Snow White Stereotypes

In the past, fairy tales were used to help teach young children how to conduct themselves in everyday life. The moral of each story would serve as how not to act in life, and the hero or heroine of the story would represent what the children should model themselves after. In Snow White, the moral would be not to let jealously control you as it controlled the evil Queen. Although this is not a poor moral to take away from this story, it was told in the wrong way. Snow White is a sexist story that enforces gender roles, stereotypes, and portrays women as helpless. Snow White is portrayed as helpless to all of the Queens attempts on her life, and each time a man has to save her. When the evil Queen instructs the huntsman to kill Snow White

Throughout the story she only demonstrates two values; her appearance and her ability to keep a house. She is not portrayed as intelligent seeing as she falls for the Queens tricks each time. Even though the dwarfs explicitly instructed her not to open the door for anyone she still does. Even though she is harmed each time she opens the door, she continues to do so. This displays a lack of common sense and intelligence that women are typically attributed to. Although all of the characters are very flat in this tale, Snow White is exceptionally undeveloped. The only trait she holds is her beauty, and outside of that the reader knows nothing about her. The other main characters possess a variety of personality traits. The dwarfs are hardworking and kind creatures, the Prince is shallow, and the Queen is insecure, intelligent, and narcissistic. Snow White is only described as beautiful because she is intended to represent what is ideal in a women; beauty. In addition in promoting stereotypes and helplessness, Snow White also enforces gender roles. Once Snow White discovers the dwarfs cottage she takes on the role of housewife. While the dwarfs went to work, Snow White stayed at the cottage cooking and cleaning for them. The Queen lured Snow White out of the cottage with quintessential female item – the corset laces and comb enforced the idea that although women are pressured to look perfect, they're penalized if they appear to try too