A typical fairytale consist of a young princess who dreams of finding her perfect prince, but there is always something or someone evil that gets in the way. However, a prince always saves her, and they get married and live "happily ever after". One would say that Charles Perrault's short story "Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" is a retelling of the Walt Disney fairytale Sleeping Beauty, but has a bit of a twist unlike most fairytales because the prince does not fully help save the day by some heroic act. Meanwhile Margaret Atwood's short story, "There Was Once", breaks all the fairytale "rules". It is the modern and feminist fairytale of today that is being deliberated over by two speakers on how it should be told. Both these stories are similar in their fairytale aspect but greatly differ in how they are told. In "Sleeping Beauty in the Wood," the female is depicted like any other female fairytale character helpless, man-dependent, naive, and only capable of being a wife and mother. In "There Was Once," by contrast, the one narrator has the female character changed to be quite the opposite: strong, independent, and average, like the modern version of the typical, everyday woman.

In almost every fairytale, the main character is a young woman who is usually a princess, whether she knows so or not. Take Cinderella, and Aurora from Disney's Sleeping Beauty, they both believe at first that they were peasants with no money or relation to the kingdom, but later discover they are princesses or about to become one. However Ariel, from The Little Mermaid, already knows she is a princess because that is how she grew up. A princess is typically beautiful, intelligent, nice, and a talented singer and dancer. A princess is perfect. In Perrault's story, the princess is gifted with these perfect qualities. Her seven Fairy God Mothers gave her these gifts of "be[ing] the most beautiful person... hav[ing] the wit of an angel...grace...dance perfectly well...sing like a nightingale...[and] play all kinds of music to the utmost perfection" (Perrault 296). This is the typical perfect princess. Atwood's princess that is being argued over is the complete opposite. So far from it in fact, that she may not even be a princess. Atwood's story is being told by two speakers who are deliberating over how the fairytale should be told. The first speaker tries to tell the fairytale how it is typically told but the second speaker changes every aspect of it. The female character that they are telling the story about is described as "average". The second speaker believes no one is perfect and that "women these days have to deal with too many intimidating physical role models as it is". Therefore, she does not want those who read a fairytale to compare himself or herself to someone that cannot exist in real life because  "description oppresses" (305) which means it could cause harm to someone both physically and mentally.

In the best of fairytales, there is always someone who gets in the way of everything that is perfect. That person is the villain, who usually is a woman in the most popular of fairytales. While the princess is almost always the victim. The villains tend to be stepmothers, stepsisters, witches, evil queens, and monsters.  It is not one hundred percent clear as to why a woman is always the victim in traditional fairytales but it seems that those woman who are evil tend to be those who are independent, strong intelligent and ambitious. It is as if these traditional fairytales mock the kind of women who are their own individual and do not rely on others, while these kind of women are those who are most respected in the world today. In most cases, the villain tends to be someone no one would suspect, usually very close to the victim. Therefore, it is a surprise to both the victim herself and the audience.

The princess (now Queen) in Perrault's story is sweet and innocent with no enemies she knew of, but when her husband, the King, leaves for war with his mother in charge of looking after the Queen and their children, everything takes a turn for the worse. The person they thought they could trust the most betrayed them. The mother was of the Ogre race, which is known for eating children. When the mother sent the queen and her children away she turned on them. The mother turned from ex-queen to Ogress. She summoned her kitchen clerk to cook both children for her, but he did not have to heart to do it, so he deceived the ogress mother and hid the children. When the ogress mother said, "I will eat the Queen with the same sauce I had with her children" (Perrault 301), the clerk was unsure of whether he could deceive her again, but was able to do so. In the end however, they were all caught. Atwood took notice as to how other women seemed to always be the villain, and was "so tired of negative female images!" Therefore, she decided to change it up from the stepmother being the villain to the stepfather. This expresses some of Atwood's feminism. When she thinks of middle-aged men, she attributes them with "bad-behavior" and says that they "are twisted [and] repressed" (306). In a way, she is treating the strong, independent men as weak and evil like the traditional fairytales tend to treat women. Atwood seems to be upset with the way women are portrayed in fairytales. With this story, she is able to rewrite it her way.

If a fairytale does not end with a happily ever after, was it really a fairytale at all? The ending is a key part of a fairytale. Everyone knows it is going to be happy, but they are never sure how. A story typically ends with the prince and the princess finding each other, getting married, having children, and living together happily ever after. Perrault's story however ends a bit differently. In a way, he tricks his readers with suspense. While the King is away, the ogress mother is angry that she has been deceived. This causes the Ogress to order they all be taken captive. The Queen, her children, the clerk and his wife are brought to the middle of the great court where there they would be put in a large tub full of all kinds of serpents. At the end when the Ogress is just about to throw them in and kill them, the King suddenly arrives early from the war and saves the day. The King did nothing but show up, and because of this the Ogress throws herself into the tub, killing herself. It is not clear as to why the Ogress would do that to herself, but unlike the usual prince saving the princess with his heroic acts, this just happens on its own. In the end however, "the King could not be but very sorry, for she was his mother; but he soon comforted himself with his beautiful wife and his pretty children" (Perrault 302). Therefore, living happily ever after.

Atwood on the other hand, never gives the reader an ending because her story has not ended yet.  Atwood has had "enough with the dead past" (306) because she wants to know about what is happening now.  She knows the typical ending to a fairytale is a marriage, but that is not how she wants it to end. As the two speakers deliberate back and forth about this tale it eventually reaches the point where there is no more story to be told quite yet. This story is being told in the present, not the past. It is happening here, not there. Therefore, there cannot be a perfect ending to this story that Atwood has created, yet.

Perrault's "Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" provides a perfect princess just like any other female fairytale character. His villain is slightly different from the usual stepmother or witch, but still keeps to the woman villain theme. Although his ending was not the most usual one, it still contained the happily ever after that everyone expects from a fairytale. In Atwood's "There Was Once" the female character is quite the opposite and breaks all the rules of the fairytale status quo. The main character is not perfect; she's average. The villain is switched from the typical stepmother to the not so typical stepfather, and unlike any other fairytale there is no ending because there is no once, was because it is happening now. Perrault abides by the fairytale rules within his story with some slight changes but Atwood twists every aspect she can. Perrault's story is in the past life of princes and princesses while Atwood's story is happening in the present with any young woman today who is on a new adventure in life, and although no one knows the ending yet it may not be perfect or a happily ever after but it will be real and that is what Atwood wants her readers to see.
