Genesis Quinones 

Professor Corrine Shearer 

Fairytales and Re-writings 10105 

20 December 2023 

 

 

                                       Fairy Tales: Sexualization and Treatment of Women: 

         Many people have heard a fairy tale at some point in their lives. Fairy tales are the building blocks of dreamy, childlike princess fantasies as well as yearning for our very own Prince Charming. It has always been thought that fairytales were simple, child-appropriate, fluffy depictions of the imaginary lives we all crave.  However, when we were kids we never really understood the conflicts behind fairy tales. There have been many ongoing issues with fairy tales and many have not paid close attention. It often has to do with women and their roles in these fairy tales. The sexualization and portrayal of women have been glazed over for centuries in fairytales.  It’s important to talk about these recurring themes in fairy tales because fairytales have had an influence on people for generations.  

          Some individuals believe that the concept of Sleeping Beauty being asleep and beautiful is a way to provoke the male gaze and is all a pleasurable sight. In the tale “Briar Rose” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, they mentioned that “Finally, he came to the old tower where Briar Rose was lying asleep. The prince was so astounded by her beauty that he leaned over and kissed her. Immediately after the kiss, she woke up” (Grimm and Grimm 164). This scene portrays women as if they are just eye candy for the men and there for them to touch. Maria Tatar is the  John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literature and folklore and mythology at Harvard University.  In her article “Show and Tell: Sleeping Beauty as Verbal Icon and Seductive Story” Maria Tatar states: 

The very name Sleeping Beauty invokes a double movement between a passive gerund (sleeping) and a descriptive noun (beauty) that invites a retinal response. Beauty may be sleeping, but we want to look at her to indulge in the pleasures of her visible charms. As Laura Mulvey has instructed us, “we” is a gendered male, although without precluding women’s narcissistic pleasure at looking (Tatar 2). 

Tatar expresses that sleeping beauty is a sight to be seen in the fairy tales, that she is a form of pleasure incarnate, and that the purpose of sleeping beauty is to fulfill the desire of others.  In “Briar Rose”, before the prince commits the act of kissing the sleeping princess, he mentions that her beauty is irresistible and that he couldn’t help himself and just had to kiss her. This presents the notion that Briar Rose is for the prince and his uncontrollable desire and that she’s a pleasure for him, as Tatar expressed.  The way he mentions her beauty in the tale acts almost as a justification for his actions. It makes it seem that if a girl is sleeping and she’s “too” beautiful someone has the right to put their hands on her. A similar thing happened in snow white when a Prince, because of Snow White’s beauty, whisked her away from those she knew without getting to know her, all because of the simple fact that she was beautiful.

           In many cases, the concept of coercive control is brought up in fairytales, however, many people disagree with that fact In “Briar Rose” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm the tale mentions “The prince was so astounded by her beauty that he leaned over and kissed her. Immediately after the kiss, she woke up, and the king and queen and the entire royal household and the horses and the dogs and the pigeons on the roof and the flies on the walls and the fire woke up” (Grimm and Grimm 164).  Briar Rose was woken up by the prince and as a result, she ended up getting married to him at the very end of the story. As well as in “Little Snow White” also by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm  Snow White is taken away by the prince after he sees her in her death-like state and asks the dwarfs to keep her because he can’t live without seeing her. They give her to him and he goes on his way, then by chance, the coffin jostled and the apple piece came out of Snow White’s throat. When she woke up the prince declared her love for her and they went on to marry and live in his castle because she loved him too (Grimm and Grimm 177). Both princes in their tales were the only ones who could wake her up and that alone meant that they held control over the heroines. Francesca Poletta is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and in her article “How to Tell a New Story About Battering” Polletta briefly discusses how in both Sleeping Beauty and Snow White the protagonists are subjected to sleep so deep it resembles death. The author discusses how the protagonist’s life relied solely on the hero’s act and they are essentially portrayed as passive in the fairytales. They also mentioned how one could believe that the princess storyline couldn’t be an act of coercive control because she was too passive to be a victim of it (Poletta 11).  In the article “4 Common Patterns of Coercive Control in Relationships” Annie Tanasugarn Ph.D. describes coercive control as “the ongoing and increasing use of manipulative strategies that deny a victim their autonomy and sense of self. An imbalance of power and psychological and emotional exploitation is used to systematically harm a person” (Tanasugarn n.p.).

