Re-visiting and Re-reading Fairy Tales

[miyako73]

I

Fairy Tales and Gender Relations

"Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation saved her."


Children's sexual identification and concept of gender are not only learned at home and school. Besides electronic and circulated mass media, bedtime stories and fairy tales are also rich repositories of conventions and stereotypes that reinforce the hegemonic definition of what is feminine or masculine and influence children's knowledge of male-female relationship and gender relations. The rigid personification and the clear illustration of the behaviors and manners of the characters in tales and stories are influential and effective when it comes to children's idea on what a man or a woman should be. They start to learn sexual archetypes and gender stereotypes early from these materials.

I was four years old then when my father castigated me with his barrage of harsh words and forced me to realize I was not a girl. He was fed up of seeing me in my sister's clothes and my mother's makeup. My long hair and girlish manners also made him fuming mad. I received his sermon on gender with much hesitation and confusion. I thought he was lying or joking when he would tell me about "sissy guys" going to hell and teach me with manly things. Everything started when I refused to share the bathroom with my brother. I protested that I was a girl, and I did not want him to see my naked body. It even felt strange coming out from the bathroom not fully covered with a towel like how my mother would wrap herself.

It was through bedtime stories and fairy tales that I realized the truth behind my father's outburst and what I should be to please him. Sleeping Beauty enlightened me that I was my father's son. When one of the boys in the neighborhood punched me for being a sissy, I wished and waited for my prince, my hero. I felt I was a damsel in distress. Nobody came to my rescue because I was not like those beautiful princesses. I was not a girl. I faked my passing out in soccer camps, falling and collapsing in baseball fields, and drowning several times, but still no boy or man kissed me and gave me air like what I saw on TV showing a hot, muscular lifeguard at work. I thought mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was only for girls, thus Sleeping Beauty survived.

I always wondered why witches and sorceresses in fairy tales were always women. I thought men could also wear black, do black magic, and ride on a broomstick. Later I found out that these villainous characters should be women to make tales sound real. I learned that through my experience with my family. When I made my mother angry she would usually yell, call me names, and reprimand me with a threat of not buying what I wanted. When I did the same to my father, I usually got spanked and grounded. He wasted no word.

My sister too thought she could be a witch. When we had a quarrel, she usually tried to cast her make-believe spell. Her bad wishes for me ranged from my rose plant dying to not receiving dolls for Christmas. She made me cry one time when she did cast a spell with her umbrella that I would lose my bird. The next day, Ming, our Siamese cat, killed Tiny Candy. I was sad. My brothers were different when we fought. They usually pushed, kicked, or punched me without even saying a word. They were never like witches and sorceresses who only used words, curses, and spells to inflict cruelty and pain. They went straight to bloody action.

Fairies made me wonder too. Why they were always women baffled me until I heard boys in our neighborhood and at school calling me names like queer, sissy, fag, and yes, fairy. I thought a male fairy had to be gay. He should know basic ballet and look good in a tutu. Graceful moves and delicate manners came up in my mind when I thought of a fairy. Had Cinderella's fairy godmother been a gay man, she would have missed the ball and the chance to meet her prince. Her gown would not have been finished in time. Her fairy gay godmother would need days to design and sew her gown and make her shoes. Hair and makeup would take time too. If fairies were straight men, we would not have lovely fairy tales. These male fairies would use sticks or baseball bats instead of magic wands, and we would have gruesome bedtime stories for kids.

I did never like tales centered on boys or guys. I thought they were silly and outrageous. I wanted real men even then, not some funny-looking characters. Pinocchio was a wood, the other one was a walking bread, and Peter Pan seemed like a bird. I just found their stories boring and beyond my reality. Robin Hood had human qualities, but I did not find him desirable and hot at all. My brothers could make up different versions about his story. I found him brute and wild, and he had no class. I desired a cultured prince not a man from a ghetto. I did, however, find his socialist idea very interesting. I thought robbing the rich for the poor was cool. If Robin Hood were a woman, she would have been a maid or a prostitute not a thief, and it would be a totally different story.

I did ask my mother what if Cinderella were a man. She thought the story would not be the same. She was right. He would have no car to fix and plumbing to do. If horny, he would end up doing his stepmother and stepsisters. That would be too pornographic for kids. He could even kill them all to end his misery, but then that would be a story about murder. A male "Snow White" would have been a very short tale. All he needed was to bend down and ask one of the dwarfs to give him a Heimlich Maneuver. The chunk of a poisonous apple would have come out. He could think such an easy remedy. Men are innately resourceful. After all, they invented fire.

