Essay 2 by Emily Dong

FFT - Tosi 435

edong14 — 2024-10-20 19:33:17 UTC

“Many contemporary rewritings of fairy tales tend to challenge the conservative norms of social behavior and the implications of gender roles in fairy tales. Feminist critics and writers have collaborated in the critical exposure of fairy tales as narratives voicing, in the main, patriarchal values, both by providing critical readings which investigate the social construction of gender and by rewriting traditional fairy tales in order to produce non-sexist adult and children's versions.”

Question

edong14 — 2024-10-20 19:33:48 UTC

How does the zeitgeist contribute to the differences in each version of the story?
When reading these stories, here the husband/fiance is depicted as the villain and the girl playing the naive/curious one, so how does gender play a role in these stories? and does gender contribute to a bigger meaning? Would it make a difference if it was the woman who was the serial killer, and a man who was the curious one?

Claim

edong14 — 2024-10-20 19:33:50 UTC

By closely examining how fairy tales challenge the norm of “social behavior” and the “implications of gender roles,” (Tosi, 435) I will show you show how a male figure playing the villain in Bluebeard, Fitcher’s Bird, and Mr. Fox contributed to a bigger meaning of the tales and how the story may have been perceived differently if the villain were a woman.

Fairy Tales Typically are Feminist by Nature

edong14 — 2024-10-20 19:36:58 UTC

Mention how fairytales are feminist by nature. How they use female figures as villans, which can be taken as feminist as we're putting a female figure in power instead of a male one. It's a female who's able to invoke such chaos in the story. But with these stories, the male figure is the villain.

Context

edong14 — 2024-10-20 19:40:20 UTC

mention the common theme of how curiosity can save you
incorporate pandora's box
to be blissfully unaware or to be knowledgeable and aware
maybe??? mention how fairy tales take after/incorporate features of the culture that they're written in and how that contributes to the reason behind writing the tale
introduce the role gender has in fairy tales

Female Serial Killer Statistics

edong14 — 2024-10-20 19:46:07 UTC

"Only 8.6% of known U.S. serial killers are female."

Serial Killers

edong14 — 2024-10-20 19:48:11 UTC

One interpretation of the following texts is to just not surround yourself/marry a serial killer. And statistically, there are more male serial killers than female. And even during the time when these tales were written, it was probably rare to find a female serial killer, so maybe this has something to do with posing the male figure as a serial killer. Can also mention how it's like stereotypically "unnatural" for a woman to have violent tendencies. It's seen as taboo for a woman to be violent.

Fairy Tale Liberation - Lurie

edong14 — 2024-10-21 16:44:17 UTC

"These stories suggest a society in which women are as competent and active as men, at every age and in every class."
women are often more powerful than men. Real help for the hero or heroine comes most frequently from a fairy godmother or wise woman; and real trouble from a witch or wicked stepmother. With a frequency which recalls current feminist polemics, the significant older male figures are either dumb, male-chauvinist giants or malevolent little dwarfs."

Some Day My Prince Will Come - Lieberman

edong14 — 2024-10-21 16:48:05 UTC

"these stories focus upon courtship, which is magnified into the most important and'exciting part ot a girl's life, brief though courtship is, because it is the part of her life in which she most counts as a person herself"

Fairy Tale's Focus on Marriage - Anti-Feminist

edong14 — 2024-10-21 17:06:06 UTC

While, fairy tales can be considered feminist by nature, many fairy tales revolve around the notion of the girl getting married. Seen in all 3 of the tales, the girl is either on her way to getting married, or is married to the male figure in the tale, which emphasizes the that that women live to get married, which in turn makes the women seem kinda weak.