        One way we can see it as coercive control is in the way that these princesses have been woken up from a dead sleep.  The only one that could wake them up from said sleep is the prince and that alone is a foothold for coercive control to take reigns. These princesses may feel obligated to be with them because they saved them and without them, they would still be asleep. Not to mention in “Little Snow White”  the prince takes Snow White away from her dwarfs and that’s a form of isolation (which is a form of lack of autonomy). She is left with him only which leaves her no option but to stay with him because she was “saved” by him and that gratitude turns into an illusion of love with her child’s naivety. That immense gratitude would turn into guilt if the princesses decided they no longer wanted to be with the princes. In the original Grimm story, Snow White is a child and she gets picked up by a prince so enticed by her dead beauty, who is way older than her and she who doesn’t know any better at her young believes naively, that she’s in love with the man. There is also this form of love bombing, as soon as child Snow White wakes up, she’s hit with the story of what happened an immediate “I love you more than anything else in the world” by the prince.  That’s a tactic that many abusers use to manipulate their victims and trap them into the relationship, which is coercive control.  The plot of both “Briar Rose” and “Little Snow White” are clear forms of coercive control. 

        In fairytales, there has been an emphasis on the beauty of each of the female characters. In every popular tale, that’s how the female main character has been portrayed. In some of the tales like “Little Snow White” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, women are portrayed as evil, capable of doing anything to maintain their beauty. In “Little Snow White”, it’s mentioned that the queen was deemed the most beautiful woman in the land, but little snow white ended up being even more beautiful than her, which enraged the queen and set out to kill Snow White to maintain her status (Grimm and Grimm 171). This part of the story depicts women as vain and capable of doing anything to maintain their semblance of beauty as if that’s what matters the most in a woman. Lori Baker-Sperry is an assistant professor of women’s studies at Western Illinois and  Liz Grauerholz is an associate professor of sociology at Purdue University.  In their article “The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children’s Fairy Tales.” they talk about how the beauty of women has constantly mentioned beauty in popular fairytales. In their article they mentioned “. The murderous actions taken by the stepmother remind readers of the symbolic lengths some women go to maintain or acquire beauty” (Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz 9). This portrays women in fairytales as jealous and capable of doing anything to maintain their beauty. It’s a bad image to paint of women, it depicts women as naturally jealous of another beautiful woman. 

        In fairytales, there is the perfect portrayal of women who are good which causes harm and forces ideologies onto women in real life. In the fairy tale “Briar Rose” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm it is mentioned that Briar was “marvously beautiful” and when the prince saw her “was so astounded by her beauty that he leaned over and kissed her.”After that kiss, Briar Rose woke up and they both got married and lived happily ever after (Grimm and Grimm 164). With the frequent mention of Briar Rose’s beauty within the tale and her being able to get her prince and her happily ever after, it gives the notion that to get your happily ever after or receive good fortune you have to maintain a certain standard of beauty.  Kay Stone is a retired professor of English at the University of Winnipeg with a focus on folklore and retellings, also the author of The Golden Woman and Burning Brightly. In her article “Things Walt Disney Never Told Us” she talks about how: 

In brief, the popularized heroines of the Grimms and Disney are not only pas-

sive and pretty, but also unusually patient, obedient, industrious, and quiet. A

woman who failed to be any of these could not become a heroine. Even Cinder-

Ella has to do no more than put on dirty rags to conceal herself completely. She

is a heroine only when properly cleaned and dressed(Stone 3).  

