Are Fairytales Sexist?

So, I recently posted a short video about the ‘damsel-in-distress’ trope, and I was griping about how it seems as though Hollywood thinks that this comes from fairytales. And of course, the problem with this trope is that when its in a story, the female character is essentially a treated like a prop. She has very little agency, and mainly is just a pretty prize for the male character to win through various adventures. That’s obviously not great storytelling and more than a little chauvinistic. And look, there’s no denying this trope is out there–I can remember watching Popeye cartoons which did this constantly with poor Olive Oyl. Bluto grabbed Olive Oyl and ran off with her, then Popeye had to do all kinds of inane stuff to rescue her. Classic did-damsel in distress stuff. And if you get that joke, you know another source of this trope, mentioned by one of the commenters on my video–Disney movies. And I agree that using this trope doesn’t give much agency, reality, or complexity to the female character who is relegated to this role. But when fairytales and myths get blamed for this, that’s when I raised an eyebrow and made that video. The question I was asking was–does this trope actually come from fairytales and myths? Or is it from somewhere else? A more modern sexist trend in storytelling? 

Fairytales?

So the short answer that I gave in the video about the damsel in distress is, no–this trope is not really a thing that is widely found in fairytales around the world. But one of my viewers “pinkofparadise” had a very thought-provoking response to this video that required that I make a longer video to answer it. So here we are. So what I’m going to do here is respond to each of the insightful points pinkofparadise made, because I think they are worthy of more serious consideration, discussion, and comment. Do I agree or disagree with this person? Stick around and find out! So first, pink says that one source of the DID trope is, and I’m quoting here:

“12th-century Arthurian literature. The trope does not require a woman to act as a helpless damsel. It operates at a structural level where a female character becomes the CONDITION that allows a male character to prove courage, devotion, or redemption. Feudal society tied male identity to visible acts that proved status and honor within a rigid hierarchy. Courtly love traditions idealized women as symbols of virtue, which positioned them as narrative anchors while men performed the action (internal or external) that defined the story.”

So here, the commentor is basically saying that one source for the trope comes from the courtly and knightly romances of the high middle ages. I don’t disagree with that. I would point out that these are not the same thing as fairytales or folktales. Of course, pinkofparadise did not imply that they were, so this is not a dig against their comment. I’m saying this more for clarity than anything else. Folktales and myths derive from oral traditions that are passed down, in some cases for thousands of years. And one of the things that happens to fairytales is that they often become more abstract and general. This is something observed by Marie-Louise von Franz, and of course other scholars of folktales such as Max Lüthi, Hans-Jorg Uther and many others. Fairytales tend to lose much of their local color with time, turning into stories more about abstract roles and very vaguely described characters in progressively more universally recognizable situations. So, pink points out here that Arthurian literature, along with the whole body of courtly romances and knightly escapades that were composed and many of them written down, DID contain this cultural ideology behind them, and the DID trope is very much a part of it. So, pink is correct.

But What About Fairytales?

Then, pink goes on to say:

“Snow White remains passive and consistent and her suspended state creates the moment that allows the prince to resolve the story. Beauty and the Beast follows the same pattern. Belle stays kind and consistent, while Beast carries the internal conflict and transformation, with her role functioning as the condition for his redemption.”

Now here, pink is no longer discussing courtly romances or local legends but fairytales, and so this is where I disagree with their opinion on the applicability of the previous interpretation to Snow White and Beauty and the Beast. That is, I think it is an accurate assessment when it comes to the legends and romances, but not with the fairytales. But stay with me here, because my thoughts on this are a bit complex. Now, I do agree with the observation that neither Snow White nor Belle exhibit any appreciable change of character. But that is different from saying they are DIDs. They are most definitely not. Therefore pink is addressing something different from what I was talking about in my short video. Pink is talking about a deeper level of analysis in which we explore whether or not female characters are allowed to experience change and growth, or if they are only ever allowed to be props that catalyze male change and growth. I didn’t get into that in my video. Though I do agree, it is a fascinating question! Another issues is that pink says that these characters are “passive and consistent”. These are not the same things. Belle is not passive, and before she drops not-dead, Snow White isn’t really passive either! They are consistent, however, so I do agree with that observation. 

