Retelling Fairytales: A Feminist Perspective

Walter Benjamin, in his famous work 'The Storyteller'  quoted, “The fairy tale, which to this day is the first tutor of children because it is the first tutor of mankind secretly lives on in the story. The first true storyteller is, and will continue to be, the teller of fairytales.” (Benjamin, Eiland & Jennings, 2002). The quote is highly relevant to this discussion as it depicts the profound influence of fairytales on developing children. Fairytales are an important storytelling tool with a significant impact on developing children during their formative years. It highlights the importance of getting the story right and ensuring the perspective is void of prejudice.

And they lived happily ever after… Every day this concluding line is sold to millions of little girls to convince them of an illusion, a fairytale where a charming prince saves the girl and all is right in the world. Yes, happiness is a beautiful thing and the ultimate life goal. But the crux of the issue is the misinformed angle to attaining happiness that fairytales portray. Growing girls are conditioned to believe that their idealistic happiness lies in their power to find a groom, which comes in the way of authentic feminism and women empowerment. 

The genre of fairytales which is a mix of folklore, fantasy, and fiction was popularized by Charles Perrault and Grimm Brothers (Perrault, Clarke & Bodkin, 2012; Grimm & Grimm, 2014). Today Disney is the frontrunner in slightly tweaked versions of the original fairytales (Neikirk, 2009). Irrespective of the medium used for presentation, most fairytales have a longstanding history of disseminating gender labels and patriarchal intentions (Rowe, 1979). However, growing up, our naivety and lack of awareness prevent us from noticing these ever persistent and erring themes in our favourite, sensationalized fairytales. Hence, most feminist authors attempt to remodel the narrative and ensure the standpoint is unbiased and egalitarian. They are also trying to make the “fairy” tales more grounded in reality. The subversion does not entail the deletion of fantasy, allusion, or magical realism but cleverly incorporates the same essential themes in retelling the story. Thus this inversion challenges one-sided notions of marriage and unrealistic happy endings and probes a female-centric viewpoint. It is done either by displaying defiance or establishing a female upper hand in a misogynistic setting (Schanoes, 2016). 

If we must retrace the timeline of the feminist revision of fairytales, it is said to have occurred in the 1970s around the onset of Second-wave feminism (Baxandall & Gordon, 2002), stemming from increased political awareness influenced by civil rights, anti-war movements, and the rejection of the restrictive role of a housewife by middle-class women. This calling for the “happy and happening housewife heroin”, was first mentioned in Betty Friedan's publication of the “Feminist Mystique” (Friedan, 1998). To embark on the prominent themes of the movement like occupational and political equality, demystification of women’s bodies, and sexual freedom, female writers were demanding voice and autonomy in the patriarchal literary field. They wished to recreate the whitewashed, paternalistic, and pedagogical stories. They understood that prejudiced fairytales impede the self-awareness and identity formation of young girls, as they may internalize the concepts consciously and unconsciously thereby enforcing the patriarchal system (Joosen, 2004).

Celebrated feminist writer Julia Alvarez in her essay, “An Autobiography of Scheherazade”, breaks down the issues with fairytales (Sirias, 2001). Concerning the fairytales like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc., presented to her parents, relatives, and teachers, she mocks the depiction of the female protagonist as below. 

“Once upon a time, there was a sweet, pretty, passive, powerless, and probably blond (stay out of the sun!) princess who never played hooky from school or told lies about who broke the crystal ball in grandmother’s garden. The handsome (Catholic) prince of the land fell in love with her, married her, and she lived happily ever after as his lucky wife and the mother of his children.” (Alvarez 16). 

The excerpt adequately points out the cultural nuances of the fairytale cliches such as attributing fair skin as the epitome of a woman’s beauty, and marriage and childbirth as the sole ambitions of women. Marcia Lieberman (Lieberman, 1973), another feminist expert, delves into the pigeonholes found in the famous fairytales of, “The Blue Fairy Book”, by Andrew Lang. The female leads share common traits like perfection, beauty, and passivity, while the plain janes are ill-tempered and seldom rewarded. The only women that hold power in the stories are older and evil. Regardless, marriage is the recurrent and central theme, courtship is the turning point in the story, post which the woman’s identity becomes lost and intermingled with her husband’s. Such derogatory representations of women adversely impact the expectations and behaviors of young female readers, by glorifying and upholding passivity and condemning, strong-headed and influential women. Hence the entire genre is problematic to a woman’s intellectual and psychological development. One may argue that the stories are open for subjective interpretation, but this is hardly the case. All the references and symbols are highly deliberate and written with the intention of training women to fit into socially acceptable norms. 

Now that we have established the need for a feminist rereading of fairytales, let us critically look into some of the feminist revived versions. Anne Sexton is credited to be the pioneer of the movement with her poetry collection, “Transformations” (Sexton, 2016) revisits Grimm’s fairytales and explores the exclusive analysis of contemporary practice that is in synchrony with Friedan’s ideologies. She employs sarcasm and hyperbole, which is intrinsic to the underlying motifs of conventional fairytales. She unveils the dissatisfaction and boredom of women whose sole purpose is marriage and looking after the family. One of her poems is as follows:

“like a dog in heat.

He turns the key.

Presto!

It opens the book of odd tales

which transforms the Brothers Grimm

Transform?

As if an enlarged paper clip

could be a piece of sculpture. 

(And it could) (42-51)

This poem titled, “the book of odd tales” completely contradicts Grimm’s fairytales. Instead of captivating the reader, images like, “secrets whimper” suggest otherwise. It is a take on how the secrets of the book are social deviance instead of being dreamy, enigmatic, and enthralling. The entire book is thus a compilation of similar poems that contrast and critique fairytales using tasteless humor. 

