Feminism and Fairy Tales

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Feminism and Fairy Tales
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Outline

• Announcements
• Frog Princess Illustrations
• Introduction to Feminism
• Readings
• Marcia Lieberman
• Karen Rowe
• Ruth Bottigheimer

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Announcements

• Examination 2 Monday, October 8
• All materials since Examination 1
• Dont forget Bogatyrev/Jakobson article
• Homework for recitationTwo multiple-choice
  questions for Examination 2

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The Frog Princess (Bilibin)

• Ivan Bilibin(18761942)

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Flying Carpet (Vasnetsov, 1880)

• Viktor Vasnetsov(18481926)

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Flying Carpet (Vasnetsov)

• Viktor Vasnetsov (18481926)

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Flying Carpet (Vasnetsov, detail)

• Viktor Vasnetsov(18481926)

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Feminine and Masculine

• Feminine Masculine
• Passive Active
• Submissive Dominant
• Sweet Courageous
• Emotional Rational
• Intuitive Logical
• Damsel in Distress Knight in Shining Armor

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Feminism Terminology

• Female
• Feminine
• Essentialism
• Sexism
• Patriarchy
• Feminism
• (See definitions on course web site)

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Feminism Definition

• Political stance
• Challenge the essentialist equation of female
  with feminine and the social consequences of that
  equation
• Uncover and debunk patriarchal prejudices and
  social imbalances
• Expose the ways in which males appropriate
  high-status roles for themselves
• Reveal the bias in supposedly neutral or
  objective observations

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Readings

• Marcia K. Lieberman. Some Day My Prince Will
  Come Female Acculturation through the Fairy
  Tale. (1972)
• Karen E. Rowe. Feminism and Fairy Tales. (1979)
• Ruth B. Bottigheimer. Silenced Women in the
  Grimms Tales The Fit Between Fairy Tales and
  Society in Their Historical Context. (1986)

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Lieberman (General)

• Some Day My Prince Will Come
• Historical/cultural approach
• Children read stories because they are
  interesting
• Children learn to predict the outcomes of
  specific acts (interest in endings)

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Lieberman Outline

• Life as a Beauty Contest
• The Glamor of Suffering
• Powerful Women (Good and Bad)
• Marriage in Fairy Tales

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Life as a Beauty Contest

• Beautiful meek, good-tempered
• Ugly ill-tempered, ambitious, conniving
• There are no plain but good-tempered girls
• Being beautiful Being chosen Getting rich
• Beauty is rewarded, at least eventually, without
  having to do anything

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The Glamor of Suffering

• Martyrdom and suffering are glamorous
• Women in distress are interesting
• the thrill of persecution, bordering at once
  on self-pity and self-righteousness
• Passivity leads to being chosen

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Powerful Good Women

• Not human
• Remote
• Old
• Asexual

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Powerful Evil Women

• Witches and villainesses are active
• Heroines are passive
• Fairy godmothers are remote and reactive
• Heroes are active
• Moral value of activity is sex-linked
• The counterpart of the energetic, aspiring boy
  is the scheming, ambitious woman.

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Marriage

• Marriage wealth and social status
• Tales are preoccupied with marriage, but rarely
  portray it
• Desire for eternal courtship, since marriage is
  the end of the story

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Rowe (Introduction)

• Feminism and Fairy Tales
• Folktales inculcate roles and behaviors
• Bettelheim girl works out adolescent anxieties
  through tales
• Splinters mother into good and bad

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Rowe Outline

• Power and Passivity
• Marriage

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Power and Passivity

• By punishing exhibitions of feminine force,
  tales admonish, moreover, that any disruptive
  non-conformity will result in annihilation or
  social ostracism.
• By portraying dream-drenched inactivity and
  magical redemptions, enchantment makes
  vulnerability, avoidance, sublimation and
  dependency alluringly virtuous.

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Marriage

• Marriage is attainable by all women
• Marriage bridges fantasy and reality
• Marriage as the only option perpetuates the
  patriarchal status quo
• Royal court as approving community
• Double-enchantmentMarriage as enchanted state

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Bottigheimer Outline

• Philological approach
• Social context
• Types of silence in Fairy Tales
• Verbs of speaking

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Philology

• The study of languages and literatures
• The study of written and oral texts and the
  nontextual features needed to understand them
• The study of a culture or civilization through
  its written and oral texts

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Social Context

• German society of the Grimms time expected
  silent women
• Men could be silent, but women were silenced.
  (118)
• Womens speech is chattering or nagging
• Womens silence is feminine
• Mens silence is well-earned repose

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Types of Silence in Fairy Tales

• Muteness (as a curse or punishment)
• Distribution of speaking parts in the narrative
  (first- and third-person representations of
  speech)
• Verbs of speaking
• Speak (sprechen)
• Say (sagen)
• Ask (fragen)
• Answer (antworten)
• Cry out (rufen)

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Verbs of Speaking

• Choice of verb that introduces direct speech
• Choice of verb indicates authority
• Speaking in seven Grimm tales
• Mother (3)
• Girl (7)
• Witch (19)
• Father/King (11)
• Boy/Prince (16)
• So what?

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Feminism and Male Characters

• All three feminist critics examine how fairy
  tales model the behavior of female characters in
  a way that constrains the choices of girls who
  emulate them. How about male characters and boys?
• What do the critics say about the complicity of
  women in perpetuating patriarchal models?