What Stone is saying with this piece is that these ideologies that represent the perfect woman are harmful to those who don’t exactly conform to that set of rules for the perfect woman. The message that fairy tales like these emanate is that women who don’t follow the tight nit standards of what it is to be a good woman, don’t deserve to be the heroine, but the villain. For example in “Little Snow white” the queen was beautiful, but not the most beautiful, therefore making her an evil woman undeserving of her fairytale ending. These fairy tales make women who aren’t the prettiest or the most tranquil the villains, the evil ones, that if you are not the prettiest in the room you are not worthy of your prince charming. It’s truly harmful to some women’s self-image and esteem. 

        When it comes to fairytales It’s very important to realize what we ingest as people and take a moment to understand what we are reading or watching because it can be harmful. In “Briar Rose” it mentions,  “Finally, he came to the old tower where Briar Rose was lying asleep. The prince was so astounded by her beauty that he leaned over and kissed her. Immediately after the kiss, she woke up” (Grimm and Grimm 164). That is sexual assault and if we can’t analyze that, it’s an act of ignorance.  In “Little Snow White” it states:

Snow White is taken away by the prince after he sees her in her death-like state and asks the dwarfs to keep her because he can’t live without seeing her they give her to him and he goes on his way and then by chance, the coffin was jostled and the apple piece came out of Snow Whites throat. When she woke up the prince declared her love for her and they went on to marry and live in his castle because she loved him too (Grimm and Grimm 177). 

The prince kidnaps a child because he is infatuated with her beauty, which is a form of pedophilia in the works, and he gets her all to himself.  Kathleen McEvoy is a professor in the Department of English and an adjunct member of the Gender and Women’s Studies Program. In her article, she mentions how Gabriel García Márquez “does not hold Sleeping Beauty up to his readers as an ideal—more as a warning about what can go awry when we let our romantic fantasies get away from us when we fail to critically analyze what these fantasies and fairy tales mean”(McEvoy 9). What he is trying to say is that we as people need to take into consideration what we read, and what we watch because if we don’t then maybe they can get out of control. Going about life not taking into account what we ingest is harmful to us because it sprouts ignorance on topics that need to be spoken about. 

       Fairy tales carry their set of problems that have been looked over for centuries. In past centuries the societal construct of women didn’t allow any true thought of how wrong these conflicts are within the fairytales. Now that society has changed and completely shifted in mindset to how women should and shouldn’t be viewed, and how they should and shouldn’t be treated, there needs to be an overall acknowledgment of how fairy tales truly perpetuate harmful stereotypes about women that will continue to go on if we don’t come to a standstill and come together as a society and evaluate how beneficial fairy tale are to our society. 

 

 

 

                                                                      Work Cited 

Baker-Sperry, Lori, and Liz Grauerholz. “The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children’s Fairy Tales.” Gender and Society, vol. 17, no. 5, 2003, pp. 711–26. JSTOR,  http://www.jstor.org/stable/3594706.  Accessed 19 Oct. 2023.

Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition. Princeton University Press, 2014. 

Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition. Princeton University Press, 2014. 

McEvoy, Kathleen. “‘I Preferred Her Asleep’: Gabriel García Márquez Reimagines Briar Rose.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 42, no. 1, 2018, pp. 95–105. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/jmodelite.42.1.07 Accessed 18 Oct. 2023.

Polletta, Francesca “How to Tell a New Story About Battering” Violence Against Women, Volume 15, Issue 12, SAGE Publications, December 2009, pp.1490 – 1508, https://journals-sagepub-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/doi/epdf/10.1177/1077801209347093

Stone, Kay. “Things Walt Disney Never Told Us.” The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 88, no. 347, 1975, pp. 42–50. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/539184 Accessed 4 Nov. 2023.

Tanasugarn, Annie. “4 Common Patterns of Coercive Control in Relationships” Psychology Today, 8 June 2022, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-ptsd/202206/4-common-patterns-coercive-control-in-relationships 

Tatar, Maria. “Show and Tell: Sleeping Beauty as Verbal Icon and Seductive Story.” Marvels & Tales, vol. 28, no. 1, 2014, pp. 142–58. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13110/marvelstales.28.1.0142 Accessed 19 Oct. 2023.