on life to help develop Red-Cap’s character into an independent woman. In her work, Duffy intends to illuminate for the audience that woman are more powerful than they are perceived by society. In the poem, she writes about a young girl at the peak of her childhood, who is about to enter into the next phase of her life. The young, inexperienced girl describes the beginning of her transformation into adulthood after losing her innocence to “The Wolf.” The loss of her innocence contributes to the realization that she no longer needs an old, no good wolf. She gains the courage and reflects on how her life changes dramatically after her departure from the wolf. The poem “Little Red-Cap," written in The World’s Wife, closely relates to certain aspects of the original fairy tales written by The Grimm Brother and Charles Perrault. Duffy’s version of “Little Red Cap” is a rewrite of the original fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood.” Duffy incorporates her strong feminist views by allowing Red-Cap to initiate her encounter with the wolf and to use him for gaining knowledge for her career and sexual desires. These aspects contribute to the development of Red-Cap’s character into a more independent woman to contradict the oppression of women in the past and present generations, and allowing her to offer suggestions for women in the future.

Despite gender, living conditions or cultural backgrounds most people grow up reading or hearing stories of heroism and damsel in distress scenarios. Anne Sexton turns stereotypes on their head in her satirical poems of classic fairy tales, including Snow White and The Seven Dwarves and Cinderella. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves tells the tale of a young princess with hair as black as coal and skin as pale as snow, whose life is thrown into turmoil at the hands of her overbearing stepmother. Cinderella tells the story of a young girl who she spends her life is yearning for the prince’s ball, and similar to Snow White, Cinderella’s stepmother is influencing her life, however she is a positive character throughout the story. This sheds light on the stepmother in Snow White’s piece as despite the fact that Snow White’s stepmother clearly does inherently evil things, a re-reading demands a re-examination of why. It is throughout these tales’ where stepmothers are only trying to protect their children from the world around them, however in Snow White an outside motive, the beauty provided by the mirror and the pride manifested by poison, creates a barrier between the queen and her stepdaughter, thus giving her the title “Evil”.

When someone mentions the name “Cinderella”, the first thing that usually comes to our minds is the fairytale in which the fair maiden who works so hard yet it treated so poorly gains her “fairytale ending” with a wave of a magic wand. However, the fairytale of Cinderella written by the Grimm Brothers has multiple differences in plot from the fairytale we all usually think of. The plot of the Cinderella written by the Grimm Brothers, written in 1812, is that a young female’s mother passes away early in the story, departing with the message to Cinderella to remain “pious and good”. Cinderella remained true to this message given to her by her mother, and she showed this in her work ethic. Because Cinderella had remained pious and good, her mother, in return, watched over her in the form of the birds above her grave that gave Cinderella help and material things that she needed. In the end, Cinderella has her “happily ever after”, for when the prince held a festival to find a new bride, she was chosen due to her insurmountable beauty. The feminist lens critiques how females are commonly represented in texts, and how insufficient these representations are as a categorizing device. These representations of women often include them being passive and emotional—staying back while the men do the work. Cinderella relates to the feminist lens because she fits into the typical representations of women created by men. Feminist criticism is important to recognize because women are often falsely represented as helpless, thus needing a man to come to their rescue. It is common in literature to see helpless women, crying and begging for help instead of being able to work out their own problems and hardships. Others, however, may believe that it is still important to uphold the fundamentals of the feminist lens because it keeps the man in power, which they say is important in keeping the man the head of the household. Cinderella thoroughly represents the feminist lens because it shows how women in literature uphold the representations of passive and emotional, created by the man.