Request: Fairy tales
I have always loved reading fairy tales. Lately, I've started reading them with my daughter. I'm finding it a bit difficult, because I'm not at all comfortable with many of the attitudes in them about social roles. I'm especially uncomfortable with the casual assumptions so many fairy tales make about women's lives being entirely centered around men, or marriage to men.
So I'm looking for fairy tales to read that have female protagonists and that don't present these women as being primarily focused on men or marriage as their main jobs. Ideally, I want ones that pass the Bechdel test.
(Note: 'The Paper Bag Princess' is out, because the whole story is about how she has a pathetic git for a boyfriend, and gets rid of him. Somehow, that really undercuts her dragon-defeating exploits for me.)
Does anyone have any favourites?
Added from a Facebook comment I made today:
There are a lot of stories that react against the traditional versions, presenting better alternatives, but what I'm looking for is stories that actually *don't present* the 'traditional' ideas (which are not the only traditional ideas out there, just the ones popular in that role at the moment).
The reactive stories, like 'The Practical Princess', 'Ever After', and 'The Paper Bag Princess' are so clearly reactions that they are likely to teach both messages: the kids may learn that there are other options, but they'll know that the 'standard' model is for a non-agent woman to be saved by a man because of how she looks or how docile she is.
Right now, Ada doesn't seem to know that. I'd like to give her other stories first, preferably traditional ones, before I present the popular Western-canon ones. That way she'll already have other options in her head and will hopefully see the problematic ones as the weird variants, not the norm.
Hansel and Gretel has versions that are fine, I just realised. (It depends mainly on whether the stepmother is to blame and the boy saves them, or the parents are to blame and the girl or girl-and-boy save them) So that's two on my list so far (East of the Sun, West of the Moon, and Hansel and Gretel.
So I'm looking for fairy tales to read that have female protagonists and that don't present these women as being primarily focused on men or marriage as their main jobs. Ideally, I want ones that pass the Bechdel test.
(Note: 'The Paper Bag Princess' is out, because the whole story is about how she has a pathetic git for a boyfriend, and gets rid of him. Somehow, that really undercuts her dragon-defeating exploits for me.)
Does anyone have any favourites?
Added from a Facebook comment I made today:
There are a lot of stories that react against the traditional versions, presenting better alternatives, but what I'm looking for is stories that actually *don't present* the 'traditional' ideas (which are not the only traditional ideas out there, just the ones popular in that role at the moment).
The reactive stories, like 'The Practical Princess', 'Ever After', and 'The Paper Bag Princess' are so clearly reactions that they are likely to teach both messages: the kids may learn that there are other options, but they'll know that the 'standard' model is for a non-agent woman to be saved by a man because of how she looks or how docile she is.
Right now, Ada doesn't seem to know that. I'd like to give her other stories first, preferably traditional ones, before I present the popular Western-canon ones. That way she'll already have other options in her head and will hopefully see the problematic ones as the weird variants, not the norm.
Hansel and Gretel has versions that are fine, I just realised. (It depends mainly on whether the stepmother is to blame and the boy saves them, or the parents are to blame and the girl or girl-and-boy save them) So that's two on my list so far (East of the Sun, West of the Moon, and Hansel and Gretel.