To understand where we agree, though, let’s continue with the heart of pink’s comments:

“Feudal storytelling gives the male character internal depth and transformation, while the woman functions as a prop, symbol, or condition, even when she carries traits like kindness and virtue and even when she carries the airtime. Rumpelstiltskin frames Miller’s daughter as a figure shaped by pressure, obedience, and survival rather than independent agency. The story uses her predicament to reinforce expectations about how women should behave, and she does not even have a name, which reduces her to an idea of what a woman should be rather than a fully realized character. What actual arc does she have, or does she remain consistent while everything happens around her?”

Agree...but also Disagree

Ok, so first, I do agree with this assessment, but only insofar as it applies to medieval courtly romances, not to fairytales. The example of Rumplestiltskin is a good one to examine to show why I disagree–so, first, the fact that the daughter in this story is not given a name does make sense as a sign that she is not valued for her individuality…but only IF this is somehow different from the norm in fairytales. In other words, this criticism only makes sense if only females go nameless. But the problem here is that nameless characters are very commonplace in fairytales, both male and female. Characters in fairytales, as I mentioned earlier, are often stripped down to their bare minimum of cultural specificities. That’s part of their staying power–they can easily translate across cultures. Most of the time, characters are just “the farmer’s son”, or “the king”, or “the princess”. This, again, is likely an artifact of how these stories get pared down in the process of oral transmission through sometimes hundreds of generations, to the point that they actually resist being changed–meaning folklorists often find that if a folktale is changed by a particular storyteller, the next time it is told, it will revert to its apparently more stable original state.

Another issue, at least with regard to Rumplestiltskin, is similar–saying that the story is about forcing women into sexist socially prescribed roles implies that fairytales don’t do this for young men–but they do. In the Frog Princess, for example, the youngest son (also nameless) is forced by his father to “go out into the world and acquire the finest jewelry or be disowned and penniless”. One could argue in a similar vein to pink that this is reinforcing a sexist gender norm that men are not valuable except through what they can acquire externally. But I think that would be overthinking it in this case, too. Rumplestiltskin is more about how excessive caregiver expectations stifle creativity. So it needed a female character because the little magical dude targeting her firstborn is an incredibly powerful symbol of that very thing. But in other instances, characters of both genders are always geing dropped into impossible situations requiring pressure, obedience, and survival. So it’s likely that this story is not really about excessive expectations put on women ONLY, but more about excessive expectations on young people, and the character of this story happens to be female because females are capable of the ultimate creative act: giving birth, and so putting a male in this wouldn’t work as well. In any case, I think it’s overstating to say that it’s an allegory for sex-specific social constraints or that it’s a useful tool for oppressing underprivileged persons. In any case, to say the miller’s daughter in Rumplestiltskin remains unchanging misses some nuance in the tale, anyway. She is at first, very passive, yes, but then when faced with the ultimate challenge–losing her beloved child–she steps up and figures out the little man’s riddle, in some versions traveling the world high and low, thereby going from miller’s daughter to heroic queen of all the land–no dude needed. By contrast, ALL the male characters in this story are static–the king and the magical guy. I should note here, too, that not all versions of this story have her as the miller’s daughter. Sometimes the caretaker who puts her into this awful predicament is her mother. So there’s that.  

Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast is another counter-example to the idea of helpless DIDs that are merely there to be subject to patriarchal gender norms: here, the beast tells Belle to go back on the promise she made, even though it may cost him his life because he cares enough about her to go visit her ailing father. And because he does that, he breaks the curse. Doesn’t this send the opposite message–stop oppressing women if you want to be happy? 

But what about the accusation that Belle is static and a mere prop for the beast’s transformational arc? That part of the critique is accurate–in this case. But fairytales don’t deal with everything–they are focused. And if I’m right about that, then there should be out there a story that does the opposite thing: have a static male character that catalyzes the change of a female character. 

