Andrea Dworkin's Onceuponatime: The Roles

Anne Sexton was a junior-college dropout who, inspired by emotional distress, became a poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize as well as three honorary doctorates. Her poems usually dealt with intensely personal, often feminist, subject matter due to her tortured relationships with gender roles and the place of women in society. The movies, women’s magazines and even some women’s schools supported the notion that decent women took naturally to homemaking and mothering (Schulman). Like others of her generation, Sexton was frustrated by this fixed feminine role society was encouraging. Her poem “Cinderella” is an example of her views, and it also introduces a new topic of how out of touch with reality fairy tales often are. In “Cinderella”, Anne Sexton uses tone and symbolism to portray her attitude towards traditional gender roles and the unrealistic life of fairy tales.

Children often learn about their society’s ideals of love and relationships from fairy tales. Told from a female perspective, the poem Puce Fairy Book by Alice Major challenges and disproves the unfeasible and degrading expectations that women are held to, specifically by men in relationships. The motivation of the speaker, addressing a male counterpart, is to say that she does not care for other’s opinions of her faults and does not desire such unaccepting people in her life. Major’s use of fairy tale allusions and metaphors play an important role in establishing the central message that is the “perfect” ideological image that society has created for women to conform to are unrealistic and

Andrea Dworkin explains women are characterized by beauty, passivity, and innocence. She argues that fairy tales creates stereotypic roles.

“Oh, fairytales, where desperate, naïve girls sacrifice everything for their so-called prince charming”. The realities of these childhood classics are controversial, sexist, and dark, yet, it’s also adored by millions of young girls around the world. Cinderella, an often sugar-coated story, is a great example on how sexism and gender stereotypes prevail in literature. The Grimm Brothers touch on a variety of devices, from characterization to symbolism, all revealing the inequality in not only fictional literature but our real-life society as well. A feminist literary critic will interpret these controversial themes and apply their beliefs of equal rights into the study of the Grimm Brother’s Cinderella.

Janie, the main character, marries three times throughout the novel. Her marriages do not contain unconditional love and because of this, do not last. Her first husband, Joe Starks, belittles Janie as a person including her intellect. "Somebody got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows. I god, they sho don’t think none theirselves." (119). Joe shows his dominance over Janie by being the breadwinner in the relationship. Janie’s next marriage is with a man named Joe Starks. He tries to show his dominance over Janie by controlling her. “Janie! "Come help me move dis manure pile befo’ de sun gits hot. You don’t take a bit of interest in dis place. ‘Tain’t no use in foolin’ round in dat kitchen all day long…" (42). Joe belittles the

In marriage, a man should possess certain qualities in order to be a good husband, and he must provide both financial, and personal support. In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, characters Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake all have some of these qualities in their marriages. Janie’s first husband Logan does not provide support for her and has very poor qualities in their marriage, in fact, he requires Janie to do unnecessary work on his farm, therefore, he is not a good husband. Furthermore, in her next marriage, she is overshadowed by Joe Starks, a selfish entrepreneur that provides her with financial support, but does not support her needs and desires. Nevertheless, Janie obtains a third husband, Tea Cake, who has exceptional

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.

Original fairy tales restrict the opportunities of female protagonists, allowing their fate to be controlled by male characters and society’s restrictive expectations of women. Authors such as Perrault of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ were quick to provide advice to their suggestible female readers in moral that girls should not try to drift from the path that society has laid out for them. Thus they became ‘parables of instruction’ (Carter) to indoctrinate the next generation in the values of a patriarchal society. Fairy tales of this time consistently remind us that those of the female sex will not prosper if they choose to ignore and defy the social constructs. Pre 1900s, the roles of women were entirely predetermined. A clear female dichotomy was established portraying them as either ‘the virgin’ or ‘the whore’. Stereotypical perceptions of women reduced them to biological functions and stated that they should acquire the role of wife and mother – objectified to such an extent where they were essentially their male counterpart’s possession. Both authors scorn the importance placed on domesticity and conformity, stressing the vital nature of being able to choose and uncover the consequences of societal ignorance. Carter highlights to her literary audience a passive generation of women who face the inability to vocalise their thoughts and opinions in the context of oppressive patriarchy. Within her work ‘The Company of Wolves’ “The

Samara Green, High school student from Pontiac, Maryland Huffington Post Teen, published (February 14th, 2014) suggests that, “Do we really want to teach young children that women are weak and vulnerable and only succeed when a man intervenes?” She is trying to make a point in saying that mostly all of children’s books or fairy tales, make us women appear in need of help. Especially a from a man who usually appears the strong and supposedly have the capacity to do more. Green supports her statement by asserting and telling that, “These fairy tales became a part of popular culture and when they were adapted to the silver screen during the 20th century, a time when many minorities were striving for equality.” The author’s purpose is to inform

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.

