02 Representation of Women in Fairy Tales

Abstract

Children love to listen to the stories and also enjoy reading colorful story books which take them to the world of fantasy and imagination where problems are resolved by a saviour, who is kind, good looking, cooperative, skillful and brave. These stories successfully manage to imprint some serious messages on tender minds in a subtle manner by perpetuating some serious gendered stereotypes. The stories promote stereotypical physical and mental attributes of male and female. The young readers are made to believe that there is a link between beauty and goodness and evil is always linked with ugliness. The ideal girls/women in stories are supposed to be pretty, tall, fair in complexion, shy, meek, submissive, and compliant. These impressions about gender remain with them for a long time. This paper critically analyses the Grim’s fairytales in terms of unequal gender treatment and focuses on their implications for the young learners.