Fairy tales often show that it is the boys and men who are the ones allowed to go on adventures and save the day, Angela Carter changes that by making it that anyone - even girls and women, can share those same curious, adventurous, and even heroic characteristics. The term is mainly used for stories with origins in European tradition and, at least in recent centuries, mostly relates to children's literature. Fairytales have been around for a long time, starting off as oral stories later to be collected by the Grimm brothers in the early 19th century. It is normally males that would gather fairy tales; although women, especially elderly ones, were the best sources of fairy tales in many of the cultures. It is a characteristic of fairy tales …show more content…
Our names are what give us our identity. In fairytales it is no different, a name can be a powerful thing. An example of this is in the tale of Rumpelstiltskin, just by guessing Rumpelstiltskin's name breaks the bargain made for the first-born child. In "The Bloody Chamber," we know that the first-person narrator is female, but her name is unmentioned. This is difference between the original story and Angela Carter’s is in the original the wife is not addressed other than wife whereas as in the Bloody Chamber is called by multiple names, but mostly pet names by her husband. She is called “Madame” by workers at the castle and with some diminutive words such as “My little nun,” “Baby” (17), “My little love,” and “My child” (18) by her husband. The female narrator labels herself by some words such as “I, the orphan,” “the châtelaine” and “I, the little music student” (13), “a little girl” (18), “child” (18), and “his bride” (13). It seems that she adopts the adjectives attributed to her by the outer world. On the other hand, the man she marries to holds an ancestral name of “The Marquis” (36) which symbolizes mastery and power, and the heroine calls the Marquis, “my husband” and “my purchaser” (15). Having these names in the story not only gives the story a fable feel but also shows the power dynamic between the narrator and the Marquis. The main character goes on to describe how the Marquis looks at her like a house wife would look at meat at the supermarket, the narrator compares herself to a female figure in an etching described as “a lamb chop” (17). Comparing herself to a lamb, which is normally seen as the victim, and the Marques is equated to a lion, the hunter, shows that the narrator sees how the dynamic will
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.
In the book “The Glass Castle” by Jeanette Walls, Jeanette’s life has gone through many ups and down’s, all the way from her childhood to her adulthood. As Jeanette’s growing up she sees her Parent’s hopes and dreams slowly starting to elude away into reality. From the start of the book Jeanette’s parents, Rex and Rosemary have strong hopes of being rich from mining and sifting up gold in the dessert, through rexes “new Invention’s” to help detect the gold. But as time tells, Jeannette’s feelings and faith in her parents start to diminish away. Jeannette also starts to realize that her father is causing the problem. Towards the end of the story, Jeannette says to her mom, “Mom, you have to leave dad” (wells 188), and Jeanette’s mom is astonished of what she had said and asks why she suggested that, and Jeannette simply states that “He will bring all of us down” suggesting that they need to be on welfare. When Brian and Lori Begin digging the foundation for the glass castle that Rex had designed and promised them they were going to make, the idea quickly diminished into a fantasy once the hole started to fill with old rusty beer cans.
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
In Cinderella Ate My Daughter Peggy Orenstein examines the triumphs and pitfalls navigating raising a daughter, in today’s mixed message world. From peer pressure and the need to fit in today’s society, young females have commercialism forced at them at every turn and in very clever ways. Doll creators have been pushing the boundaries of good taste with each new season launch. When the more “mature” actresses at the age of 17 feel the need to do something drastic to remove them from the wholesome image created for by company executives, mothers and consumers feel betrayed, and yet then we need to have a dialog with our kids as to why just last month Miley Cyrus was wonderful but now she is not okay for the viewing household.
Growing up in today’s society can be traumatizing for any child. When it comes to growing up as a young girl, however, it can be downright devastating, but not only for the child but the parent as well. There are so many decisions to be made when choosing how to raise your child, assuring that you have instilled proper values to develop a healthy sense of self-worth and confidence.
Claire Standish or “the princess” portrays the stereotypical popular teenage girl in The Breakfast Club. She is in detention with everyone else because she decided to skip class and go shopping, which also plays into the stereotypical teen girl image. It can also be assumed that she is spoiled and rich since her father tried to get her out of detention but failed, and she mentions to the group that her parents only use her to get back at the other one. She brings a fancy lunch of sushi while the other teens either have nothing or the standard lunch one’s parents might pack for them. There are a couple of times in the movie that she brings up her social standing and could even be considered as looking down on those who are not as popular as her. Even closer towards the end of the movie she informs the others that if they were to say hello to her in the hallway in front of her friends, she would have no choice but to ignore them. By the end of the movie, she has opened up to everyone else about her fears of letting her peers down and has formed a close relationship with Bender.
Artemis fowl is a 12 year old whose family is full of money and is a international crime organization and has a mother and his died disappeared anyway artemis wants to restore his family fortune and so he makes the decision to find a fairy and take all the gold from the “Fairies”. The story starts in a city called Ho Chi Minh City where a male named Nguyen and Artemis tells him to take him to the sprite. Artemis gives Nguyen $20,000 for his services and he disappears after that. Artemis puts on night vision goggles to see the sprite in the dark old shop. She was drinking whiskey and artemis said if i hand you some rice wine can i see the book. She takes the deal but what she does not know is that the rice wine is actually holy water or “poison”
The Bloody Chamber (or The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories) is a collection of short fiction by Angela Carter. The stories share a theme of being based on fairy tales and folk tales, and Carter uses adaptations of the stories that are attributed to the French authors Charles Perrault and Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, to the Brothers Grimm and to German and Scandinavian folklore. In the introduction to the 2006 Vintage edition of The Bloody Chamber, Helen Simpson suggested that Carter did not want to show simplistic feminist form of these fairy tales. Carter's stories also depict a theme of feminism, and The Bloody Chamber is linked with the feminist movements in the late 1970s. The Bloody Chamber, the tale, is an allegory of female change and sexual discovery.