Another significant contributor to the retelling of the fairytale genre is Angela Carter (Carter, 2012). Her works are said to be appallingly outrageous. She is a genius at amalgamating classic fairytales with reframed feminist subversion which is confusingly dark and gruesome. Her well-known story, “The Bloody Chamber”, draws parallels between “Beauty and the Beast”. The narrator is married to a wealthy and elderly Marquis, who cares for her to the brink of suffocation. The claustrophobia motivates her to explore the forbidden part of the place only to find three damaged bodies of the Marquis’s ex-wives. It is symbolic of the violent tendencies of authoritative male fairytale heroes who are driven by absolute submission. The climax of the story grants agency to women characters, as the mother of the narrator comes riding on horseback and rescues her daughter, thereby ditching the “knight in shining armor” narrative. 

Renowned Indian feminist writer Manjula Padmanabhan’s (Padmanabhan, 2013) collection of inverted fairytales is another classic example of the feminist rebellion against the male-controlled literary world. She has been very clever in uprooting sidelined female characters in Indian mythology and elevating them to levels of supreme power. She uses cynicism and satire to deconstruct the predatory male gaze and regain prominence. In one of the most influential stories in the collection, called, “The Other Woman”, Mandodari, Ravana’s neglected wife is pulled from the historic setting of the epic Ramayana and lurched into a futuristic world where she uncovers ultramodern technology, shopping markets, and explores territories that are otherwise considered illicit for the typical Indian housewife. The story reclaims the narrative by discarding the image of the compliant housewife of the villainous emperor and shows the reader how she is capable of so much more. Mythology is used as an effective tool for investigation and places a neglected woman in the center of it all.  

Carmen Maria Machado in her collection, “Her Body and Other Parties”, probes into the womanly wishes and resistance against systemic and intimate violence that women are forced to go through in their lives (Machado, 2017). “The husband stitch”, is the most acclaimed piece in her collection as it examines the repercussions for disobedient girls and trivializes the consequences. The plot revolves around a bold and vivacious woman whose husband wishes to unveil the mysterious green bow around her neck, assuming it is his marital right. The ribbon is essentially a euphemism for bodily agency and how marriage fills men with a notion that they now have the access to their wife’s physical body and free will. It is an interesting take as it dives into the unexplored zones of fairytales, and what happens after the “happy ever after” i.e., the institution of marriage shattering illogical illusions. 

Sarah Hall’s (Hall, 2011) story, “Wolf Alice”, is also a fitting example of viewing fairytales through a critical feminist lens. Here a man helplessly watches his beautiful wife turn into a fox. Instead of accepting his wife’s transformation, he constantly tries to stop or change it. The interpretation of the story is pretty overt and obvious. It throws light on the false male gaze and the objectification of women to merely their beauty and body. It is also an antithesis of the “Beauty and the beast”, as in this fairytale version the demonic male form is accepted without question, whereas the reversal of roles is an unwelcome occurrence. 

Feminism is a profound and powerful movement, but for it to be implementable, a holistic approach is the need of the hour. It can only be achieved by drawing attention to structural stigmas in all spheres of life. Literature, story-telling, popular culture, and media have massive control over the kind of information that is disseminated, so they are an effective way to put things into perspective. Superficially, fairytales seem completely harmless, and they may be if consumed solely for entertainment purposes. But the problem occurs when the intention behind their creation is wrong and manipulative in turn affecting the reader’s psyche. Hence, rereading is a tactful and efficient way of diverting the focus away from societal expectations and towards socio-cultural glitches. Such critical and morally informed revaluations guide and educate young women and help them see what is fundamentally wrong with the system. It empowers women and makes them more self-aware and self-reliant. It motivates women to chase their own, self-earned happy endings instead of waiting on external stereotypes to save them. Who needs a prince when we can raise our little girls to be independent queens, right?

REFERENCES

Baxandall, R., & Gordon, L. (2002). Second-wave feminism. A companion to American women’s history, 414-432.

Benjamin, W., Eiland, H., & Jennings, M. W. (2002). The storyteller.

Carter, A. (2012). The bloody chamber and other stories (Vol. 8). Random House.

Friedan, B. (1998). It changed my life: Writings on the women's movement. Harvard University Press.

Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. The original folk and fairy tales of the brothers Grimm. Princeton University Press, 2014.

Hall, S. (2011). The Beautiful Indifference. Faber & Faber.

Joosen, V. (2004). Feminist criticism and the fairy tale: The emancipation of ‘Snow White’in fairy-tale criticism and fairy-tale retellings. New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship, 10(1), 5-14.

Lieberman, M. R. (1973). The Feminist in Fairy Tales: Two Books from the Jung Institute, Zurich. Children's Literature, 2(1), 217-218.

Machado, C. M. (2017). Her Body and Other Parties: Stories. Graywolf Press.

Neikirk, A. (2009). “… Happily ever after”(or what fairytales teach girls about being women). Hohonu: A Journal of Academic Writing, 7, 38-42.

Padmanabhan, M. (2013). Three Virgins and Other Stories. Zubaan.

Perrault, C., Clarke, H., & Bodkin, T. (2012). The fairy tales of Charles Perrault. Courier Corporation.

Rowe, K. E. (1979). Feminism and fairy tales. Women's Studies: An interdisciplinary journal, 6(3), 237-257.

Schanoes, V. L. (2016). Fairy tales, myth, and psychoanalytic theory: Feminism and retelling the tale. Routledge.

Sexton, A. (2016). Transformations: poems. Open Road Media.

Sirias, S. (2001). Julia Alvarez: A critical companion. Greenwood Publishing Group.

Written by: Deepti
Reviewed by: Nishtha Agarwal