Subversive Female Characters

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Subversive Female Characters In Alison Lurie’s “Folktale Liberation” she claims that the true folktales are subversive meaning that women and the middle class have power, they are original and clever. In the film “Grease” the main female character Sandy is exactly what Lurie would view as being beautiful, smart, and precisely the character a man would centralize as his female role. Lurie proves that the old folktales orally told to children in the past by women are much more powerful than those re-written by men now. She praises women empowerment and does not like them being downplayed. Although this film emerges to not be subversive by the end of the film you come to realize that with time and learning on Sandy’s part it truly is. Despite the attitude of Sandy at the commencement of the film (Grease) later in the film she becomes the revolutionary character Lurie would praise. In the summer, Sandy meets this clever, witty, and in her eyes kind prince charming; but when her family forces her to move her senior year to his high school their then summer fling becomes apparent to all his friends he assures his previous inconsiderate attitude by automatically becoming the macho he acts like around his friends proving to her that he is not the kind of guy she wants. By contrast Lurie enjoys female characters that show no weakness and are content with being on there own and strong. Sandy then begins dating the “perfect man” at her high school, yet still finds herself longing for the extra zip Danny’s attitude entails. Her new boyfriends “pleasant adult society…” (Lurie 335) behavior was not what she wanted. As a result all the critics that believed folktales to be unrealistic realized that once children grow up they soon find the world to be imperfect and not what they expected. “The contrast continued in maturity when women were often more powerful than men”
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