"The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" by Charles Perrault and "There was Once" by Mar-garet Atwood are both short stories that begin with some form of "Once upon a time". In this re-gard, they follow the typical narrative of fairytales with which most readers are familiar. However, as we read further, we see that they are actually polar opposites. Perrault follows the formal, and verbose writing style that often accompanies a fairytale, whereas Atwood challenges this otherworldliness aura, and many other attributes of a fairytale outright. Replacing it instead, with mundaneness. In the telling of their fairytales, Perrault and Atwood are reinforcing and critiquing society's social norms respectively.

Perrault follows every 'rule' of a standard fairytale. His main character is a princess, who is cursed and threatened, but ultimately finds a prince and lives "happily ever after". Perrault's other main characters include the princess' royal parents, fairies, and an ogress mother. These characters set the stage for a perfect fairytale: a beautiful princess, a love interest, and villains. Perrault feeds into the stereotype by encouraging the quest for perfection sought by the main character. He introduces fairies who endow the princess with various gifts such as beauty, talent, and grace, all so that she may have "all the perfections imaginable" (296, Perrault). The de-scriptions of these characters' lives, namely those of the royal family, include "fine christenings... great feasts... and pure gold utensils set with diamonds and rubies" (296, Perrault). All of these elements enhance the romantic and regal picture that a typical fairytale paints for its reader. Later in the story, the Prince makes mention of the young girl's out-dated clothes, remarking that she was "dressed like his great grandmother" (300, Perrault). However, her ill-styled wardrobe doesn't detract from her perfection. As the prince states, "she looked not a bit the less charming and beautiful for all that" (300, Perrault). Here, Perrault alludes to a time that is more contemporary than what the Princess is familiar with, but his story remains true to the structure of old fairytales nonetheless. In this telling of a perfect young girl and her carefree life, readers are drawn into this imaginary world that is far from reality. Arguably, this is what people want to do --  escape from reality. However, some might say that these tales are warping the minds of our youth into thinking they need to be perfect.

Atwood doesn't allow her story to succumb to the stereotypical telling of a beautiful prin-cess, her knight and shining armor, and their happily ever after. Right off the bat, Atwood's first speaker disrupts the narrative, turning it into a conversation about the political correctness of some of the aspects of the original story. That speaker argues, "It's not a right image of our so-ciety, today" (305, Atwood). She consistently demands normalcy for the main character throughout the conversation using the voice of the second narrator. The second narrator rebukes each line of the story read by the first speaker. "Stop right there. I think we can cut the beautiful, don't you?... Can't you make her, well, more average?" (305, Atwood). Here, the second narrator is defending the feminist argument that there are far too many pressures on women to be perfect and beautiful all the time. The narrator turns the princess character into the most ordinarily plain human possible. She goes out of her way to be politically correct, even changing the girl's ethnicity to "indeterminate decent" (305, Atwood). With the use of a conversation rather than a story, the piece feels more like a drama rather than the telling of a story. Atwood uses the first speaker as an outlet to freely comment on, and challenge the aspects of, a 'traditional' fairytale. Atwood changes every word of the original story so she can to ensure it is the farthest thing from a stereotypical fairytale.

Perrault takes the time to develop the fairytale from initial conflict to resolution. He dis-cusses the King and Queen's struggle to get pregnant, then progresses towards a plot where the baby is cursed with the 'gift' of death by an evil fairy. He goes on to detail how the Princess evades this death by entering into a deep sleep, thanks to another fairy. The story, if left here, closely mirrors the tale of sleeping beauty, albeit with more explicit details. However, Perrault does not end the story with her awakening from a deep sleep, but instead creates an extension of his initial story with an entirely new conflict that begins after the princess is saved by her brave prince. When the Princess awakens, the focus of the narrative shifts to a new setting. The Princess is brought into the Prince's world, where she and her children reside under the care of the Prince's mother while he is away at war. The princess and her children now face new threats from the Queen, who can't suppress her ogress urges to devour human children. With two different conflicts within his story, Perrault is somewhat straying from a typical fairytale. However, that's where the progressiveness ends. When you look at the content, you see that he remains true to traditional narratives with all the elements used. For example, the ogre demanding to eat children, or the fairy casting a spell on the Princess. He includes things that most would associate with fairytales like fairies, dwarfs, dragons, royal families, castles in the woods, valiant princes, and evil ogres. Every part of his fairytale is consistent with a stereotypical plot and attributes of a traditional tale.

Atwood, on the other hand, doesn't seem to develop a plot. She briefly makes mention of a potential villain, the evil stepmother, but quickly refocuses attention on the gender of this character rather than her actions. She also spoils the ending of the tale, saying the girl, or rather the woman, was to be married by the end. However, we never hear anything besides a brief in-troduction about the girl's appearance and circumstance, which is drastically different compared to the extensive detail used by Perrault to explain the Princess' beauty. In this untraditional story, Atwood is again challenging society's expectations of a fairytale. Without a plot or single conflict anywhere in her writing, there really isn't a story at all. All the reader is presented with, is a harsh critique of a fairytale. This slaughtering of the story leaves behind only a skeleton -- mundaneness, and dullness. Atwood takes away the magic that typically accompanies a fairytale. However, quite possibly this is what she is trying to do. This piece was intended to provoke thought and create a shift in the way adults read fairytales, not to ruin a child's bedtime story.

Both authors add something to our understanding of a fairytale. Perrault maintains most of the conventions of a fairytale, while Atwood challenges everything we know to be true about a fairytale. While Atwood might agree with her second narrator as she critiques the narrative, she is also stripping the story of it's captivating components. One could view this as a positive -- a piece that exposes the perfectionistic aspects of a standard narrative. By stripping the story down word by word, she paints a picture of how detrimental this ideation of perfection can be to the youth reading the story. One could also read this as a negative --  a piece that takes the enjoyment out of a fairytale. However, Perrault, while somewhat straying from a fairytale's narrative with the use of two plots, still retains the image of a beautiful princess, and a wicked mother.
