Do Fairy Tales Train Women to be Victims?

Fairy tales have attracted a range of criticism since their first publication in the nineteenth century, with varying feminists, Freudians and Post-colonialists interpreting the works of the Brothers Grimm. Jack Zipes identified that we often ‘refer to myths and fairy tales as lies [but] these lies are often the lies that govern our lives. [They] are historically and culturally coded, and their ideological impact is great’ (1994, p. 4). With this in mind, it is therefore worrying that works such as Susan Brownmiller’s book Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (1975) suggest that fairy tales train women to be rape victims, with her claim that Little Red Riding Hood is no more than a rape parable. This article examines three fairy tales from the 1994 Puffin Classics edition of the Brothers Grimm that were adapted by Disney to assess whether her claim holds true, and if fairy tales are disguised carriers of toxic patriarchal myths. <a href="https://medium.com/@thomas.barrett1998/do-fairy-tales-train-women-to-be-victims-9508b482efce">Read More</a>