I once had a discussion with someone who said that if "Sleeping Beauty" were a man, he would be good-looking too. I definitely agree to his proposition, but a male "Sleeping Beauty" must be a handsome gay man and the muscular prince must be gay too. I don't think a frail, dainty princess in an intricate, long, puffy gown could slay a dragon or clear gigantic vines. There were no Survivor and Fear Factor then. The story would sound unreal, over-stretched, and shallow if the hero were a woman. The story of Beauty and the beast popped up in my mind too when I thought about men's heroism in fairy tales. What would be the story like if they were of a different gender? I think a female beast would be dead, and a handsome, patient village man would be celebrated a hero. Men, after all, are hunters for kill, conquest, and glory.

[JCamilo]

All this made me remember of an anime (Do not know if you care about animes at all) named Revolutionary Girl Utena, which was a version of sleeping beauty where the princess wanted to a be prince.

[Aylinn]

All this made me remember of an anime (Do not know if you care about animes at all) named Revolutionary Girl Utena, which was a version of sleeping beauty where the princess wanted to a be prince.
Yes, Revolutionary Girl Utena is the best series to watch if you want something about gender roles. There is also another anime that may be interesting - Princess Tutu. It's about a duck, turned into a human girl, who wants to save a prince.

[Delta40]

Good points on the gender roles Miyako. There is also never an evil stepfather in fairy tales either.... so women need to be rescued, men get to be heroes and women are also b itches

[Aylinn]

Good points on the gender roles Miyako. There is also never an evil stepfather in fairy tales either.... so women need to be rescued, men get to be heroes and women are also b itches
In the most popular fairy tales, yes, but there are less popular ones in which girls are the resourceful or powerful ones and rescue men. I'm certain that there are stories like that in Arabian Nights.

[Delta40]

In the most popular fairy tales, yes, but there are less popular ones in which girls are the resourceful or powerful ones and rescue men. I'm certain that there are stories like that in Arabian Nights.

lol you're probably right. I wasn't exposed to Arabian Nights as a child. Just the mainstream stuff.

In terms of fairy/fantasy and female heroes, I've only written one short story that comes close.

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40626

[JCamilo]

Scherazade is the heroine of 1001 Nights, she risks her life to face a psycho sultan and cure him. Vassilisa is her own saviour as well.

It all depends, in early versions of Blue Beard, the girl outsmarts the psycho. In Eros and Psyche she is not exactly rescued by males. Beauty and the best style of stories often have not rescuer for the girl.

A reason that some may point for evil stepmothers is that guys were more liked to marry a second time, so there is more stepmothers, but original snow white, the witch is the mother herself, not a stepone, a change made in XVIII to not scare kids.

There is evil guys roles too: jealous brothers, ambicious ministers, devil, etc. In traditional devil folk tales stories, the devil is often defeated by a woman (often a maid).

The genre faery tale, we must consider, is born from popular oral tales and women had something to say on those popular cultures. Usually the genre clash happens when the faery tales arrives to the city/enlighted word, when more masculine roles "correct", but the stories usually have lots of structures within, fruit of the tradition that modify the tales without registering an author.

[miyako73]

I wrote about the fairy tales that stole my innocence or shaped my worldview.

[miyako73]

II

Fairy Tales and Human Emotions

"I learned about love, sincerity, and sacrifice from Beauty, and the power of laser hair removal and plastic surgery from the beast."


I believe that children start to develop their own self-actualized, non-stimulated inner emotions ranging from fear to anger and sadness to happiness through bedtime stories and fairy tales. This early emotional development helps them acquire their own concepts and strategies in dealing with problems they encounter in their daily lives from childhood to old age. It also makes them wonder and understand their own feelings.

As far as I can remember, the earliest sources of my fear were devils, witches, dead people, thunder, forests, and others I usually had in my nightmares. I learned about their imagined existence from my mother's stories and saw their exaggerated images on children's books. The thought that dark places were scary was best illustrated to me by my mother's mention of cemeteries, haunted castles, eerie storms, dark caves, and even villainous characters who were usually in black, and dwelt in dim, mysterious, dangerous places.

I also feared my father's spanking and belts, but it was a kind of fear I consciously knew, and could control by behaving according to his strict code of discipline. Fearing a devil, for instance, lurked in the subconscious level of my mind. It had no tangible cause or material stimulus, and I could not control it. My parents used to scare me that a dead man would come and get me if I did not eat my greens or take my nasty Scott's Emulsion. They always succeeded that way. Scaring me with a whip did not usually work. I always warned them that if I got welts on my butt, I would show them to Mrs. Johnson at school, and that they would go to jail.

