Fairytales Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Fairytales - Essay Example An important theme of Cinderella is male superiority. All men discussed in the story are in dominating and controlling positions and accordingly, the women are shown in submissive positions to the men. There are two men performing main roles in the story i.e. Cinderella’s father and the king’s son. While Cinderella’s father is shown to be a rich man, her mother is said to be old and sick. Death of Cinderella’s mother is an important event in the story as it changes Cinderella’s life. It does not take Cinderella’s father long to get married to another woman, and there is no mention of memories or love of Cinderella’s mother in her father’s mind or heart in the story that follows. This is suggestive of the notion that it is very easy for a man to forget a woman and that a man never falls short of women ready to be his wife, irrespective of his age. While her father happens to be a rich man, this hardly helps Cinderella in any way. Her father does not intervene anywhere as Cinderella’s step-mother and step-sisters make her their servant. This is suggestive of the ignorance of men toward women even in the position of their children, thus again mentioning the superiority of men over women in a way. Finally, when the king organizes the festival, its main purpose is to provide the prince with an opportunity to have all the beautiful girls in the town right in front of him and select anyone he wants to marry among them as his future wife. Not just this, but also the element that all girls in the town are so eager to be there at the festival, knowing the purpose for which it has been arranged suggests that men are far advanced in terms of power and superiority in comparison to women. It is understood that any girl the prince would pick up would sure be his wife, there is no question of the girl’s readiness for this. Even Cinderella, the main character of the story with whom, children sympathize and wh om they love finds a way to attend the festival. All these elements imprint this fact in the minds of the children that men assume a strange and obvious sort of superiority over the women. Rapunzel Rapunzel is another fairytale that never fails to get admiration from the little readers. There are many elements in the story that spark interest for it in the children. Some of these elements include the long and beautiful hair of Rapunzel, the garden that accommodates all sorts of beautiful flowers, not to mention, the magical rampions in it, use of the long hair of Rapunzel as a rope, and most importantly, her pitiful life. For a fact, a common element between many fairytales is that the main character of girl in the story is always pretty but is in pitiful circumstances, waiting for a prince to come to her rescue. Rapunzel is no different in this sense. Marriage is an important theme of Rapunzel. All couples talked about in the story are married couples. When children read such stori es in their childhood, they are raised with the assumption that marriage is the only way two people can live together and procreate in the society. Such stories lay the foundation of the fundamental status of marriage as the building block of the society and the criticism toward cohabitation and same sex marriage observed in everyday life. The story starts with the depiction of a couple of man and woman that are husband and wife to each other and have a