The Princess Paradox Critique Alexandra Heinrich May 2012 English 120 In the article “The Princess Paradox” By James Poniewozik the author explains how “modern day” Cinderella stories have came a long way from what they once were. Although, no matter how hard we try, the Cinderella story will always end the same and our young girls will always want to be a princess, no matter how the princess is portrayed in the fairy tail. In this article, Poniewozik explains the changes that have occurred in the princess stories throughout the years, and the way that they have changed from one story to the next. He shows how the fairy tales and ideal women in movies went from being just a few years ago the “girls-kick-ass culture” to now the much more elegant fairy tales. A few years ago there were movies such as his examples “Charlie's Angels, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the Powder Puff girls” Where women were very fierce and self defendant.
Some of these depictions can be found in Ruth, Oliver Twist, East Lynne, and Tess of the d'Urbervilles. In the Victorian novel, women were stereotyped to ensure the dominance of the patriarchy. Presented as a role model and ideal for the family fireside readers, the sweet and beautiful angel is the arbiter of domesticity in the face of an uncaring world. In return for her loving devotion, she is rewarded by a marriage that provides her security and identity. In contrast, those women who are too willful or intelligent
While Disney did manage to stay pretty close to the basic story line, they had to water down many of the details in order to make a more child-friendly film; the enchanting characters, the wicked curse, the actual beauty being laid to rest, her meeting the love of her life, all the way to the defeat of the antagonist differ from the original. Princess Aurora, a.k.a. Briar Rose is the epitome of a Disney princess; she is innocently gorgeous and of course has a choir of animals that follow her every step. Talia, from Basiles’ version, does share similar qualities with Aurora, she is just as beautiful and naïve but lacks the animal entourage and isn’t actually a princess, she is the daughter of a lord. Prince Phillip is the dashing man who steals Auroras’ heart, but Talia captures the eye of King.
Explore the opening few pages of The Bloody Chamber in relation to the Gothic genre In the opening few pages of ‘The Bloody Chamber’ Carter explores the feminist notion of a female identity existing independently of, and not limited, by male identity. The opening line of the novel, ‘I remember how’ lays the foundations of a text that puts focus on the influence of the past, shadowing Gothic expectations. Furthermore, by letting the heroine tell her own story empowers the figure of woman by placing her in the traditional male dominated role of storyteller instead of confining her to the stereotypical ‘damsel in distress’. Carter bases ‘The Bloody Chamber’ on the fairytale legend of ‘Bluebeard’, however unlike a traditional fairytale, generally in third person, Carter challenges this stereotype by giving the heroine a voice further exploring the effects of empowering women. However, Carter uses the narrator to alternate between strength and passivity, although constantly lines the text with repeated images of female assertiveness.
Anyone who reads the novel will —— remember the female character—Jane Eyre and be very impressed by her rebellious spirit, which is discussed in this article through the analysis of her views on love. key words ：Jane Eyre view of love equality sincerity 中图分类号 ： I 106 文献标识码 ： A 文章编号 ：1672-1578 （2010)11-0001-03 Jane Eyre is one of the most famous classical works in English literature history. The main reason why it achieves astonishing success is that the young woman writer charlotte Bronte unprecedented puts a young governess who is plain featured and has low social position into the center stage of the literary palace. She successfully creates an ordinary woman who dares to revolt and dares to strive for freedom and equality. Jane Eyre is an orphan and comes from a poor family.
Angela Carter- The Bloody Chamber Discuss how Carter addresses the idea of a patriarchal society in 'The Bloody Chamber'. The 'Bloody Chamber', written by Angela Carter, is a series of short stories which follow fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood and Beauty and the Beast, and Carter puts her twist on them by challenging the way women are represented in these tales. She uses voluptuously descriptive prose and shows how the traditional tellings of fairy tales, which are often patriarchal, can become matriarchal societies. For example, the story 'The Bloody Chamber' is a retelling of Bluebeard, and Carter introduces a heroine to replace the stereotypical male hero; the girl is rescued by her mother unlike in Bluebeard where her brothers come to the rescue. Likewise, there is a different ending in 'The Company of Wolves', as the girl tames the wolf unlike the traditional tale of the wolf eating the girl and being rescued by the huntsmen who uses his axe to kill the wolf and save Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother.
Miss Lucy Westenra is Mina’s best friend and subsequently opposite in characteristics; she is a vivacious young woman who becomes Dracula’s first victim. Mina and Lucy embody many of the typical and traditional tropes of gothic literature, Mina being an example of purity and Lucy symbolizing the sexuality of women. Gothic tropes such as female sexuality and the “New Woman” are evident in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and characters Mina and Lucy can be compared to Coleridge’s Christabel and Geraldine. Miss Mina Murray and Christabel are both young women who share the gothic tropes of the ‘New Woman’, purity and subsequently both pursued by the antagonist (Domíngues-Rué 300). Mina is a schoolmistress engaged to be married who strives for self-improvement through her
Companies, such as Disney have twisted, tangled and tweaked the original stories to please the targeted audience, hence where our happy endings come from. My personal favourite fairytale when I was little was Cinderella. However, the genuine story originated in the 1st century BC, where Cinderella’s name was actually Rhodopis. The story was very similar to the modern story with the exception of the glass slippers and the famous pumpkin. But lurking behind this pretty tale is a sinister twist.
Although each of them stands for a typical kind of character, one mode sometimes agrees for overlapping on one another. 3.1 The Cinderella Mode Based on the folk tale embodying a myth element that the once neglected character finally experiences recognition or success after a long period of oppression, the Cinderella mode is the one that arouses the most adaption in either films or TV dramas over the decades, as Wu (2008) demonstrated in her PhD thesis. Far from the well-known original plot, modern variants of Cinderella find their way shinning not only by attracting the Prince Charming with their physical beauty and getting married, but also by achieving a certain degree of self-fulfillment. This becomes one of the supporting arguments when producers claim their TV dramas to be feministic works. However, the so-called self-fulfillment of these characters (like Nodame in Nodame Cantabile) have two premises in common: 1) their initial motives to striving for more virtuous visions are, directly or indirectly, encouraged by the main male characters, or the variants of the Prince Charming; 2) their raises in status in the end are to match the status of the Princes Charming.
In doing so, she draws attention to the ways her story is distinct from the legend of Bluebeard and, moreover, from fairy tales in general. Unlike a traditional fairy-tale narrator, generally an impartial third person, this narrator is the heroine herself. By giving the heroine a voice, Carter challenged the fairy-tale tradition of our seeing, from the outside, events befall an innocent girl. Letting the heroine tell her story empowers the figure of woman by putting her in the traditionally male-dominated roles of storyteller and survivor instead of relegating her to the role of helpless princess. In The Bloody Chamber, the heroine tells us personally about how her suffering became the source of her enlightenment.