Art of Fairytales

           In this entry, I wanted to do something a little bit different by talking about the morals of the Perrault version of Bluebeard. It is the only version with a written moral and I found it fascinating while reading all of the other stories to reflect back on this portion of this one version. Morality, while believing that one action is write and acceptable while another is wrong and bad, is what makes us innately human. It is especially interesting to me that Perrault wrote this version, for many reasons I will disclose.           Perrault was a trained lawyer and was said to be a part of a group of Moderns who believed that while society progressed, so did literature. In 17th century France more particularly in which Perrault lived, women were deemed property of their father until they were married, then of their husband. They were confined to their households, which in this version the wife was. Women were also forg...

      The story of Cinderella is one that is seemingly romantic. From a young age, little girls are taught that their prince charming will one day come for them and sweep them off their feet. However, in the true versions of the tale, the fate of Cinderella is quite sad and she is never shown true forms of love. Her father remarries a villain whose daughters are evil, only to be loved by a man who is obsessed with a singular shoe and the "done up" version of the girl he danced with. In truth, the version of Cinderella that we grew up with taught young girls a version of love that is not only unattainable but is also unhealthy and coercive.      More specifically in Perault's version of Cinderella, the father who is the king wishes to marry his own daughter. Her Godmother tells her to give him ridiculous asks, making him stretch to the far reaches of the kingdom to please her for her hand. The daughter is scared, and flees into the wilderness only to be know...

           Although the tale of Sleeping Beauty often evokes a sense of adventure within its male characters and a submissive, passive woman, there are similar takes on the classic tale that allow for the woman to rescue the man and take ahold of the normal rhetoric. In the words of the introduction, the females of these stories, "remind us of the pleasures of beauty but also the attractions of morbidity."           In Perrault's version of Sleeping Beauty, the prince finds his beauty over 100 years after she was put to sleep. His love pushed them together, against his mothers wishes and ended up giving him two young and beautiful children that he had to keep from his family and his city. His mother, an awful woman, took advantage of this and wanted to children gone, only to be destroyed in the end by her own evil desires. We can see as readers from this the beauty of true love and the power of family as well as the morbidity o...

      In the Introduction to Snow White, it is said that the tale is a representation of "a young woman's development" and that the many version support this claim with oppositions (death and birth, adoption and expulsion, & affection and jealousy).      In Basile's version, "The Young Slave", a woman gets pregnant seemingly out of thin air, and one of the fairies she visits accidentally puts a curse on her daughter, for on her seventh year she would fall asleep. This did happen, and after the mother passed, her brother's wife opened the crystal casket and took the young girl out- waking her. She treated her horribly as the young girl continued to grow up, until the girl told her uncle what had happened. The wife was then banished and the young girl got the man of her dreams: death, expulsion & jealousy .      In the Brother's Grimm version, a woman wished for a daughter who was, "white as snow, red as blood and black as ebony." She...