Friday, February 24, 2012

Female roles in Snow White

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

The beautiful powerful witch that represents a woman who is strong and fearless.

This is the damsel in distress who is meek and weak
The domesticate woman who takes care of her home

No comments:

Post a Comment