Fairy Tales
Fairy Tales were composed to express eternal joys, sorrows, hopes, and dreams of human kind. Although these folk tales may be aimed at children, but they surely reflect the values, assumptions, and concerns of our cultural traditions. They always portrayed one moral that obedience, good manners, beauty, and hard work always lead to rewards while opposing characteristics are consistently punished. The two tales, "Cinderella" and "Hansel and Gretel", are revolving around a female center character. Both characters seem to be different in some ways and yet very alike. Many females usually portrayed as the main character in fairy tales are faced with tasks of demonstrating their domestic competence.Cinderella is described as a very understanding and tolerant female. She is burdened with her inordinate amount of what is deemed domestic challenges put forth by her cruel stepmother and stepsis
" However, such ending seems disturbing and even unethical. Not only do these fairy tales show conflict between good and evil, but also they all dwell on the beauty of the main character. She is shown as a person who strongly believes in fate. She is quick enough to make appropriate decision when the situation asks for it. When a famine devastates the area, the evil step mom decides to abandon the poor children, Hansel and Gretel, by leaving them in the forest. The folk tales, in the end, automatically change considerably to try to justify the negligent father's redemption and ability to live "happily ever after. This may possibly lead people to believe that a supernatural realm exists to award those characters with positive characteristics such as beauty, patience, kindness, obedience, or perhaps hard-work ethics. "In masculine psychology, the stepmother is a symbol of the unconscious in a destructive role" (Franz). Almost all of the fairy tales reinforce to some degree the association between beauty and goodness. She is associated with jealousy and cruelty. She was going along with the flow of life. For example, in "Cinderella" the main character is portrayed as beautiful, good, hard working, and abused. In the story of Cinderella, her stepmother along with her daughters mistreats the poor girl, Cinderella, and brings bad luck for her in everyway they can. The stepmother figure is actually two sided, in that while she has destructive intentions, her actions often lead the protagonist into situations that identify and strengthen his or her best qualities. In Hansel and Gretel, the father, who was too weak to resist the evil suggestion of his wife and with her abandoned the children in the forest, is not only not punished for his highly immoral way of acting but even gets to enjoy the treasures the children bring back.
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