By Alexandra Meghji
It is not at all original to claim that popular fairy tales and their film adaptations participate in the maintenance of misogyny and regressive gender stereotypes. There is a significant oeuvre of literature on the anti-feminist sentiment of myth and fairy tales, and a growing awareness in our society that these narratives are not as quaint and light hearted as we may have once thought. We know that stories such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and Sleeping Beauty violate sexual consent, and that films like Aladdin seem to reward male voyeurism, objectification, and possession of women, not to mention the outrageous physical standards to which they mandate (often very young and impressionable) women to adhere.
But what is curious is that the assertion of misogyny in fairy tales tends to be met with either sheepish dismissal or vehement backlash. In 2017, for example, a woman called for the Sleeping Beauty film to be taken off her six-year-old son’s school curriculum in light of its implications for sexual consent, and critics were quick to deem her ‘pathetic’, ‘sad’, and ‘ridiculous’ on Twitter.[1] This response isn’t surprising – fairy tales and Disney films are nostalgic and challenges to their wholesomeness inevitably elicit defense. And as much as we might find discomfort in acknowledging the anti-feminism of our favourite childhood stories, it does require contemplation. Why is it that we, members of a so-called ‘feminist’ society that advocates equality and applauds powerful women, are so fervently determined to overlook the fact that popular fairy tales literally romanticize rape and emotional abuse, and encourage female passivity, helplessness, and submission?
There’s an odd misconception that, over the years, common fairy tales have been adequately cleansed of their anti-feminist and violent content and that they are, therefore, appropriate for a young audience. And while it is arguable that the presence of friendly farm animals and shapeshifting pumpkins in these narratives means that they are entirely light and unadulterated entertainment, the underlying subtext of most of these popular stories, and the subtle messages they convey, have not been properly updated to reflect modern feminist sentiment. In earlier versions of Sleeping Beauty, for instance, a passing king rapes and impregnates the comatose princess, and the eventual marriage of the princess and the king (her rapist) is meant to constitute a happy ending. Obviously, Disney’s adaptation of this story, in which Aurora is kissed by the prince whilst she is sleeping, is less ostensibly outrageous. But we must not forget that this story is still one of sexual assault, and it still undermines the importance of consent to its young, suggestible audience.
The claim that modern fairy tales are adequately sanitized compels us to make exemptions, to excuse the stories’ accounts of rape and dismiss them as insignificant parts of enthralling love stories. It is arguable, however, that these ‘sanitized’ adaptations actually cause more harm by shrouding sexual assault and misogyny under the guise of chivalry, romance, and male heroism.
This flippant acceptance of violence against women in fairy tales is a troubling mark of lethargy in our world. Despite our general, insidious awareness that fairy tales and their adaptations tend to uphold gender stereotypes that we, in other realms of society, condemn and try to disband, we are still able to take untainted pleasure in these very real, very powerful emblems of misogyny, and to advertise them to young people. And it is not unlikely that these negative representations of women, and the romantic flavour they afford sexual and emotional abuse, participate in normalizing women’s seemingly insurmountable otherness. It is troubling that we do have the knowledge and awareness to resist the fairy tale juggernaut of misogyny, yet we opt to sit, eyes glued to the screen, watching Prince Philip assault Aurora, mumbling tactless apothegms about love and romance.
While we should certainly question the suitability of these androcentric fairy tales for a young audience, it would not be constructive to do away with them altogether. That said, what is the next step? On one hand, we shouldn’t continue to blindly endorse popular fairy tales in light of their misogynist connotations, but we shouldn’t completely ban or boycott them on the other.
But out of what seems like a trap, there is a fantastic opportunity for constructive criticism, education, and progress. These narratives are prime examples of the widespread power of myth to uphold patriarchy by saturating us with misguided notions of romance and regressive norms of gender. In this way, they are a useful tool for the analytical eye. This is exactly what many feminist critics and authors have begun to do in the last few decades, mainly through fictional adaptations of these traditional tales.
Feminist reinterpretations of androcentric narratives are increasing in multiplicity and popularity. Although there have been so many fruitful contributions to this subgenre of women’s rewritings, the “dame in shining armour” of fairy-tale adaptations is none other than British writer Angela Carter. She has published a variety of works, including novels, short stories, poetry, children’s books and translations, but she is best known for her 1979 collection The Bloody Chamber and other Stories. These tales aren’t mere feminist retellings of popular fairy tales; rather, they are new narratives that appropriate the foundations of sexual violence and sexism found in these works. Carter explains, “I was using the latent content of those traditional stories, and that latent content is violently sexual.”[2] This collection revisits several common fairy tales, including but not limited to Bluebeard, Beauty and the Beast, and Little Red Riding Hood. Through the use of the female first-person perspective, the reversal of gender stereotypes (a female hero and male victim), and explicit sexual, sadomasochistic, often pornographic imagery, Carter infuses her narratives with feminist flavour and unshackles her female characters from the traditional androcentric stories.
The genius of Carter’s work lies in its operation both within and against the dominant oeuvre of androcentric myths. Neither does she explicitly affirm the misogyny of popular fairy tales, nor does she rewrite them in a clean, sanitized way in order to suppress their misogynist underpinnings. It is precisely her focus on sex, violence, on the abject and the grotesque, and on female power and lack thereof, that she calls for the emancipation of women from the compulsory weakness, submission, and tolerance of sexual abuse to which traditional fairy tales encourage us to accept.
Carter’s work is considered shocking and sensitive, and certainly inappropriate for a young audience. But further contemplation begs the question why the we deem tales of Disney and the Brothers Grimm suitable for a young audience, and we wouldn’t The Bloody Chamber. Why is it that non-consensual kissing, emotional manipulation, objectification and the possession of women, voyeurism and the scrutiny of the female body, and the active woman/passive woman binary are appropriate for everyone, but Carter’s stories of women’s power, heroism, and sexual emancipation still continue to shock? Simpson states that Carter’s work “elicits furious hostility from a significant number of students, who are outraged when they recognise the bedtime stories of their childhood newly configured as tales of sex and violence.”[3] The point, though, is that these bedtime stories are tales of sex and violence, and that this harmful content has somehow been overlooked by an illusory valence shell of wholesomeness and twisted morality with which we tend to coat these narratives.
This is not to say that parents should be reading The Bloody Chamber to their children before bed; it is merely to invite reflection on why we could consider this so unsuitable, but we would happily and unquestioningly let a six-year-old watch Sleeping Beauty. We have become so accustomed to casual misogyny that it becomes difficult to recognize and even harder to reject.
Essentially, don’t stop reading fairy tales and watching Disney films. Just read Angela Carter and her feminist counterparts as well. All these texts, when read together, cultivate in us a sense of critical perspective, which is a real catalyst for change.
Goldsworthy, K., (1985). Angela Carter. Meanjin, 44(1), pp. 4-13.
Simpson, H., (2006). Femme Fatale: Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jun/24/classics.angelacarter
Matthews, A., (2017). Mother Demands her Son’s School take Sleeping Beauty off the Curriculum because the Princess Doesn’t Give Consent to be Kissed and Woken Up by the Prince. Mail Online. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5110415/Mother-demands-son-s-school-ban-Sleeping-Beauty.html