| Feminists have diagnosed the fairy tale as an unhealthy genre. To support their opinion, they point to the negative symptoms--namely, sexual stereotyping and gender-bias--in traditional fairy tales, those of and congenial with the collections of the Brothers Grimm. Feminist writers have attempted to cure the genre by retelling traditional fairy tales from a matriarchal perspective. Unfortunately, feminist versions--re-tales--exhibit more overt instances of sexual stereotyping and gender-bias than do the traditional tales. This analysis, based on a structural and psychoanalytical definition of the genre, focuses on why feminist fairy re-tales fail to be fairy tales. To illustrate the possibility of creating a narrative that does function within the genre, avoiding the use of overt imagery, an original fairy tale written and illustrated by the author is analyzed and, using the same criteria by which the feminist re-tale is redefined, deemed "healthy."... |
