Fairytales

Fairytale

    Every fairytale is inclined to contain similar features, all falling under Webster’s definition: “A story in which improbable events lead to a happy ending, involving a protagonist who is put to a test” (Webster’s Dictionary). Furthermore, they have similar plots that tend to include a beautiful damsel in distress, a dashing hero, and a wicked antagonist who prevents the man and woman from happily being together. An example of this can be shown through the Grimm Brother’s fairy tale of Snow White, who is separated from both love and happiness by the evil queen.   Both the novel The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima, and Snow White, by the Grimm Brothers, share the similar themes of vanity and feministic portrayals, as well as the typical structure of most fairytales.

For hundreds of years now, women have been portrayed in a way that suggests they are the most passive of the two genders, and how “…physical beauty, grace, innocence, ignorance, and even silence (in Sleeping Beauty, for example) are all ways in which women can conquer the forces of evil, and by so doing, achieve the ultimate life victory--getting the guy” (Christian Brothers University). The classical stereotype that has been set upon women is that they belong in the kitchen, cooking and cleaning, while still looking flawless. In Grimm’s Snow White, though Snow White is a princess and a child, she is still taught that in order to be a good girl she must obey what she is told to do. This includes when the dwarves tell Snow White that “"If you will keep house for us, and cook, make beds, wash, sew, and knit, and keep everything clean and orderly, then you can stay with us, and you shall have everything that you want" (Grimm Snow White). Likewise, in The Sound of Waves, women are portrayed with the same amount of stereotype as in the Western fairytales. The women are the ones who have to do the household work, and Mishima even clearly stated facts like “Drawing water was women’s work”...