Comparative Analysis: Sleeping Beauty in Different Tales

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Throughout the years there have been many different stories of Sleeping Beauty, but none have ever been as great as these two tales. The two stories are Briar Rose one by Jane Yolen, and one edited by Maria Grimm. Through comparing and contrasting these two tales, the reader finds that both stories had the princess fall asleep differently, the princess’ worldly positions differed in riches and poor, and how long they slept and who woke them up were almost the exact same. . In the edition of Briar Rose by Jane Yolen, at first glance a lot of the tale is the same, but after closely looking at it the reader can see they are different. One of the main differences spotted is how the princess was put to sleep by the fairy. In her version, the princess and everyone in the kingdom were put to sleep by a mist. Yolen states, “A mist. A great mist. It covered the entire kingdom. And everyone in it... Everyone slept…” (Yolen 61). In the story the evil fairy sent a mist on the whole kingdom putting everyone in the kingdom to sleep. When going over the this part in the book and reflecting, Gemma was actually in a concentration camp, and the mist was …show more content…

During Grimm’s story, the king and queen were so overjoyed that they birthed a daughter and they gave her anything she could have ever wanted or needed. Yolen did not let her princess have many things in her version. Grimm stated that “And on it went until the girl had everything in the world you could ever want.” (Grimm 131). As a true princess from royalty they were expected to have it all. This was important to the story because it let the reader know that she was really a true princess because Gemma was trying to hide her horrible past of evil with a beautiful fairytale. While these two stories have many differences, they are very alike in how the princess’ fall asleep and how they are woken

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