My childhood was like hell plagued with scary figures. There were zombies for not eating bitter gourd and Dracula for Brussels sprouts. For not taking my cough medicines, I got the witch flying on a broomstick. When they saw me wear my sister's dress was the scariest experience. I usually got spanked and threatened with a one-eyed giant or a jealous, ugly queen who would ruin my flawless face. These particular characters made me sweat and gasp for air at night when I had a nightmare. Ghosts were the cruelest ones. They made me hide under a thick blanket or lock myself inside a closet. It was a hell of a childhood, indeed.

Every time I read and heard the overused cliche, "and they lived happily ever after," was the only constant moment in my childhood that always made me feel joyful. It gave me hope and made me wish my own perfect prince. I dreamed of a white castle too. I also wished I had many pairs of glass slippers in different colors and styles. I thought I would have lots of chances finding my prince charming that way.

I also started to have my own view about God. I really thought He was so nice and powerful for answering all my prayers. When I begged him to intervene, He helped Cinderella. The fairy godmother appeared. God also answered my prayers when Sleeping Beauty woke up. I could not have forgiven Him, had Snow White perished from the poisonous apple. I cried and prayed hard for that one.

I was happy too when I got dolls and girly stuff from my grandmother, when my mother took me to a beauty salon with her, or when I was allowed to take ballet lessons by my father instead of Tae Kwon Do, but I knew the reasons why I became happy. When Belle turned a mean, ugly beast into a nice, handsome prince, I cheered. I was very happy. Though I didn't know why, I felt as if I won, and was vindicated. It seemed her triumph was mine too. Looking back, I think that's how I developed my notions of good and evil. I also started to understand and imbibe human virtues such as patience, honesty, sincerity, and perseverance. I understood humility in Cinderella's story, love and sacrifice from every prince who rescued a damsel in distress, and real friendship I felt between Snow White and his little friends. I saw the goodness of men among the kind-hearted fairies and the seven dwarfs and the wickedness among the scary witches, evil stepmothers, and cruel sorceresses.

My very first deep feeling of anger was towards my father when he told me I was not a girl. It felt like I was being told Doggie, our sweet Labrador, was not a dog. It did not make sense to me that time. I thought my father was joking or lying like what he did about Santa Clause. I did not sleep one Christmas eve trying to spy on Santa. I wanted to see him when he would fill my sock with toys. I did not want his robots and matchbox cars again. He did not arrive, but I caught my father putting a Batman and Robin duo in my pink sock. I found out the truth and protested that I wanted what my sister got- plastic cooking pots and pans for playhouse, cute umbrella, and Barbie dolls. I got none of them.

After my father forcefully turned my shoulder-length hair into army cut, gave all my dolls to my sister, threw away all my collection of red nail polish our neighbors and my girlfriends gave me, and pulled me out from my tutu to wear jerseys for soccer summer camps, I found out he was serious. I realized the painful truth but also learned about the nature of my anger. Most of my childhood anger after that were directed to Cinderella's stepmother, the witch who gave Snow White the poisonous apple, and the sorceress who cast a sleeping spell on a beautiful princess. I hated them extremely. I realized later that their characters existed, so I would know how to control my self-hate when I got tired of living and surviving and understood my hatred towards others when I was bullied and rejected.

My earliest experience of sadness was due to my mother's silence and tears. After my father reprimanded me for my girlish manners and behaviors, I sulked and banged my head on the floor. He wanted me to be like Superman. As far as I knew then, it would be like teaching Ming, our Siamese cat, to bark. He made me undergo his brutal boot camp of catching balls, climbing trees, and pushing gardening carts, instead of jumping ropes, playing house with my sister, and watering roses and daisies. I could no longer bear the cruelty of my father's intentions. I ran to my mother for help. It was so inhuman of my father for making me look horrible in a baseball cap. I thought my mother would understand me. I showed her my cuts and bruises from balls, gloves, and bats. I thought she would sympathize with me. She was just silent. Oftentimes, she would cry. She made me very sad.

Through my mother's bedtime stories and fairy tales, I fully understood sadness and learned to hope. I knew then that every after gloomy winter, spring comes and bursts into colors. I knew sadness from Cinderella's lonely nights of doing all household chores and Beauty's sorrow of being away from his father and alone with the beast. The seven dwarfs mourning for Snow White helped me understand the pain of losing someone. I also learned from Sleeping Beauty that even if death comes knocking, I should not lose hope.

[JCamilo]

There is a poem (in portuguese, Fernando Pessoa, I do not know if you can read spanish, if you can it is an interesting poem, i can link it for you if you want), in the poem he tells sleeping beauty and when the prince faces her before the kiss, he see that it is himself in the place of her. Just thinking of it, while thinking about the question you do to your mother.

