Gender Roles In Lemony Snicket's A Bad Beginning

Fairy tales help to establish gender roles at a young age to characterize and represent the ideals, values, and roles that each gender should succumb to. Females are taught to be kind, sweet, week, honest, self-sacrificing, and beautiful. On the other hand, males are taught to be courageous, brave, saviors, and wise. Many of these characteristics are shown in Snow White. However, in lemony Snicket’s, A Bad Beginning, the novel challenges many of these ideas by providing the reader with alternate views to gender roles. This is shown through the main protagonist, Violet.
In Snow White, Snow White is depicted as unintelligent and the damsel in distress, because she constantly falls into the same predicament time and time again. Even after much warning from the dwarves, Snow White still falls into traps that her stepmother concocts for her. She must rely on the help of the prince to remove the spell and to free her. Violet contradicts this view, because violet is portrayed as extremely intelligent. When Sunny was taken, Violet took charge of the situation and using her intelligence devised a plan to rescue her. Using only the resources available, she created a sturdy rope and grappling hook to courageously climb the tower. Violet tries to manipulate any situation to her advantage. She tries to persuade Count Olaf that she will not be a suitable actor. ‘“Count
She is extremely hands-on and is able to create things using her imagination and the resources available to her. “Violet had a real knack for inventing and building strange devices, so her brain was often filled with images of pulleys, levers, and gears, and she never wanted to be distracted by something as trivial as her hair.” (3) This contradicts the idea that is represented in Snow White. Snow White is portrayed as only being able to cook, clean, and prepare the dwarves’ home. She isn’t able to invent things like