The
image of the female gender is seen as to be nurturers with warm hearts and
gentle in every describable way. They were the ones who took care of the home and
the family. They were fragile flowers and did as they were told by the men in
their lives or better yet they were not selfish. In Marcia Lieberman article "Some Day My Prince Will Come" she describes the different characteristic of how women are seen depending on their look. Women who were beautiful start out being the outcast by the women who envy them. The ugly women or the women who were considered ugly were evil and cruel.Yet in the Snow White fairytale
the Queen is just as beautiful as Snow White but she is evil and that takes away the fact that she is in fact beautiful. The Queen does fall under the facts that she was vain and malicious with
no care for anyone except herself. She is as Lieberman describes ill-tempered and that is what makes her ugly and evil (385). She was obsessed with the power that her
beauty had given her. The moment that was taken away from her she felt
powerless and mad sure that she did whatever she needed to do in order to get
it back. The men did as she told them to do which was the opposite normal trait
for a man. The men obeyed and feared her raft. Snow White on the other hand
fulfills the above description she was gentle and fragile. She wanted to be
rescued and used her beauty along with her desperate tears in order to get away
from the huntsman. It is all of her actions that make the men that come in
contact with her mesmerized by her beauty and gentleness. She takes care of the
dwarf's and their home in exchange for shelter.
She portrays what was said to be the normal traits of a female. Women
are represented in two different ways in the fairytale of Snow White, the
strong woman who is fearless and the damsel in distress who meek and weak.
Reference:
Lieberman, Marcia R. “Some Day My Prince Will Come”: Female
Acculturation through the
Fairy Tale. College English,
Vol. 34, No. 3 (Dec., 1972), pp. 383-395. National Council
of Teachers of English.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/375142
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| The beautiful powerful witch that represents a woman who is strong and fearless. |
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| This is the damsel in distress who is meek and weak |
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| The domesticate woman who takes care of her home |
It is amazing how people view folktales and how they interpret them. I always thought they were just tales that taught you some kind of lesson or gave you an idea of someone's culture. I now realize that there is more to it than that. Not to mention that you must be careful because some tales have changed based on time and the person telling the tale. It is going to be very interesting to see how the tales we read are not exactly what they originally were when they were told or read to us. Especially the way the women in these tales were described and their actual characteristics. I am curious to see the way they really were treated and the way they reacted to the treatments that they receive. It will be very interesting to see how much these tales were edited. 