Long flowing hair in the wind, a strong chiselled jaw with big muscles and a hearty smile, or perhaps no smile at all. Saving princesses, fighting dragons, befriending beasts and being cavalier. This generic stance of the male hero is discussed in Max Luthi’s essay The Fairy-Tale Hero; however, although the norm, this opinion of a male protagonist is not as immovable as it may seem. Max Luthi’s opinion of Grimm’s, Hansel and Gretel is that Gretel is the leading character and that the males are irrelevant to the outcome of the story. Instead of accounting for the different scopes of personalities of the males, Max Luthi dismisses them as non-instrumental characters. For example Hansel uses wit to defeat the evil witch and is detrimental in the survival of the two. Also The Father breaks the traditionalist view of a Male character, as he is pressured by his wife to rid of the children. Male characters in traditional fairy tales do not have to abide by a strict convention and may have different of roles including being witty or cowardly instead of being primarily brave and strong.
Intelligence can be a more useful tool than brute strength. Strength can be misleading. Strength is the primary choice of most who chose to become heroes; while wit allows a simple man to become a hero. Hansel, in the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, shares the leading role with his sister throughout the tale. Hansel is thrust into becoming the hero of the tale as he and his sister are left in the woods to die. Hansel, senses this and uses his intuition in order to find the way back home. “The moon was shining bright, and the pebbles around the house glittered like silver coins. Hansel crouched down and stuffed his pocket full of them.” (Grimm 143) This e...
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...d on Male leads in his critical essay, The Fairy-Tale Hero. The character of Hansel depicts the intelligence and quick thinking that can lead to great results. Being just a child, Hansel decides that he and his sister must be watchful in there escape instead of rash. The father is an example of cowardly behaviour. Being one of the few adults in the tale, he displays himself as a pushover with indecisive characteristics. This extremely opposes other tradionalist fairy tales; as it seems most of the adults portray a symbol of composure instead of naivety. Although this fairy tale is the furthest thing from reality, the characters, especially the males, show the ideals of typical human interactions. This refreshing take on an unrealistic circumstance is well ahead of its time and illustrates the plethora of roles that males can symbolize in fairy tales and in life.
In “The Company of Wolves” Carter employs conventions of gender construction and didacticism, which help establish a fairy tale space (Koske 323). Carter presents a world in which fairy tale notions of gender are upheld. In her paper, “In Olden Times, When Wishing was Having: Classic and Contemporary Fairy Tales”, Joyce Carol Oates explains that the girls and women in fairy tales “are the uncontested property of men”. Carter alludes to this male dominated reality in her tale (99). When the girl, Carter’s Red Riding Hood, insists on venturing into the woods, the narrator says that “[h]er father might forbid her, if he were home, but he is away in the forest, gathering wood, and her mother cannot deny her” (1224). There is perhaps no gendered element to a parent preventing his child from wandering into the wilderness, b...
...n” is a great example of an old myth or tale reconstructed and adapted for a modern audience in a new medium. It is a progression on one hand in its use of modern language, setting, and style but it is also the product of the old myths in that it is essentially the same on the thematic level. In addition, the level of self-awareness on the part of the narrator and, by extension, the author marks it out as an illustration of the very notion of evolutionary changes of myths and fairy tales. Adaptation is the solution to the fairy tale, and fairy tales have been endlessly changing themselves throughout history and, by some strange transforming or enchanting power endlessly staying the same.”
The fictional world of Grendel has great divides between male and female characters. While the novel is written in a fairly contemporary society, the world that Gardner constructs still follows under the same logic and principle as the ancient writings of Beowulf. The men are overtly masculine and tough, and the women are constructed with extreme passivity; there is marginal middle ground in both worlds. The constructions of how certain genders act are crucial to interrogate in order to understand one’s bias and become cognizant of the variety of gender roles men and women can endorse. The world of Grendel is full of symbols that construct men as violent, sexual creatures and women as passive objects.
Writing a story is pretty difficult. Writing a short story is even harder, there is so much that has to be accomplished; in both commercial and literary fiction! The plot, the structure, whether it has a happy, unhappy, or indeterminate ending. There must be artistic unity, chance, coincidence, rising action, climax, falling action. Most importantly there must be characterization. Characters make the story! “anyone can summarize what a person in a story has done, but a writer needs considerable skill and insight into human beings to describe convincingly who a person is” [page 168]
What is a Hero? In the Novel Mythology by Edith Hamilton it speaks of many Greek Gods and Goddesses, you get a clear outlook on many of the characters in the novel. Many of these gods fit some criteria on what a hero is. An Epic Hero is a character who is brave and takes risks to accomplish tasks not only for themselves but for the goodness of others. A Hero is someone who doesn't only do things to benefit themselves but benefits the people around them and goes on quests to establish their greatness. Who is also glorified by their community. In the Novel two characters by the name Theseus and Perseus meet many of these characteristics. Perseus is very brave and goes on a quest to capture an item that is very dangerous
For centuries, the tales that capture the youth of society or the adult 's mind are continually under speculation. To whom do the fairy tales of our literature belong, and have they been disassembled from their true meanings? Jack Zipes ' Breaking the Disney Spell and Donald Hasse 's Yours, Mine, or Ours? essays focus on the answers to this pressing question.
