The Representation of Women in Snow White, Sonnet 130 and the Rape of the Lock

Anne Sexton was a junior-college dropout who, inspired by emotional distress, became a poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize as well as three honorary doctorates. Her poems usually dealt with intensely personal, often feminist, subject matter due to her tortured relationships with gender roles and the place of women in society. The movies, women’s magazines and even some women’s schools supported the notion that decent women took naturally to homemaking and mothering (Schulman). Like others of her generation, Sexton was frustrated by this fixed feminine role society was encouraging. Her poem “Cinderella” is an example of her views, and it also introduces a new topic of how out of touch with reality fairy tales often are. In “Cinderella”, Anne Sexton uses tone and symbolism to portray her attitude towards traditional gender roles and the unrealistic life of fairy tales.

Few people can grow up within today's society without knowing the tale of Snow White. From the Grimm Brothers to Disney, it has been told and retold to children throughout the ages. However, what is often overlooked are the true meanings within the story. Fairytales typically have underlying messages that can be found written between the lines, generally in terms of the key themes. Snow White discusses the themes of envy and beauty, and shows how humans' obsessions can lead to their own downfall as well as the harm of others. When focusing on the relationship between Snow White and her step-mother the Queen, it is evident that the combination of these two themes results in a power struggle in which beauty

In depicting Snow White’s husband as a devil who defies all her moral beliefs and who corrupts other men, Gwynn exposes the ludicrous nature of women being taught to blindly follow a man. These biblical allusions are paired with allusions to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to expose that perhaps a familiar happily ever after is not truly the case for women. Perhaps the most subtle yet brilliant reference to the fairy tale is Gwynn’s use of a classic four line meter paired with a simple ABAB rhyme scheme. In choosing this structure for his poem, Gwynn creates a nursery rhyme like tone of familiarity which matches that

Furthermore, the woman was never recognised as an equal in the world; with a “mane” for hair she is immediately relatable to an animal. When this connection is made, the woman is perceived as some strange creature; a mere mimicry of a real human. Harwood’s description of is a taste of how society views women; not quiet human. Now equipped with darker views of the flower filled day; the contemporary day reader is pondering to whether or not this vile practice is still belittling women of today.

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.

By analyzing the construction of gender roles and transformation within the poetic retelling of Snow White by Anne Sexton, we are able to think about these topics in a more honest way that reveals their troublesome nature. First, by connecting presents themes and elements in this modern day version that don’t appear in more classical versions, we are immediately given a more vivid depiction of how characters function. Descriptions of cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper, dwarfs being described as little hot dogs and czars, and the queen eating the boar's heart like a piece of cube steak, are just a few examples of the vivid descriptions that lace this poem. These descriptions pull meaning from more modern day topics, they objectify characters,

“Magic Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?” the Evil Queen inquiries (1). In the novella Ethan Frome, Mattie Silver (Snow White) surpasses the beauty of every living organism in Starkfield. Zenobia Frome correlates herself with the Evil Queen. Furthermore, Zeena, a hypochondriac in the eyes of Ethan Frome, is used as a foil for Mattie Silver. In the dark and gloomy tale of Ethan Frome, the story emerges as an inverted fairytale. The “fairy maiden” anthropomorphizes into a greater evil than the Evil Queen, herself. Snow White was known for her pale skin, red lips, and her beautiful voice. Alike Snow White, Edith Wharton sedulously attaches red and light with Mattie Silver, symbolizing her with a red scarf. Ethan Frome and Zeena are associated with dark and grim colors blending in with their haggard surroundings. Ethan is in awe when he sees Mattie, his silver lining. Zeena envies Mattie indirectly in the story and goes out of her way to make her seem like a horrendous person. Moreover, Zeena emerges as the powerful Evil Queen in Ethan Frome that successfully wins. Thus, in Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton taints the classic fairytale to become a disastrous tragedy of two lovers.

As a result of this mature stance, her speech was respected by many for addressing the important issue of women in society, and doing it in an entertaining manner. Atwood was influential during the feminist movement which began in the 60s and her influence is shown through her literary works. Her speech raises the issue of the role that women should take in society looking at it through the portrayal of women in literature. Atwood’s historical and literary references allow her to validate her points and to explore the role of women and how they are portrayed in literature (good and bad). The audience can easily identify with them – Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Lady Macbeth. Atwood supports her ideas with language techniques and features making her speech worthy of critical study.

