A Common Fairy Tale Motif, By Hansel And Gretel, Snow White, And The Almond Tree

     In the movie “Cinderella,” Cinderella is a maid to an evil stepmother and two very heartless and obnoxious stepsisters. The only reason that Cinderella still puts up with their orders is an example of the Behavioral perspective. The Behavioral Perspective puts emphasis on learning by experience with rewards and punishments. She knows that if she does not do the chores, she will be punished or thrown out of the household. She does not have anywhere to go because her mother and father have passed away. Because Cinderella is a genuinely kind human being who wishes to please, she usually does not stick up for herself against the others in the household. She is used to taking on the brunt of

It is interesting to note that when the Queen receives Snow White?s heart, she eats it. ?And [the heart] was salted and cooked and the wicked woman ate it up, thinking that there was an end of Snow White? (Grimm and Grimm 168). This is a remnant of a primitive cannibalistic belief that one receives power and characters through what is consumed. By devouring what she is told to be Snow White?s heart, the Queen believes she is capturing Snow White?s beauty and power within herself (Sale, 1979). These instances show that the Queen was driven to act by her envy of Snow White?s beauty, which was said to be more beautiful than her own. As she saw Snow White?s beauty as a threat to her own (and through it, her power), she saw the need to eliminate Snow White completely. In consuming Snow White?s heart not only is she celebrating her triumph over Snow White, but she is reinforcing her own beauty and vitality.

Throughout the story, the characterization is heavily influenced by gender roles and sexist stereotypes. The role of the stepmother and stepsisters is to solely use their power as a source of evil in order to bring down Cinderella, while Cinderella is depicted to be beautiful yet weak and

The author explains early on the initial absence of Cinderella’s mother proposes a sign of disempowerment. This in term changes the events of the story and leaves Cinderella bewildered with her stepmother and stepsister. Cinderella has the advantage that her mother is now a form of power through symbolism and is now a magical figure. The author explains that there are similarities between Cinderella and her mother and the stepdaughters and their mother because each child is trying to perform to impress ones maternal figure. This creates tension between Cinderella and the stepdaughters through competition for the ball to attend with a prince. The author explains firmly that “Cinderella is also a competitor, she plots and schemes, and she wins.

The Grimm Brothers version of Cinderella is a written down oral story that people passed down from generation to generation, meant to teach a lesson about piety and good behavior. Before the Grimm Brothers ever wrote it down, the story had been told several times by memory. It is thus not surprising that the descriptions of certain events in the story, such as the way Cinderella went to the Ball, are lacking in details. It is obvious that these parts of the story are unimportant to the overall message of the story. Instead, it focuses on the piety of Cinderella and the wickedness of the step-sisters. Through the events of the story, it becomes obvious that the goodness of Cinderella is justly rewarded, and that

On the other hand, young girls are shown the tendency for females to compete with one another rather than empower each other. Lady Tremaine teaches her daughters to eliminate girls that are better than them. For example, Lady Tremaine locks Cinderella in her room to prevent the Duke from fitting the shoe on her. The film is showing girls to fight tooth and claw with one another in order to get ahead. As a result, women are viewed as only being capable to move up in society by manipulating and betraying others. Women are not capable enough to win positions on their own. Furthermore, Lady Tremaine’s character serves to show how women are incapable of being the matriarch. For example, Lady Tremaine was incapable of handling the family 's wealth, which led to Cinderella becoming the servant for the home. For this reason, girls are taught that they need a male figure to handle the finances of the home, while they tend to the chores. The evil stepmother gender role has caused children since the film was made, to hold a deep-seated hate towards stepmothers.

The fairy tale Snow White is a story about two women. One, the evil stepmother, schemes

Whether Female antagonists within fairy tales are portrayed in a positive or negative light their roles within the stories are very important if not crucial to the development of the protagonists. Karen Rowe in “Feminist and fairy tales” explains the divide between different female antagonists. Female antagonist come in all forms, Faeries, ogresses, evil queens, and evil witches step mothers and or step sisters. For the most part these characters are often divided between good and evil, or light and dark, but what is often realized, is that there isn’t much of a combination between the two groups in which an antagonist falls in between both categories. In this essay I will lay out the thematic roles of these different types of female antagonist’s portrayed within fairy tales.