An in depth study orchestrated by Lori Baker-Sperry and Liz Grauerholz analyzed the correlation between sales of fairy tales and the emphasis the story placed on traditional feminine beauty standards in their essay “The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children’s Fairy Tales”. The study followed the sales of fairy tales from the 1900’s to the 2000’s to determine if feminine beauty in the stories was more common in times of “normative constraint” ( Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz 715). While there was no significant difference in the number of references to beauty of a specific gender, the feminine beauty ideal came with more standards in the tales. Stories used beauty to represent goodness and ugliness to represent poor character. Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz observed that during times of increasing female power in society, book sales increased for fairy tales that celebrate traditional feminine beauty standards. Throughout the essay, the authors argue that the feminine ideal found in the fairy tales “helps to maintain and legitimate the institution of gender” (Lorber 1994). According to the essay, as women spend time making themselves beautiful, they waste resources that men are putting into society. I do agree with Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz that feminine beauty standards are rigid and are often used as a form of constraint. However, I do not agree with their subtext of negative opinions on feminine beauty in general.

Samara Green’s article, “Fairy Tales and Gender Stereotypes,” tells us that in fairy tales they all have a common trend, that women are weak and vulnerable and only succeed when a man steps into their lives. This is the gender stereotype that is just downright disrespectful. Women don’t need a man in their life to succeed, some women are stronger than men and this world needs understand that. In the same article in paragraph one she states, “Take Twilight, for example, a great example of a 21st century teenage girl-crazed phenomenon. Twilight represents the idea of a girls dependency on strong capable men. Bella, the main character, is a weak and clumsy human, which requires her vampire boyfriend Edward and werewolf friend Jacob to constantly come to her rescue. This is a great example of pointing out the gender stereotype. This stereotype can devastate women by them living up to that stereotype. As you can see, the gender stereotype is very dangerous to

In fairy tales, female characters are objects, and their value centers around their attractiveness to men. Since fairy tales rely on cultural values and societal norms to teach morals or lessons, it is evident that fairy tales define a woman’s value in a superficial way. Fairy tales teach that, typically, beauty equates to being valuable to men because of their fertility and purity; whereas, ugliness equates to being worthless and evil, including being ruined because of their lack of virginity. Descriptions readers see from fairy tales like “Rapunzel,” and “Little Snow-White” revolve around the women’s, or girl’s, physical appearance, and both stories play out to where the women remain in a state of objectification. In addition, they are damsels

Many fairy tales emphasize sexist assumptions about gender stereotypes that are damaging to children as they express a set type of socially constructed gender roles and performances. Sexist and gendered stereotypes are prevalent in Andersen’s tale The Little Sea-Maid, overt instructions that beauty alone wins the sole affection and love of a mans heart are specified to the protagonist. However, Andersen challenges this sexist assumption as the protagonist does not win her prince in the end. Andersen expresses the traits of bravery and intelligence as being other qualities that females need to possess.

For almost two centuries, fairytales have been a huge part of society and mainstream pop culture. Fairytales are ways creators explain the world to children. Fairytales give a platform to teach young children moral lessons and give them ideas on how to apply them to everyday situations in kid-friendly language. Even though fairytales are make believe stories, often the portrayal of males and females in them are not accurate. Women are often seen as damsels-in-distress who wait for a brave knight in shining armor to come rescue them and live happily ever after. Men are often described as handsome heroes ready to save the day. How is this proper representation on what women and men roles are? In the majority of fairytales the way gender roles are displayed it fosters up an image that women are inferior to men. Traditional gender role stereotypes in fairytales negatively impact young children.