ENGL 2810Y Lecture 2: Princesses and Damsels In Distress 2
5 Feb 2019
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Point 2: adolescent girls in these stories model their futures on dead mothers, wicked stepmothers, and fathers. The trauma of blossoming sexuality (345-6) learning proper behaviour. [t]he stepmother and the bad fairy (346: dead mothers, fairy godmothers, incestuous fathers. Beneath romantic justifications of love" lurk actual historical practices which reduce women to marketable commodities (351: to get the prince: conventional female virtues, submission, assimilation (352) Point 3: good girls embrace sexist social roles & are rewarded; wicked, assertive women die. By punishing exhibitions of feminine force, tales admonish, moreover, that any disruptive non-conformity will result in annihilation or social ostracism. While readers dissociate from these portraitures of feminine power, defiance, and/or self-expression, they readily identify with the prettily passive heroine whose submission to commendable roles insures her triumphant happiness. (353) Point 4: young female readers are taught by fairy tale romances that conventional marriage is the only possible outcome open to them.