Fairy tales like Snow White and Cinderella both contain the struggle of good vs. evil. The struggle of good vs evil in these tales teaches us that good always prevails over evil. The fairy tales often times contain common elements that represent good and evil in the story. Both of these tales show the good and evil elements in similar forms. Both tales have the same outcomes where good prevails and they live happily ever after. These tales expose important concepts like good and bad for young readers. Tales such as these two can also teach young readers about good and bad things in life and ways of handling them.

The story of “Snow White” depicts what a beautiful girl has to endure from her evil stepmother, whose vanity and cruelty know no boundaries, is there more to the story though? The Brothers Grimm give us clues here and there, about how they both have similarities. Little by little, Snow White’s character can be seen changing from the pure character at the beginning of the story, to someone that if you look close resembles the evil Queen by the end of the story. Snow White’s and the evil stepmother both share some common traits such as vanity, envy, and at times no remorse among others; in which Snow White can be compared to the Queen.

She did not leave her house; therefore, she did not have many friends to she could talk to or rely on to help her. She mainly socialized with her stepmother and stepsisters. Her stepmother enforced her gender role because she would order Cinderella to cook, clean and get her daughters ready. In addition, her stepsisters constantly reminded Cinderella that beauty was everything and they demonstrated this when they got ready to go out. Same sex siblings influence the younger sibling’s choices and actions a lot (Gender & Gender Identity). If they were not same sex siblings, Cinderella would have engaged in activities that are more masculine (Gender Role Development). She developed a female gender role because she had the stereotypical role in which a woman cooks, clean, sews, sings and obeys authority. This gravely affected her because she did not know a man’s characteristics since she was never around them. If Cinderella were around men more, she would have picked up on the things they do. Since the men at that time portrayed strength and chivalry, Cinderella might have been strong enough to fight back her stepmother. Gender roles carry on as the individual get older and they do the same chores outside their home; therefore, Cinderella is likely to display the same role at her husband’s house. This might result in a problem because the Prince has his own servant and Cinderella will have to adjust to commanding other

With the power the step-mother has obtained, she utilizes it in order to oppress Cinderella as she is forced to become a maid within her own place of dwelling. For this reason, it causes Cinderella to become apart of an inferior level. Cinderella continues to stay passive and an inactive contributor within her life. Not resorting to the chance of rebelling or escaping the unfortunate situation. But even so, some may insist upon her attempting to break free as a form of escaping, yet she does not use it for instead she choses to wait in order to be saved. In view of that, Cinderella is presented as a goodhearted, but submissive character in need of rescuing. Above all, both the step-mother and Cinderella are seen as stereotypical characters. In fact the step-mother is showcased to hold great power, thus being a vision of dark evil ways. Much less, Cinderella and her character is not endowed with any power whatsoever, thus being looked upon as a good hearts and beautiful person inside and out. Accordingly this represents the message of female characters and power relationships between them. Being that those with power are seen as evil, while on the other hand those who have no power are meant to be good. Therefore a happy ending is give to those powerless, instead of female individuals with

In every story there is always a person who everybody considers a villain. A villain isn't always the least favorite character in a story, but in most cases they're the one character most readers dislike. The evil step mother in Cinderella, Lady Tremaine is one of the best villains of all time in my perspective. She's a villain who has always caught my attention. She once said, "You needn't call me that. Madam will do." (Perrault). The evil stepmother had always been cruel even with her own two daughters, and their father. She's a high maintenance kind of women.

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”.

In “Cinderella: Not So Morally Superior,” Elisabeth Panttaja makes a claim that the Grimms’ version of “Cinderella” provides reasons that Cinderella may not have been so fortunate due to her being “good and pious.” One main point that she discusses within the article is the mother/daughter relationship Cinderella shares with her deceased mother, in comparison to the mother/daughter relationship shared between the stepmother and stepsisters. Panttaja argues that the mothers in each relationship are both motivated by the same thing, “to ensure a future of power and prestige for their daughter” (Panttaja). Panttaja continues to identify how both mothers’ motives are similar, but her argument falters when she attempts to bring Cinderella’s