Fairy Tales From A Villain's Perspective

This article by Christy Williams was published by Marvel and Tales, the journal of fairy-tale studies. This article emphasize how the idea of a wicked stepmother became a staple of popular fairy tales traditions. The author uses different grimm’s fairy tales such as, Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, etc. To support her argument of the use and image of an evil stepmother. She gave opinions of actually stepmothers and how they felt about this stereotypes. Finally she emphasizes that postmodern fairy tales have made a change in the use of evil stepmother as a villain and how this could improve the use of negative gender roles. The audience for this article can be specifically blended families and writers.

Fairy tales are one of the many types of folklore that generally have some sort of fantastic element, usually featuring magic, imaginary creatures, and often a conflict between sides that are clearly good and evil. Within

Madness in its entirety is a fluid term. It can be mended and shaped to mean whatever you want it to. By fluidity of definition, it is easier to label anyone as mad. For the purpose of this paper, madness will be looked at through several different lenses of violence in fairy tales. When madness is depicted in fairy tales it is in different forms of violent tendencies. These violent tendencies are not exclusive to one type of character but are universal. Whether male or female, stepmother or biological father, any character can show these symptoms of madness. There are different degrees of violence: child abuse and abandonment, cannibalism, self-mutilation including suicide, and murder. An insane man could be admitted to the hospital for a

Fairy Tales are not just stories that parents tell to their children, but stories with hidden valuable messages which are mostly left on a side. In the article “An Introduction to Fairy Tales,” Maria Tatar clearly explains how people need fairy tales in their lives. Tatar also states how fairy tales have the ability to take the listener, especially children’s, into a journey in which they can play with their imagination so that they can discover their deepest fears and wishes. Personally I agree with the author, because of the fact that in an individual’s lives as they get older, they will try to define themselves, sometimes comparing their own life with a character from their favorite story or Fairy Tale.

Triumphant reward in spite of unjust punishment is a universal sentiment that transcends languages and cultures. There are thousands of folktales and fairy tales that are firmly rooted in individual cultures, yet the tale of Cinderella has been told through many centuries and throughout the far corners of the world. With thousands of versions of this classic tale in print worldwide, the tale is believed to have originated with the story of Rhodopis, a Greek slave girl who is married to an Egyptian King. The story of Rhodopis, which means rosy-cheeks, dates back to 7 BC and is attributed to a Greek geographer named Strabo. The Chinese variation of this fairy tale is named Yeh-hsien. The Chinese version is traceable to the year 860 and appears in Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang by Duan Chengshi. Yeh-hsien is a young girl, motherless and in the control of her stepmother, who befriends a treasured fish. The jealous step-mother kills the fish, but it’s bones provide Yeh-hsien with magical powers, eventually enabling Yeh-hsien to escape the control of her step-mother for a royal life. The Story of the Black Cow which is found within the pages of Folk Tales from the Himalayas by John Murray, published in 1906, the child who is mistreated by a stepmother is a male and the role of savior is portrayed by a snake, with a cow serving as the moral of the story, faithfulness. These two versions of Cinderella carry many common threads that are

Despite the similarities of both scholars about children’s autonomy, there are few differences that sets them apart. Haase claims, “After all, teachers…exert a certain control over the popular reception of fairy tales by determining to a great extent not only the nature of the tales that are made accessible to children, but also the context of their reception” (445). Haase believes that teachers are the problem why children are having a hard time claiming their power over fairy tales. Apparently, teachers hold the power over what children can observe in fairy tales. The perception of teachers who read the fairy tales to children can maneuver through the story to make children believe in what they believe in. Haase also states “It is no

“Each film is only as good as its villain. Since the heroes and the gimmicks tend to repeat from film to film, only a great villain can transform a good try into a triumph.” This is a great point from Robert Ebert in his review of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This holds true for fairy tales as well. Villains are almost always the most interesting part of the tale, they’re usually women, and more closely represent us as humans than heroes and heroines.

In his evaluation of Little Red Riding Hood, Bill Delaney states, “In analyzing a story . . . it is often the most incongruous element that can be the most revealing.” To Delaney, the most revealing element in Little Red Riding Hood is the protagonist’s scarlet cloak. Delaney wonders how a peasant girl could own such a luxurious item. First, he speculates that a “Lady Bountiful” gave her the cloak, which had belonged to her daughter. Later, however, Delaney suggests that the cloak is merely symbolic, perhaps representing a fantasy world in which she lives.

Attention Getting Sentence: One of the most ancient and prominent character archetypes across literature and film, is the Trickster.

Sagas about princes and princesses, beauty, magic, and love, fairy tales like Snow White and Cinderella among others have become children’s favorite bedtime stories. However, as parents tuck their sons and daughters in, they fail to realize that there is a much more daunting purpose to these stories. American writer and poet, Jane Yolen suggests that fairy tales indicate life values. Furthermore, Yolen insists that these tales are “thumbprints of history” (Yolen 27). Studying fairy tales in depth, she proves that the “functions of myths” consist of “creating a landscape of allusion [and] enabling us to understand our own and out culture from inside out” (Yolen 18). Yolen confirms that these stories comment on, “the abstract truths of our

For generations stories and fairytales have been read to children all over. These stories that are read to kids often are lighthearted and have happy endings. In contrast, to these typical stereotypes about fairy tales the Grimm Brothers changes the way fairy tales are perceived. Now after reading the Grimm Brothers fairy tales seem a lot deeper and darker than the classics that would be read to kids because the characters are evil spirited, their are unpleasant endings and the mood is darker.

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.

"Once upon a time," the most used introduction phrase in common fairy tales used to start an adventure. These adventures have been around for years. The importance of some tales might be more significant than others, also based on culture. My goal for this paper is to educate my readers with the importance of fairy tales, especially for younger children. Fairy tales have been around for centuries from generations to generations. Different cultures, such as the Japanese and Western, have also expressed them differently. All these fairly tales teach children different aspects of life, which make these tales so important.

As we grow up, we hear fairy tales and we read them into our lives. Every word and every image is imprinted into our minds. The fairy tales we read are never abandoned. They grow with us and our dreams become molds of the many morals and happily ever afters fairy tales display. We tell children fairy tales when they go to sleep and they read them in school and we even have them watch Disney adaptions that reinforce them further. Generally, they were everywhere while we grew up and they continue to be present while children are growing up now. But what influence do these stories have? We casually expose our children to these tales, but in some cases they can have particularly, harmful personal effects on them, although there is nothing completely or visibly “bad” about them or about the characters in them. Before we divulge our youth to these stories, we should assess their substance and see what sort of effect they may be having on them. They have received so much scrutiny and have been studied by many. Recognizing fairy tales effects on the minds of children is vital in their development. This paper will focus on the underlying messages that the average person wouldn’t recognize in these everyday stories. There’s a modern distort with fairy tales because while they still are widely popular with the youth, they influence children’s self images, outlooks on reality and expectations for their futures, especially for young women.

1. What is the genre of this story? Are there any other possible genres this story could fall into?