When trying to think of a childhood story to talk about, I realized that the majority of the stories I was familiar with were about either about animals or about men and boys. The few stories I knew where the main character was a girl were about how the girl was waiting for her “prince charming” to come along and save her or some variation thereof. Examples of these scenarios include Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty.
Cinderella has to wait on her aunt and cousins hand and foot. Her only hope to get out of this demeaning role is to have the prince fall in love with her. At the ball, Cinderella appears gorgeous in her beautiful dressed and she dances gracefully with the prince. The prince instantly falls in love with her and they have a wonderful time until she has to leave at midnight before her beautiful clothes disappear and she becomes a common peasant. Cinderella loses a slipper in her hurry to escape by midnight and the prince finds it. He is determined to find to whom it belongs. He goes through the town checking everyone to see if it belongs to them. Finally, when it he tries it on Cinderella, it fits her perfectly. He realizes what class she is from, how she is poor, and how she is not from the upper class. This does not mean anything to him because he only cared for what was underneath. In the end, Cinderella is saved by her prince charming and no longer has to clean and cook for her evil aunt and cousins.
In a way, this story teaches girls that they can be who they are and not have to try to impress people for someone to like them. They do not need fancy clothes or have to dress a certain way to be accepted. True relationships, friendships, or love should not be based on social class, appearances, or clothes; they should be based on understanding the other person and accepting them for whom they are.
Also, these types of stories make it seem like the only way a woman or girl can get out of a difficult situation is to find a man and marry him. These stories make it seem like the man always saves the girl. There never seem to be any situations where the woman is valued for her brains and personality as a means of success. Success seems to depend on being beautiful so as to attract a man. Then, although the couple appears to live happily ever after, the woman is dependent on the man and the relationship seems shallow as it is never developed in these stories.
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1 comment:
When I read this, I thought it was interesting how you pointed out that this story (and probably others) can have good and bad points. Sometimes when analyzing things in class, we get too stuck on how everything is bad and really it's just a myth that the world is a nice place. But there really are morals that really are good in these stories. They're not completely sexist and antiquated. They have good things, too.
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