| Gender roles have always been and will always be, explicitly or implicitly, a topic of literature. The different ways in which gender roles are depicted in the literature of a given period reflect the political and societal state of affairs of that period. Literary works must therefore be critically analyzed to understand them in the context of their times. German fairy tales provide important examples of this.;In this thesis I will examine the literary genre of the fairy tales in order to illustrate how differently female and male authors approached the topic of the woman's role. To do so, I will compare Benedikte Naubert's "Ottilie" with the Brothers Grimm's "Marienkind." I will prove that Naubert's portrayal of women is much more mature and emancipated than that of the Brothers Grimm. Being thirty years older than them, Naubert began her work of collecting and writing ancient folk tales much earlier. "Ottilie" and "Marienkind" are both based on the same story, only that Naubert's rendering of the female protagonist and the length of the tale contrast the Brothers Grimm's version immensely. In my final chapter, I will examine how the differences in women's portrayal prove the early sensibility of female authors for emancipated literature over a hundred years ago. |