[miyako73]

Please share the link. I know a free translation website. Thanks

[JCamilo]

Here, Fernando Pessoa's Eros e Psique:

http://www.insite.com.br/art/pessoa/cancioneiro/182.php

Conta a lenda que dormia
Uma Princesa encantada
A quem só despertaria
Um Infante, que viria
De além do muro da estrada.

Ele tinha que, tentado,
Vencer o mal e o bem,
Antes que, já libertado,
Deixasse o caminho errado
Por o que à Princesa vem.

A Princesa Adormecida,
Se espera, dormindo espera,
Sonha em morte a sua vida,
E orna-lhe a fronte esquecida,
Verde, uma grinalda de hera.

Longe o Infante, esforçado,
Sem saber que intuito tem,
Rompe o caminho fadado,
Ele dela é ignorado,
Ela para ele é ninguém.

Mas cada um cumpre o Destino
Ela dormindo encantada,
Ele buscando-a sem tino
Pelo processo divino
Que faz existir a estrada.

E, se bem que seja obscuro
Tudo pela estrada fora,
E falso, ele vem seguro,
E vencendo estrada e muro,
Chega onde em sono ela mora,

E, inda tonto do que houvera,
À cabeça, em maresia,
Ergue a mão, e encontra hera,
E vê que ele mesmo era
A Princesa que dormia.

[miyako73]

Removed. A devoted father complained and wanted to protect his children. I wish my nieces and nephews can understand even the most sophomoric poems in here. Congratulations again for your brilliant children.

[miyako73]

Sorry, folks. I still have to re-edit and revise these. I feel manic but tired today.

[bIGwIRE]

I don't want to offend you, or express a less than politically correct opinion here, but I think your imagination has run amok. Fairy-tales, while they do influence us, especially when young, shouldn't to the degrees you are suggesting. They are entertainment, not tutors to how you should or shouldn't live.

I agree that they do contain a measure of gender discrimination, but, many of them have a positive message. Entertainment, even if distasteful, shouldn't influence our lives to an enormous degree. That's your parents job to do, or fail at doing.

I think quite a bit of what you wrote, I won't quote it, scroll up, is a very large stretch of the imagination, to say the least.


I would also like to add, as a father who lets his young children read on sites that I consider proper, there should be a warning and an age verification restriction if posts like this are allowed.

There are other places online to broach those subjects. It doesn't seem right to have them in a literature forum.

Like I said, my young kids are very much into reading /literature, and would be attracted to a thread on fairy-tales.... just saying.

[miyako73]

First off, I despise political correctness. Second, this is not a sociological paper. I was rereading and revisiting fairy tales to examine my childhood, my life.

Literature is a powerful influence to a human mind- that of a child or an adult. Aren't revolutionaries in the third world countries influenced by Marx's Das Kapital?

As far as I'm concerned, fairy tales had molded me subconsciously when I was a child.

Lastly, if your children browse this site, congratulations. They are geniuses.


“The fairy tale, which to this day is the first tutor of children because it was once the first tutor of mankind, secretly lives on in the story. The first true storyteller is, and will continue to be, the teller of fairy tales. Whenever good counsel was at a premium, the fairy tale had it, and where the need was greatest, its aid was nearest. This need was created by myth. The fairy tale tells us of the earliest arrangements that mankind made to shake off the nightmare which myth had placed upon its chest.”

― Walter Benjamin

"Fairy tales are loved by the child not because the imagery he finds in them conforms to what goes on within him, but because—despite all the angry, anxious thoughts in his mind to which the fairy tale gives body and specific content—these stories always result in a happy outcome, which the child cannot imagine on his own."

Bruno Bettelheim (20th century), Austrian-born child psychologist. The Uses of Enchantment, "Fears of Fantasy," (1975).

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

― Albert Einstein

“Though now we think of fairy tales as stories intended for very young children, this is a relatively modern idea. In the oral tradition, magical stories were enjoyed by listeners young and old alike, while literary fairy tales (including most of the tales that are best known today) were published primarily for adult readers until the 19th century."

― Terri Windling

“We encounter fairytales as kids, in retellings or panto. We breathe them. We know how they go.”

--Neil Gaiman

[miyako73]

I just read that you're a youth minister. That says it all. Thanks for reading.

[bIGwIRE]

I'm not saying you are wrong. Only that some of what you wrote about is beyond taboo subjects, and, in my estimation, should be posted on a different website. In particular, which I'm sure you know, I'm refering to your posts about many illegal sex practices and their supposed promotion within fairy-tales.