The depiction of women in the literary works studied this semester has been controversy. It was hard to decipher if women were being valued or not, because of their unsteady portrayal in each work. This controversy subject can be linked to the view of women in society today. In society, some men write women out to be flawless and some write women out a being a flaw. Likewise are women written in the literary works of Jason and the Argonauts, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Antigone, and The Arabian Nights. Women played a big roles in all of literary works, but how their roles are portrayed is the matter in question. The women in the early world literature we have studied are depicted as either being sheros, sexual beings sometimes deceitful, or beneficial

Margaret Atwood’s satirical poem, “There Was Once”, aims to disrupt the generic conventions of a traditional fairy tale. Atwood begins with the traditional opening of a fairy tale by writing, “there once was a poor girl, as beautiful as she was good, who lived with her wicked stepmother in a house in the forest” (Atwood 406). Atwood begins to dissect the aspects of a fairy tale by first calling out the normal backdrop, which is a forest. Then, she points out that the girl in the story was never poor to begin with since she lived in a house. Atwood questions why the protagonist must always be beautiful, pointing out the current problems surrounding women and body image. Atwood also complains about the fact that all of the female leads in fairy tales are white, possibly alluding to Hollywood’s constant whitewashing of films. She attacks the idea that the “evil stepmother” must always be evil and be a female, pointing out that if the stepmother had to be

Throughout many pays and novels, women have had important roles of helping form the main characters, in the way they think, move or change the story. Women have always been subordinate to men all through history, but in plays, novels, short stories, etc, they have been given large enforcing roles, showing the power within women. William Shakespeare and Sophocles use guilt, pride, and influence to demonstrate the importance of the women’s role to support the main characters in both the plays of Macbeth and Antigone.

Throughout history, it has generally been accepted that women are of a lesser standard than that of their male counterparts. There has always been an opposition to this theory that believes that the reverse is true, or at the very least, that the sexes are equal. While some authors place women within their works solely as a filler character, or as support of their male lead, there are some that have written with the intent of the females offering a distinctive viewpoint than that of what the readers might be used to. The roles of women in literature have never been forced to be monotonous, yet that’s how they’ve been perceived. However, there are examples of female characters who have been written with the express purpose of breaking that

Over the years, Snow White’s story has been told in numerous different versions then its original version in 1812 by the Grimm Brothers. The main basis of the story has remained the same. Only a few minor tweaks to the story have changed. The three versions of the story that are going to be analyzed are the original story “Little Snow White” by the Brothers Grimm, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” by Disney, and “Mirror, Mirror” by Disney also. They each were created in very different times and the original story has changed over the years to appeal to the audience of that time. No matter how many versions there are Snow White is considered, one of the most cherished fairy tales of all time. They each use different methods to get their

The short story ‘Snow, Glass, Apples’ was written by Neil Gaiman in 1994. The story is a re-telling of the fairy tale Snow White from the step-mother’s perspective. Gaiman is considered a feminist writer and this is shown in ‘Snow, Glass, Apples’ where he brings awareness to the removal of women’s power by men in vampire text. In 1990, third-wave feminism had just begun. This wave involved “eschewing victimization and defining feminine beauty for themselves as subjects, not as objects of a sexist patriarchy” (Rampton 1). This differs from ‘Carmilla’ because LeFanu supports oppression of females while Gaiman is a feminist aiming to expose stereotypes of gender roles.

Angela Carter, an English writer, is best known for her feminist rewriting of classical fairy tales. In her stories she prominently uses themes, such as, virginity, the pornographic image, violence and sex, and many others. Degrading someone to the status of a mere object, in other words objectification, is a theme Angela Carter shows in many of her fairy tales, specifically the objectification of women. According to Carter, the objectification and subjugation of women is part of a “latent context” of fairy tales that she expressed simply by virtue of being a woman. Both “The Tiger’s Bride” and “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” are fairy tales intertextually linked with “Beauty and the Beast” and show the reader Carters’ views on femininity. Not