Cinderella Gender Analysis

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In the 21st century, women's role in the society has revolutionized the way society perceives them. Women in modern society are often recognized as being independent, capable, and intelligent in their own way. Although many recent Disney movies began shifting towards featuring more heroines in their major productions to reflect the current society's view of women, vast majority of the most popular fairy tales undoubtedly contain strong gender stereotype that portray women as weak, vulnerable, and puny characters; whereas men have a better chance of being portrayed as hero-like figures who are strong, courageous, and intelligent. Judging by the three most popular fairy tales, "Sleeping Beauty", "Cinderella", and "Little Red Riding Hood", there …show more content…
"Cinderella" is a classic story about a poor mistreated "pretty"(page 1) girl who loses her magical glass slipper at a ball but escapes her atrocious step mother and sisters after marrying the prince. Cinderella's primary duty is cleaning and doing house chores which is a strong gender bias illustrating women as sole responsible figures for house works. One can argue that this is because her father had already passed away and there aren't any other male figures in the story. However, by connecting Cinderella to housework rather than other physical labour, it is obvious that there is a gender bias within the type of work she does. Furthermore, she is only able to escape her cruel step mother and step sisters upon marrying the prince. Rather than escaping the dreadful house herself by running away, she just simply stays at home listening to her step mother. This reveals to us that Cinderella is a bit irrational for simply accepting her step mother's orders and she is also being shown as typical powerless figure. Upon "[marrying] the prince, and in time, they came to be king and queen, and lived happily ever after" (page 6), and her step mother and her sisters are punished. Cinderella albeit she is the protagonist of the story, she is frail and reliant on male figure which exemplifies gender stereotype in this classic fairy tale. By contrasting the suffering life …show more content…
This classic fairy tale unfolds a story of a "dear little girl" (page 1) known as Little Red Riding Hood, who decides to visit her sick grandmother's house to deliver cake and wine. The protagonist's main activities consist of delivering food and picking flowers, and the only other female character, her grandmother, is sick and bedridden. On the other hand the only male character is portrayed as being a physically strong hunter. Furthermore, Little Red Riding Hood is described as being "frightened" and afraid of the dark (page 5) whereas, the hunter is fearless and immediately jumps into action, cutting the wolf apart to save the two women that were previously devoured by it. Despite how the title of the story refers to the female character, once again, it is the male character that is illustrated as a hero and resolves the conflict. This suggests that women, like how they are devoured as a meal in the story, are placed at the very bottom of the food chain, and serve as a foil to demonstrate the men's position at the top of the food chain. Additionally, Little Red Riding Hood is unable to recognize the wolf impersonating her grandmother yet the hunter finds this oblivious - this reflects women's inferior position when it comes to reasoning or thinking rationally. Again, similar to "Sleeping Beauty" and "Cinderella", the ending of the story is cliche; the
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