Gender Stereotypes In Fairy Tales

Fairy tales have always been the very first kind of literature which children meet. Fairy tales with a fantastic world are all of fairies, princes, goblins, elves, giants, trolls and witches, are dreams for children. However, the adult relationships presented in fairy tales, with subtle stereotypical significance, give an impression and get entrenched in the social psyche of a generation. So we can say that fairy tales have promoted and reinforce stereotypical gender roles through a presentation of socially suitable male-female relationships.
Obviously, fairy tales has a very rich and long history, they have existed in our society for thousands years. As people were first able to speak than write, at the very beginnings fairy tales were passed on orally and the topics they concerned with were closely connected with the life of the people within the community, the original fairytales of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries all contain specific gender stereotypes.
As for the characteristic portrayals themselves, women are typically described in an inferior or even unfavorable way. They are present as
For example, in Charles Perrault's version of Cinderella, the protagonist, Cinderella herself, is hardly referred to without some mention of her physical appearance or gentle temperament, she is “Unparalleled goodness and sweetness of temper, which she took from her mother, who was the best creature in the world.” Similarly, in The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, another of Perrault's fairytales, a newborn princess is the recipient of magical gifts to make her the most perfect of women, these gifts being “that she should be the most beautiful person in the world; the next, that she should have the wit of an angel; the third, that she should have a wonderful grace in everything she did; the fourth, that she should dance perfectly well; the fifth, that she should sing like a nightingale; and the sixth, that she should play all kinds of music to the utmost