For that, look no further than the ATU type 307 tale, The Vampire Princess or Princess in the Coffin is ATU. This story, versions of which are found all over Europe, but also in Rumania, Poland, Russia, India, and East Africa, tells the tale of how a childless couple, after making a hasty wish or are cursed, have a demonic daughter, who demands that when she dies there must be a night-watch at her coffin. The dead girl rises every night and eats the man on guard. A soldier (or sometimes simply a boy) learns from an old man what to do: hide from the girl, then lie down in the coffin to keep her from entering it, at which point he convinces her to say a prayer, cast a spell, speak to a spirit, or sing a hymn, depending on which version, at which point the girl is disenchanted, has all the evil leave her, and she becomes a cured young woman. This story, therefore, mirrors Beauty and the Beast, in the way that the girl transforms from a horrible demonic vampire into a fully human girl, and as an added bonus, the men she killed come back to life. So, you know, no blood, no foul. Convenient. In any case, the vampire princess is in the place of the beast who has the radical transformation, and the boy is the one who is constant, noble, and good, and is essentially the prop through which the vampire girl changes–though to be fair, nobody is passive in either this or Beauty and the Beast. But with respect to being the “prop”, the boy is the prop here.

Rapunzel

Another example is Rapunzel. Now, to be fair, pink didn’t mention Rapunzel, but it bears discussing here. In that story, the prince is the one who doesn’t change and winds up being the catalyst. Rapunzel starts off imprisoned, yes, but the prince comes along, not to rescue her, because she rescues herself, but ultimately he is the catalyst which transforms  her into a mature woman. The prince here just shows up and climbs into her tower. He’s kind of useless otherwise. At this point, the witch catches him and yeets him into the thorns where he goes blind. Rapunzel then rescues herself and finds a home in the forest, until the prince blunders into her home and then she heals him with her tears. To be fair, Rapunzel is quite complex, but at least with respect to the present discussion, it’s obvious that Rapunzel is the much more active character here, and her transformational arc much more profound. The prince is just a lovesick dude and that doesn’t really change. 

So what I hope I’ve demonstrated here is that fairytales, like I said in the video, are usually way too fantastical to be very good at doing what they are sometimes accused of doing, which is reinforcing patriarchal gender norms. I think they go much deeper than that, right to the heart of what is truly universal in the human soul. The cultural variations that happen to us are largely stripped away from 

And yet...

Nevertheless, pink’s observation that many of the romances they mentioned treat the female character as a prop or catalyst, not as a genuine character. This is likely due to the fact that such stories were primarily aimed at young men. So then, what does all this tell us about our main question–are fairytales sexist in this respect? Well, I would say that if that were true, then it would be difficult to provide counter-examples in the storehouse of popular fairytales that show the opposite of the story beats pink brings up here. But as you can see, it’s not really that hard to do that, at least for fairytales. Pink ends the comment with these words:

“I encourage you to look at this trope again across folklore and notice how often the woman becomes the condition that enables the male character’s arc, regardless of how morally strong or virtuous she appears.”

Did I Give it a Fair Response?

So, I hope you can agree that I have at least given this challenge a good college try, and was able to provide evidence, at least with respect to fairytales, that there are examples of male and female characters enabling each others arcs. But I want to reiterate that, in defense of pink’s very thought-provoking comment, that the examples given in medieval romances are much closer to the given interpretation. I think that this is likely due to the fact that romances, legends, and national epics are much more likely to incorporate culture norms in them than fairytales and myths–which go through the grueling process of oral telling and retelling that tends to strip away such finery over time. For this very reason, Marie-Louise von Franz argued that fairytales were our clearest view of how complexes and even archetypes often function given universal situations. The disadvantage of them is that they tend to be short, though for this reason they are very concentrated symbolic expressions. Literary tales, however, like medieval romances, national epics, legends like Beowulf, and so forth, have a lot more cultural material in them. Which is interesting from that perspective, of course. 

In any case, I want to thank pinkofparadise very much for providing the catalyst for this very interesting dialogue. But what do you think? Do you think I’m right, or if not, what did I miss? I love discussing this stuff, and I’ve always found that I come away from discussions from such obviously intelligent commenters having learned a lot.

Catch you next time.