Tales of Fascination

The Independent wrote an article on October 18, 2018 entitled “Five Reasons To Stop Reading Fairytales to your children Now!” which is not only misleading but dangerous. I’m going to deconstruct their entire article with logic and then give you eight rebuttals in support of reading these stories to your children.

Independent: “Stories like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast are so ingrained in popular culture that it can be all too easy to overlook the damaging ideologies that they perpetuate via misogynistic characters, degrading plot lines and racial uniformity.”

Bold statement. Let’s lose the inflammatory language and restate what they are saying in plain words without the derogatory language. Words like “misogynistic” are used purposely to get you to sympathize with a side because, if you rebut it, you too must be misogynistic, true? No, not true at all. Here’s another way to state this sentence. “Stories like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast are so ingrained in popular culture that it can be all too easy to overlook the negative ideas they portray, such as characters who hate women, plots that reduce segments of society, and everyone is of one race.”

So it’s not okay to write about characters who hate women any more? We’re not supposed to teach our children these people exist, possibly avoided in some situations, and should be corrected? Apparently, the idea of “understanding evil” is no longer in vogue. Is it no wonder that evil runs rampant in the world? You can bet there are others teaching their children to hate. When your child encounters that ideology, they will be defenseless to contradict it. If we censor our children from stories with hateful characters, we are doing a grave disservice to them.

And who are these people? For some reason, the authors of the article connect them with the princes and generally all the male characters. Really? I’ve read these stories multiple times and fail to see how the prince hates Cinderella—because you know the prince is a misogynistic bastard…really? Please read me the line where the prince exhibits these characters.

Degrading plot lines. Degrading to women? To dwarfs? To whom exactly? 

Racial uniformity. Okay, please reread Grimm’s version of Cinderella and tell me what race she is. Guess what? Nothing says she’s caucasian. Fairy tales are short and lack detail in order to be relevant to a wide swath of people. Perhaps instead of complaining about these stories, the authors should sit down and actually read them instead of going to see a Disney movie and assuming they know the stories.

Independent: Women are passive damsels who can only be saved by men.

I wrote about Rapunzel before when it comes to princes saving princesses. If the authors of this article can tell me exactly in which way the prince “saved” Rapunzel, I’d like to know. Hint, he doesn’t.

Let’s take Snow White. What saves her exactly? A jarring as she’s mounted in a cart and then apple flies from her mouth (read it, that’s what happens). The prince never truly “saves” her. Her evil stepmother is not killed by dwarfs or princes but destroys herself—a great lesson that when you do evil to others, you often do evil to yourself as well. Did they even read the story, or did they assume the prince kissed her and awoke her?

Independent: Marriage is the ultimate reward

I see. So we should all stop reading Shakespeare too as many of his plays end in marriage. I guess Orlando “saves” Rosalind because that’s how As You Like It Ends too. Let’s stop reading Shakespeare because Rosalind’s ultimate reward is marriage. (That’s sarcasm. Go read it.)

This is a traditional ending of the comedy (versus the tragedy). Yes, it’s a cliche but it’s not meant to be derogatory to women. Plenty of novels end with a marriage.

Independent: Not only does this present marriage as the sole goal for the male and female characters, which subsequently characterises them as vapid, but it totally abhors the value of professional, financial, and social success, all of which seldom feature in these narratives.

No, it doesn’t at all. It only means someone gets married. As a married person, this smacks as prejudice that one cannot find happiness in marital state. I’m highly offended. The stories never say that “if you’re not married, you’re not happy” (reread Rumplestilskin).

I love this phrase “but it totally abhors the value of professional, financial, and social success.” Let’s examine one of the most popular fairy tales which this article targets—Cinderella. One of the most-loved elements of this tale is the hard-working, slave of a waif rises above her abusive sisters. Mistreated, she works hard at her chores (i.e. profession) and finally gets her chance to go to the festival. While the fairy tale doesn’t come out and say “she’s a hard worker and her efforts pay off later when she meets the prince,” the tale clearly implies it.

Independent: Love is seen as a concept which happens when you find somebody to marry and not seen as evolving philosophical concept.

