Fanny's Fairy Tales

I would like to share with you some thoughts about our childhood princesses that I study through this thesis.

Thanks Cinderella and Donkeyskin characters, i wish to understand the part of these women’s figures into their rewriting, their evolution over time, in written, iconographic and cinematographic forms. These characters from Perrault and Grimm tales are founders of youth texts. I wish to put in light the duality of these characters, both facets of Cinderella and Donkeyskin.

This woman seems to meet parental expectations and exist into society from the moment that she is linked to a man through marriage, so she represents a definition of what beauty and femininity should be. Cinderella, who is mute and victim and Donkeyskin who is on the run and desperate, are however those who convey what a woman should be since the first publications until Disney : beautiful, young, gracious, obedient… 

However, nowadays, this layout seems to be deconstruct itself with the new fairytale’s heroines who are actresses of their lives and of their place into society. The purpose isn’t marriage anymore, they are combative and adventurous like Vaiana, instead of being afraid of the outside, of the unknown, as all of our traditional princesses. 

This proves the new public’s expectations into a society which is in perpetual evolution, and which keeps Cinderella and Donkeyskin as examples of virtue. My memory will also report this evolution of female representation.