Angela Carter’s highly feminist anthology of short stories ‘The Bloody Chamber’ 1979 challenges the patriarchal society’s view on women. As a libertarian feminist Carter presents the ideals of the second wave of feminism and the notion that in order for society to progress, women must cast away the restraints placed upon them by society and reclaim authoritative qualities that are deemed masculine and unsightly for women to possess. Traditionally fairy tales present females as timid and “cute but essentially helpless” (Bertens.H(2001)) Carter addresses this by portraying the doomed eponymous “Snow Child” as the epitome of femininity, who adopts a silent and passive persona which reflects the qualities endorsed by antiquated British etiquette,
Opening up with a typical fairy tale intro, “There once was...”(Perrault 144), and then diving right into the plot of his story with just enough details to fill a mind with a perfect picture. He then identifies his main character, Bluebeard, who has great wealth and an upper class status. Unlike Carters, Perrault’s main character is a male and the story is being narrated through third person, both ideas which are very commonly seen in traditional fairy tale telling. His next character is the female who is only described as a, “[perfect] beauty,”(Perrault 144), and who also at first despises Bluebeard when he begins to ask for her or her sister’s hand in marriage. Nevertheless, after seeing all his wealth after a week long country vacation, where, “everyday there were parties of pleasure, hunting, fishing, dancing and dining,” (Perrault 144), she decides to looked past his less desirable characteristics and get married. Further into the story the husband tests his new wife by tempting her. After giving her keys to every lockbox, closet, room and drawer in the house he says, “Open anything you want. Go anywhere you wish. But I absolutely forbid you to enter that little room, and if you so much as open it a crack, there will be no limit to my anger,” (Perrault 145). When her husband leaves, the wife becomes overwhelmed with anxiousness to go look in the forbidden room. Perrault describes how she rudely left her guests upstairs do to her tormenting curiosity and ran down the stairs so fast that, “more than once thought she was going to break her neck,” (Perrault 145. Once reaching the door she has a brief moment of clarity, thinking of the future harm that could come, however, the temptation was to overpowering. The way Perrault tells his version of these scenes makes it seem very condescending towards women. He makes the wife out to be a rude, disobedient
Like all fairy tales, Rapunzel has a history that extends far earlier than the 1800s when it was first transcribed by brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. However, Rapunzel is a tale that continues to be re-written and re-interpreted even today. From the 1970s with the feminist revitalization of fairy tales to the early 2010s with Disney’s Tangled (2010), this timeless tale continues to engage its listeners. In 2015, Katie Kapurch of Texas State University revisited Rapunzel with an eye on its more recent modernizations. By starting with Anne Sexton’s poem “Rapunzel” from her 1971 collection Transformations, Kapurch analyzed the lesbian elements of the tale in order to examine the 21st century Tumblr culture that “ships” Tangled’s Rapunzel with Brave’s (2012) Merida.
Fairy tales picture a world filled with magic, love and the triumph of the good over the evil. Fairy tales are a window to other worlds where the wildest dreams can come true and the hero always lives happily ever after preferably paired with his loved one. Although some people argue that fairy tales are full of stereotypes, filled with frightening monsters and promote racism and sexism I believe that they are wrong because fairy tales provide valuable moral lessons to children, teach them other countries' cultures promote the imagination and the cognitive development and therefore they should be read to young children.
First of all, a rather sexist view of women has emerged from the evolution of a variety fairy tales. In older versions of many fairy tales, on can see the female dominant, matriarchal societies through the strong female protagonists. For example, as Yolen reminds, “Cinderella until lately has never been a passive dreamer….The forerunners of the Ash-girl have been hardy, active heroines” (33). One of the earlier Cinderellas belonged to a hunting community where “most important is the function of a female. She was at the center of this society and maintained a nurturing element” (194). As time went by Zipes concludes, women lost their supremacy and “fairy tales…reinforced the patriarchal symbolic order based on rigid notions of sexuality and gender” (qtd. in Tatar 338). As Zipes explains, “the heroines in these fairy tales remain pathetic , passive, and pale in comparison to the more active characters”, usually the men, when compared to those of the first generation of fairy
As a son to a mother who is in love with fairy tales, I know a little about them. Everyone has heard of the common stories such as Cinderella and Hansel & Gretel. But these are your common bedtime stories. There’s other versions of these stories known as, Grimm’s Fairy Tales. They’re far more interesting and less childish in my opinion. They also have a very interesting background and development story behind them.
Fairy tales have been passed down from generation to generation, each person in one way or another altering the tale to reflect a piece of their life in the work . The Brothers Grimm wrote hundreds of fairy tales in their life time and in these works they used their childhood experiences as reference. Because of the hardships they faced growing up their tales take on a more gruesome approach to fairy tales. Because their mother was their only caregiver growing up, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm reflect their fondness towards her through the strong willed, independent female characters in their fairy tales. Female heroines are rarely seen in modern day fairy tales, but as a result of their childhood the Brothers Grimm utilized them frequently