Gender Roles in Children's Literature: An Analysis of Walt Disney's Cinderella

Sex Roles (2007) 56:717–727
DOI 10.1007/s11199-007-9236-y

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The Production of Meaning through Peer Interaction:
Children and Walt Disney’s Cinderella
Lori Baker-Sperry

Published online: 5 June 2007
# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2007

Abstract For many years researchers have understood that gender roles in children’s literature have the capacity to create and reinforce “meanings” of femininity and masculinity
(Currie, Gend. Soc., 11: 453–477, 1997; Gledhill, Genre and gender: The case of soap opera. In S. Hall (Ed.),
Representation (pp. 339–383). London: Sage, 1985; Tatar,
Off with their heads!: Fairy tales and the culture of childhood. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993;
Zipes, Happily ever after. New York: Routledge, 1997). The purpose of this study was to investigate children’s interpretation of a popular gendered fairy tale at the level of peer interaction. Walt Disney’s Cinderella was used in elementary school reading groups to investigate the ways that children understand messages regarding gender and the influence of peer culture on the production of meaning. The findings indicate that gender and gendered expectations were essential to the process of interpretation and the construction of meaning for the children. Gender unified the boys and girls into two distinct groups, particularly around the “girls’ book,”
Cinderella. Gender was reinforced along traditional lines in the peer group, serving as a deterrent to the production of alternate interpretations to traditional messages in the text.
Keywords Gender . Peer interaction . Children . Agency .
Cinderella

Introduction
Children’s literature has long been cited as a vehicle for the transmission of gendered values and messages (Weitzman et
L. Baker-Sperry (*)
Department of Women’s Studies, Western Illinois University,
500 Currens Hall,
Macomb, IL 61455, USA e-mail: [e-mail]

al. 1972; Agee 1993; Zipes 1997).

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