It does sadden me greatly to think you are suffering, or have suffered, as your posts lead me to believe. I hope that horrible chapter is in the past, and now revisited only in retrospect.

My oldest child does browse this site, and is hungry to learn about literature, having read several childrens editions of classics.

If some of the things you discussed are appropriate to post here, there should be a warning for parents, like me, will know to steer our kids away, if that is our desire. Like a spoiler alert? Admins?


On a note in line with your posts, I do believe that much of it is not the fairy-tale molding people as much as it is our natural desire to interject our own life and thoughts into what we read, but I am far out of my realm on that opinion, so perhaps I type ignorantly. I just don't think fairy-tales contain underlying perversions, but a person may interpose them from their own mind onto everything they take in?

As I'm far from a therapist or psychologist, I'm not sure...

[bIGwIRE]

I just read that you're a youth minister. That says it all. Thanks for reading.



No, not a youth minister. I believe you misread my post. My post stated that I spent much of my youth, as in my early 20's, learning about the scriptures. My volunteer ministry is with adults who would like to become more familiar with the Bible, and helping with disaster relief, building projects, and the like.

Many things in your post are not just personally offensive to me, they are illegal in all civilized society on earth.

[miyako73]

Advise your kids not to go to the "homosexuality" thread. They talk about sodomy in that one. There is also a thread listing all recreational drugs you can think of. Warn them with that one also. What else? Oh! how about atheist threads that make fun of Jesus? I'm not sarcastic here.

You don't need to be a psychologist. If you know how to use google, you can easily find child or developmental psychologists who can educate you about fairy tales and child development or psychology.

[miyako73]

No, not a youth minister. I believe you misread my post. My post stated that I spent much of my youth, as in my early 20's, learning about the scriptures. My volunteer ministry is with adults who would like to become more familiar with the Bible, and helping with disaster relief, building projects, and the like.

Many things in your post are not just personally offensive to me, they are illegal in all civilized society on earth.

Literature, like art, should comfort the uncomfortable and discomfort the comfortable.

Necrophilia is illegal, but it is not illegal to write about it. Rape is illegal too, but there's a thread in here about rape where the victims are even blamed.

Don't worry; I already deleted it, and I'm sorry.

[bIGwIRE]

Literature, like art, should comfort the uncomfortable and discomfort the comfortable.

Necrophilia is illegal, but it is not illegal to write about it. Rape is illegal too, but there's a thread in here about rape where the victims are even blamed.

Don't worry; I already deleted it, and I'm sorry.

I see your point, and I do agree. It just took me a little by surprise when looking at a fairy-tale thread to see such a violent twist on those stories. We come from different places, and sometimes I struggle to see the beauty in another lands graphic terrain.

Please believe I wasn't trying to censor you, I only asked for a warning. Perhaps something like the spoiler alert? Thank you for being kind enough to edit. I would have rather seen a warning in the title, though, because now you haven't fully expressed yourself.

[JCamilo]

To be honest, Miyako visions of the tales are far from twisted. There is consirable bigger taboos breaking on the original versions and indeed the political correctness has reduce it but also serving a moralising purpose.

What to say, I think it is "The golden ***", that the girl runs because his father wants to marry her. This relationship father-daughter is part of Snow White, since the original versions is not about a step mother and her real mother.

Suggesting Sleeping beauty is necrophilia is rather new. In some versions the enchanting prince finds her, have sex with her, then leaves her pregnant and she wakes with kids.

Anyways, Myiako, another thing come to my mind, do you know Kawabata, japanese writer?He has two books that i recalled. One i think it is very good, The House of sleeping beauty, which tells about an old man that visits a place, sort of motel, where he pays to spend the night sleeping beside a girl. Everytime he goes is a new girl and the girl is always sleeping (drugged) and he cannot do much beyind hugging the girl. Another is The Lake, about a man with foot fetishes (his feet are ugly, so there is some psychological twist) and he also has some perverted acts like following woman, etc. The first book i like more, but Kawabata is very good, if you do not know.

[crusoe]

Were Fairy Tales written or told to entertain the child ? Are they told by half-tired parents to half-tired kids at Bedtime to "keep the brats quiet" ? Do parents actually know
what they tell or read into those underdeveloped brains ? I doubt it...
From a certain age on the TV takes over anyway and it'll go down the drain from there.
And then of course there are the Fairy Tales for the "Grown Ups", the ones like "Jones has a new car. What are you going to do about that ?" Doesn't that remind you of
"The Tale of the Fisher's Wife" ?