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Comparing Princess Mononoke And The Brothers Grimm

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European fairy tales usually paint us a picture of a damsel in distress, unable to do anything to better her own situation through her own autonomy. Recently, however, some of these stories have been adapted to showcase women in a stronger light, with taking responsibility over their own destiny, while still portraying women as conventionally beautiful. An original contemporary fairy tale created by Hayao Miyazaki of Japan in 1997, Princess Mononoke, meaning “princess of spirits or monsters”, is set 300 years prior to the Brothers Grimm adaption of Cinderella. In Princess Mononoke, we see two women fighting on opposite sides of a conflict, both with complete control over their agency, needing no man to fight for them. One the other hand, we …show more content…

Once her father remarries, her new stepsisters take her good clothes from her and dress her in an old nightgown with a pair of wooden shoes, meanwhile no one, not even Cinderella, take the initiative to change this. The narrator tells us that Cinderella would, “get up at daybreak, carry water, light fires, cook and wash,” while her sisters just laughed at her, neither parent trying to stop this abuse from happening. The name Cinderella is not even her true birth name, it was given to her by her sisters “on account she always looked dusty and dirty. The day finally came when the King decided to hold a festival in order to find a bride for his son, the only requirement being that the young girl be considered beautiful by the King himself. When Cinderella meets the prince, every time someone tries to dance with her, he simply states, “She is my partner,” to get them to leave them alone, without a single word uttered by her. As she began to leave, the prince started after her, with the narrator stating, “he wished to see to whom the beautiful maiden belonged,” assuming that she had no autonomy over her possible future marriage. Even though she literally ran away from him, he continued to pursue her every night until she was out of sight, going so far as to leave a sticky substance on the staircase so that she would not be able to escape the castle. When the prince goes searching for a damsel that fits the shoe she left behind and both stepsisters are unable to fit into it, the prince asks her father if he has any other daughters, to which he responds with “There is still a little stunted kitchen-wench […] but she cannot possibly be the bride,” for some reason showing disdain for his only biological daughter who has been with him the longest, and yet, in the end, it is only the vain step

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