Essay about Fairy Tales, The Hidden Meaning

There are numerous genre’s in literature, but the level of importance and influence on an individual will differ. Exposure to books and stories is especially important for children because it their chance to acclimate themselves to written language and in turn create their own visuals for the toneless words. “Why Fairy Tales Matter: The Performative and the Transformative”, by Maria Tatar contains an ample amount of textual evidence from author’s research into fairytales, as well as writer’s personal experiences with fairytales. Although Tatar supports her claims with evidence, her resources are not concrete, and seems excessive at times. Also, her assertions are weakened by her failure to defend her conclusion against competing beliefs.

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

Once upon a time, there was a literary genre commonly know as fairy tales. They were mystical and wonderful and a child’s fantasy. These fairy tales were drastically misunderstood throughout many centuries, however. They endured a hard life of constant changing and editing to fit what the people of that time wanted. People of our own time are responsible for some of the radical changes endured by this undeserved genre. Now, these fairy tales had a young friend named Belle. Belle thought she knew fairy tales very well, but one day she found out just how wrong she was.

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

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.

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

The tradition of telling fairy tales to children effects not only the listener but also the reader. Maria Tatar, in her book Off with Their Heads!, analyzes how fairy tales instill and reaffirm cultural values and expectations in their audience . Tatar proposes that fairy tales fall into three different tale-types: cautionary tales, exemplary stories, and reward- and- punishment tales. These three types portray different character traits as desirable and undesirable. Due to the tale’s varying literary methods it can change the effectiveness of the tale’s pedagogical value. In Tatar’s opinion, all of these tales are similar in the way they attempt to use punishment, reward, and fear to encourage or discourage certain behaviors. In the cautionary fairy tale “The Virgin Mary’s Child”, the use of punishment and fear to discourage certain behaviors is enhanced by the Christian motifs and values employed by the tale. These literary devices encourage the audience to reflect on and internalize the lessons that are presented in the fairy tale.

Reading fairy tales or seeing them represented has become part of an everyday routine for children. As Baker-Sperry states, “Through interaction that occurs within everyday routines (Corsaro 1997), children are able to learn the rules of the social group in which they are a part” (Baker-Sperry 717-718). For example, through Red Riding Hood, children learn to listen to their parents and to be wary of strangers. Some of these messages are harmful though; not all girls have to be naive and weak while boys are predacious wolves. Not everyone has to play the role that society assigns them.

"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.

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.

In order for women to get ahead in the world, the fairy tales say that they have to be with a Prince Charming type figure that has money and is famous. Most of the fairy tales that were made by the Brothers Grimm have royalty as a factor in the main character's happy ending. Whether it is the poor girl marrying a prince or a princess getting the kiss of life, all of the stories end to perfect leaving so many women with their heads in the clouds. They objectify women by showing them what they need to be to have that happy ending, an encounter with royalty.

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

In well-known fairy tales the males and females characters are often portrayed in the same light. The male characters are often described as the hero with strong masculine traits while the female characters are portrayed as the damsel in distress. Throughout the years fairytales have been casting the same stereotypes for their characters. In the story Beauty and the Beast the author de beaumont depiction of what an ideal woman is lays in Beauty. She is meant to embody the role of a feminine, humble caretaker, lover, and savior. The author depicts males as provider’s, however, it is clear that the men in the story are dependent on a positive female figure for life. Beauty’s disappearance threatens both her father and beast with death, symbolizing

In a society unbridled with double standards and set views about women, one may wonder the origins of such beliefs. It might come as a surprise that these ideals and standards are embedded and have been for centuries in the beloved fairy tales we enjoyed reading as kids. In her analytical essay, “To Spin a Yarn: The Female Voice in Folklore and Fairy Tales”, Karen Rowe argues that fairy tales present “cultural norms which exalt passivity, dependency, and self-sacrifice as a female’s cardinal virtues.” Rowe presents an excellent point, which can be supported by versions of the cult classics, “Cinderella” and “Snow White”. Charles Perrault’s “ The Little Glass Slipper” and the Brothers Grimm’s “ Snow White” exemplify the beliefs that

Some things about fairy tales we know to be true. They begin with "once upon a time." They end with "happily ever after." And somewhere in between the prince rescues the damsel in distress. Of course, this is not actually the case. Many fairytales omit these essential words. But few fairytales in the Western tradition indeed fail to have a beautiful, passive maiden rescued by a vibrant man, usually her superior in either social rank or in moral standing. Indeed, it is precisely the passivity of the women in fairy tales that has led so many progressive parents to wonder whether their children should be exposed to them. Can any girl ever really believe that she can grow up to be president or CEO or an