Stereotypes In Snow White Women

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

“Through the cheerful music, funny characters, and happy ending, the character of Snow White starts the Disney trend of a domestic woman who becomes a damsel-in-distress relying on a prince to come and save her” (Barber, 2015). The original 1812 tale of Little Snow White by the Brothers Grimm portrays Snow White as a small, naive, self centered little girl who can’t seem to listen to anything she is told, and who has to rely a prince she doesn’t even know to wake her up from the dead. Two hundred years later, in the 2012 movie version Snow White and the Huntsman, the director Rupert Sanders revisits the original tale of Snow White, but decides to change it up a bit. In this version of the tale, Snow White is a strong, independent young woman who seems to be able to do anything she decides to do. In Sander’s version, Snow White not only conquers the cruel queen, but she conquers the labels society often places on women. Unlike the Grimms Brothers, Sanders develops his Snow White's character in a way that fits with women’s empowerment that the current generation now fights for everyday.

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

Once upon a time in a land not so far away, the society of man created the idea that it was a woman’s job to conform to the ideologies generated in fairy tales. From women depending on their prince charmings all the way to romanticized sexual abuse and lack of consent, stories like Cinderella and Snow White radiate sexism within an array of scenes of the stories and films. Not only does this affect the way that men view women, but it has had a relatively negative effect on the ways that many women view themselves. Many fairy tales have made their way into mainstream culture, and today many young girls and boys grow up hearing and seeing the subliminal messages in fairy tales. As more and more fairy tales make their way onto the big screen, it can be seen that all princesses seem to share a common feature other than their crowns and lack of self worth without a man by their side; their tiny waists. In recent years during the 21st century more and more people in the media have been calling out fairy tales for their anti-feminist attitudes with sexism, body standards as well as societal comments about women being dependent on men.

In fairy tales many of the sexist tropes have seeped into our modern day children’s books and movies