The Difference Between Tangled and Rapunzel The Short Story

While remaining similar in the main plot points of the story, Tangled and “Rapunzel” take very different approaches in many of the story’s details and settings, as well as in the characterization. These differences drastically affect the tone and themes of the two stories. Howard and Greno’s Tangled focuses on a narrative of taking action when opportunity is offered to try to achieve what you want. Through the reoccurring acts of disobedience, the Grimm Brothers’ “Rapunzel” explicates a theme of the dangers of greed. As a result, Tangled tells a more hopeful story, while “Rapunzel” remains more

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

Like all fairytales, Rapunzel has a history that extends far earlier than the 1800s when it 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.

Lori Baker-Sperry and Liz Grauerholz discuss the concept of female empowerment through beauty in their article “The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children’s Fairy Tale.” Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz state that, “women willingly engage in ‘beauty rituals’ and perceive being (or becoming) beautiful as empowering, not oppressive” (712). Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz argue that in children’s fairy tales, the female characters see their beauty as their most useful tool and would undergo “beauty rituals” to attain this beauty. By being beautiful, the Fairy Queen is able to win the attention and loyalty of Lanval. Not only does the Fairy Queen receive power in this bond, but also Lanval himself finds good fortune in the form of physical wealth. To further emphasize the Fairy Queen’s beauty and the power she holds over the court, France uses the series of girls prior to the Fairy Queen’s entrance. This builds a sense of suspense and the fact that the Fairy Queen easily trumps the girls in beauty further emphasizes her superiority. By emphasizing the Fairy Queen’s bodily beauty, France is able to show the power the Fairy Queen has over Lanval and the court.

Today's culture is one dominated by the media. People, especially young, impressionable females, are bombarded with images of “beautiful” and “desirable” women; these “sexy” women are lacking modest clothing, wearing copious amounts of make up, and are content to be viewed as objects, particularly by members of the opposite gender. In a society where the vision of true beauty has been distorted to such an extreme, fairytales serve as a reminder of the value of a beautiful

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.

Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm also known as the Grimm brothers are historically known for their uniqueness both in their styles of writing and the exceptional illustrations of their works. Their age old literature has been told and retold with the essence of gothic architecture and contemporary children's stories for decades now. This essay will contrast the Grimm brothers story of Rapunzel and Disney's story of Rapunzel, it will also include comparing their illustrations with Molly Bang's theory.

The men in “Cinderella” also value women for their beauty. The prince has a ball for all the maidens in the land to find his future wife, which “amounts to a beauty contest” (Lieberman 386) for a new trophy wife. While some argue that Cinderella’s rebellion of going against her stepmother’s instructions of staying home shows that the story has feminist qualities, the prince weakens her achievement when he chooses her only because of her beauty as “girls win the prize if they are the fairest of them all” (Lieberman 385). Her need for independence is transformed into the prince’s need for a pretty wife, making her again an object in her family. Once integrated into the prince’s family, Cinderella goes from the maid of her family to the smiling porcelain doll next to the prince as the “first job of a fairy tale princess is to be beautiful” (Röhrich 110). This gives the impression that the only way

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

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

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.

Fairy tales are full of tropes and stereotypes that exist from story to story, one of the main ones being the “happily ever after” ending. Most fairy tales, especially the traditional Perrault or Grimm versions, fall prey to this trope where the main goal is for the princess to find her prince, get married, and live happily ever after. Many critics, particularly feminist critics, find this trope to be problematic because of the extreme emphasis placed on marriage as women’s main, if not only, objective in life. Karen Rowe, for example, states in her essay “Feminism and Fairy Tales”, that “fairy tales perpetuate the patriarchal status quo by making female subordination seem a romantically desirable, indeed an inescapable fate” (342). In other words, Rowe relates the “romanticizations of marriage” portrayed in fairy tales with promotions of “passivity, dependency, and self-sacrifice” expected of women in their everyday lives (342). However, it can be dangerous to assume that every fairy tale conforms to the singular promotion of marriage as women’s only option. While early fairy tales such as “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty” tend to glorify the romantic ideal of marriage, and in turn female subordination, contemporary tales and adaptations such as Brave and Frozen, are working to give women a more powerful position.