Criticism Of Sleeping Beauty

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The Self-effacing and Compliant Sleeping Beauty
The selfless and subservient nature expected of women in the past have impacted the writing or portrayal of females throughout literature. In Charles Perrault’s fairy tales, not only does he demonstrate how willingly a woman will sacrifice her freedom of power by giving the powerful females of status servitude, but Perrault also illustrates how the role of dominant females is threatened when challenged. From Cinderella, or the Glass Slipper, with the stepmother punishing and degrading Cinderella for making “…her own daughters appear the more odious,” thus partaking in the matriarchal balance of evil overtaking the vulnerable and humble (Perrault 2). To Little Red Riding Hood, questioning how her …show more content…

In The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods, the social and internal conflicts of Sleeping Beauty versus the 8th Old Fairy, the Ogress, fate or destiny, and she reflect how she is obedient to others so willingly as well as how …show more content…

Notably, the Old Fairy is mistakenly not invited to the princess’s christening, but the King and Queen’s daughter is cursed with death from a spindle as a result. Although a child may see this as evil harm, Rochère explains how Charles Perrault’s parallel of how the royal family’s “…breach of étiquette…” towards the Old Fairy mocks “…the strict social hierarchies, rigid codes, and vanities of his own times and milieu” (136). Hence, Sleeping Beauty’s social conflict to the norms of reality in Perrault’s societal realm persists on trying to break through the ridiculous protocols. On the contrary, the Ogress mother-in-law wants to dictate what is happening with the lives of her kingdom and with Sleeping Beauty never meeting the Ogress before marriage, due to being hidden by the Ogress’s son, leads to craving for the taste of her daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. In other words, the threat of these two leading female characters in The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods “…feel slighted by a patriarchal order: the fairy, by the king who failed to invite her to the christening party; the ogress, by the son who failed to acknowledge her primacy when he covertly married the young-but-old woman who promptly bore him two heirs” (Knoepflmacher). Under those circumstances, the

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