Destiny, fate, and even magic are key roles in helping to guide such heroes on their quest but ultimately it is either their wits, brain, or brawn that aid them to overcome the enemy.
Hansel and Gretel face challenges which involve more than their personal problems. The whole world is now threatened by the witches. The wider setting is also reflected in an ever-widening quest. Along the way, while battling the witches, the protagonists find the truth about themselves. They encounter their past and discover their real identities. They also learn to choose according to their personal morality. In fact, this second romance narrative circle deals with the protagonist’s coming of age.
Fairytales share similar themes in the manner in which they approach storytelling for the individual. In “The Great Fairy Tale Tradition”, Jack Zipes has selected and edited stories and categorized them by their respective themes, illustrating the different thematic elements found in each story. Every chapter includes a short introduction to the literary history of the selected stories and their themes. In the “Three Brother’s Who Become Wealthy Wandering the World”, “The Three Brothers”, and “The Four Skillful Brothers” each story explores the adventures and pursuits of brothers who venture into the outside world and are later faced with a test of skills in which they must prove their worth and courage. Although the three tales are incorporated into the thematic chapter of “Competitive Brothers” and share similar characteristics, there are contrasts between their respective stories.
In a society unbridled with double standards and set views about women, one may wonder the origins of such beliefs. It might come as a surprise that these ideals and standards are embedded and have been for centuries in the beloved fairy tales we enjoyed reading as kids. In her analytical essay, “To Spin a Yarn: The Female Voice in Folklore and Fairy Tales”, Karen Rowe argues that fairy tales present “cultural norms which exalt passivity, dependency, and self-sacrifice as a female’s cardinal virtues.” Rowe presents an excellent point, which can be supported by versions of the cult classics, “Cinderella” and “Snow White”. Charles Perrault’s “ The Little Glass Slipper” and the Brothers Grimm’s “ Snow White” exemplify the beliefs that females are supposed to be docile, dependent on the male persona and willing to sacrifice themselves. In many cases, when strong female characters are presented they are always contradicting in these characteristics, thus labeled as villainous. Such is the case of the Cinderella’s stepsisters in Perrault’s “Cinderella” and the stepmother in the Brothers Grimm’s “Snow White.” These female characters face judgment and disapproval when they commit the same acts as male characters. With such messages rooted in our beloved fairy tales it is no wonder that society is rampant with these ideals about women and disapprove of women when they try to break free of this mold.
In this essay, I examine what Zipes means by institutionalised, define what makes a fairy tale and evaluate how different versions of Little Red Riding Hood reflect the social ideology of the period.
A fairy tale is seemingly a moral fiction, intended mainly for children. A lesson in critical analysis, however, strips this guise and reveals the naked truth beneath; fairy tales are actually vicious, logical and sexual stories wearing a mask of deceptively easy language and an apparent moral. Two 19th Century writers, the Grimm brothers, were masters at writing these exaggerated stories, bewitching young readers with their prose while padding their stories with allusion and reference: an example of which is "Rapunzel." Grimm's "Rapunzel" is packed with religious symbolism, which lends a new insight to the meaning of this classic story.
Tatar, M. (1987). Sex and Violence: The Hard Core of Fairy Tales. The hard facts of the Grimms' fairy tales (p. 3). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Folktales are a way to represent situations analyzing different prospects about gender, through the stories that contribute with the reality of the culture in which they develop while these provide ideas about the behavior and roles of a specific sex building a culture of womanhood, manhood and childhood. This is what the stories of Little Red Riding Hood of Charles Perrault (1697) and Little Red-Cap of the Grimm Brothers (1812) show. This essay will describe some ideas about gender in different ways. First, the use of symbolic characters allows getting general ideas about the environment in the society rather than individuals. Second, it is possible to identify ideas about gender from the plot from the applied vocabulary providing a better understanding of the actions. Finally, the narrative perspective of the tales analyzes deeply the status of the characters referring to the thoughts among the society.
Throughout literature, authors employ a variety of strategies to highlight the central message being conveyed to the audience. Analyzing pieces of literature through the gender critics lens accentuates what the author believes to be masculine or feminine and that society and culture determines the gender responsibility of an individual. In the classic fairytale Little Red Riding Hood, the gender strategies appear through the typical fragile women of the mother and the grandmother, the heartless and clever male wolf, and the naïve and vulnerable girl as little red riding hood.