There’s a simple answer to this. Love is not an evolving philosophical concept. Love is a very real, emotional experience, indescribable, made evident in one’s spouse, friends, and children. Even that definition falls far short of what it actually is. Love is not something you sit back and observe, scratching one’s chin, and reflect on impassively. Love is not cold or dull. Love is warm and bright. And marriage is not the end goal of love—not at all—but people express their love in the ceremony of marriage which I see as a good symbol to the world.

Independent: Lack of racial/physical/sexual diversity

Since diversity isn’t present in these tales, the tales must be pushing an agenda of homophobia or bigotry? The absence of inclusion of this diversity doesn’t imply the support of that idea. In the future, there will be another marginalized segment of society, and guess what, today’s inclusive authors will have overlooked them, and they will become the “ists” of a future generation.

You could make the same statement about most novels of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Read Dickens, Bronte, Hemmingway, Steinbeck. Were these exemplary authors a bunch of bigots too, promoting their regressive ideas? It’s a good thing we have more diversity in modern novels, but don’t look down your nose at past literature because of it. As I said above, one day you’ll find yourself tabelled “bigot” in some way. 

Independent: Female characters are either bound to the home…or they’re evil step mothers / sisters / witches

Now, either I’m misunderstanding the term “bound to the home” so I will try to answer this in both ways. First, “bound to the home” means they never venture out from their home. I don’t think this is what the authors mean, but I’ll respond to this claim to cover all bases.

In this case, Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Thumbelina, Penta, the Marsh King’s Daughter all venture out of their homes. Some are forced, admittedly, but most choose to go and they survive and are stronger when they do (a good lesson in female empowerment).

Or perhaps the authors suggest “bound to the home” means a female character is a domestic. She’s the cook, maid, etc. of the household. Fairy tales were written before the industrial age. Sorry to say, both men and women were bound to the home in most ways. Oh, but the men were the farmers or hunters you say. They ventured out every day. Yes, and the women did too. If they weren’t the hunters and farmers themselves, they were the gatherers, gardeners, shoppers.

Are all women domestics in fairytales? The female lead in Rumplestilskin is a royal spinner, the Little Match Girl is a merchant, Thumbelina is an adventurous sprite, but admittedly, a lot are. However, if you know one thing about fairytales is that the protagonist is often not a woman but a girl or starts the story as a princess (i.e. a youth). People think the fairytale characters are in their twenties. No, they were written with teenaged protagonists.

These characters were all written to likely be under seventeen: Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood

Don’t you want your twelve-year-old daughter bound to the home? Are Matilda and Romona Quimby bad influences because they’re “bound to the home?” Oh, but they’re girls, you say. And what exactly is Little Red Riding Hood?

Or women are witches?  So a woman cannot be portrayed as evil any more? Not very diverse. There are plenty of evil or mischievous, magical men: Rumplestilskin (in which the woman outsmarts the man—please don’t read that to your female children according to this author), Pinnochio, Little Red Riding Hood (wolf is referred to as he), Jack and the Beanstalk, Tom Thumb, etc. Again, I have the feeling the author looked at their shelf, saw the Disney movies, and made a snap decision to write this article without doing their proper research.

Independent: While fairytales can be brilliant for inspiring imaginative discussions in children, parents must be vigilant in their way of sharing these tales so as to avoid promoting outdated ideologies they continue to foster.

I’ll tell you a trick about time, the moment a book is published, it’s outdated. Cell phones, VR, 3D printers are all technology which makes books written 5 years ago feel like they’ve been written 20 years ago. Your ideologies this year will be outdated next year. In Dante’s Inferno, people chase around a banner outside of hell. I feel the same way with people chasing around the “progressive spirit.” It’s okay to make the world a better place, we must all be vigilant to call out misogyny and racism and anything that reduces the human person. However, we should not expect everything to adhere to our current standards.

Lastly, the article makes no recommendations for replacements. In other words, what will you read to your children? The author doesn’t recommend anything because nothing is sanitized to a degree where it can’t be criticized in some manner. Maybe this is their intention—it’s better to  read nothing to your children. Do that and you’ll be unfortunately making your children dumber according to every educator everywhere. Be my guest if you will, but I’m going to continue to read to my kids, and I’m going to continue to read them fairy tales!