Throughout the centuries, the world has produced Fairy tales with the typical princess and prince somehow finding each other through some very intricate journey. To this day, as they adapt to the modern world, they remain to be as unrealistic as ever. Story writers tend to stick to the supernatural elements such as fairies, ogres, and hundred year slumbers, where somehow people never age. In the story of Sleeping Beauty in Charles Perrault's Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, these elements are vital to the story. She is cursed by an evil fairy to prick her finger on a spindle and fall into a slumber for one hundred years until she is awoken by a prince. However, considering that it is a fairy tale, none of it is true, it is completely unrealistic. This is shown in Margaret Atwood's There Was Once, where the typical introduction to a fairy tale is wholly torn apart and rewritten. These two writings compliment each other by proving the stereotypes that fairy tales follow evil characters, being inconceivably beautiful, extremes of socioeconomic standings, and a remote setting within the woods.

In There Was Once, there is an ongoing conversation beginning with a stereotypical fairy tale introduction. There is someone challenging specific pieces of the sentence and causing the author to change it as they go along. One element that is picked apart is that the girl, or princess in most cases, is described with undeniable beauty. In Perrault's writing, the fairies each give the young princess a gift, "the youngest gave her for gift that she should be the most beautiful person in the world;" (399). Atwood on the other hand challenges the typical beauty standards of princesses, "I think we can cut the beautiful, don't you? Women these days have to deal with too many intimidating physical role models as it is," (407). They challenge the idea of automatic beauty for the character saying that it should be more realistic, however this leads to completely skipping the description of the character because there are too many images to appeal to in the world that describing one attribute a specific way could be considered offensive.

Atwood's piece is able to pinpoint the typical aspects of fairy tales, another being labeling characters as good or evil from the very beginning of the story. While the Sleeping Beauty story labels one of the fairies as evil, the concept is still present. It is said that this particular fairy was not invited to the soiree because she was thought to be dead or enchanted. She later mumbled something terrible under her breath which one of the other fairies overheard so she tried to prevent it, "...hid herself behind the hangings, that she might speak last, and repair as much as she could, the evil which the old Fairy might intend" (399). In Atwood's piece she gives the evil role to the step-mother, as the story of Cinderella typically goes, but also objects to that cliche, "another thing, Good and wicked. Don't you think you should transcend those puritanical judgemental moralistic epithets? I mean, so much of that is conditioning, isn't it?" (407). The two pieces go hand in showing the pattern that most fairy tales follow. 

Another common stereotype for fairy tales, is that the main character is either extremely well off in life, those that are born into royalty, or are notably poor or treated poorly. In Perrault's story the main character, the "sleeping beauty," is born directly into a family of a monarchy. Her parents are a King and Queen of a kingdom, so she is obviously going to be the princess of said royal family. Being as well off as she is, she will be granted all the finest things in the land. For example she is given seven fairy godmothers who come to her bearing gifts to ensure that she be the perfection that she was born to be. The gifts that she receives, aside from the one given by the evil fairy, are all glorious gifts that just build her a personality. From six of the seven fairies she receives the following: beauty, the wit of an angel, gracefulness, the skill of dance, the singing voice of a bird, and the ability to play any music she so desired. Atwood's typical class for a princess is the complete opposite however. To begin with they are described of as poor, beautiful and live in a house in the forest. Challenging all of those aspects of that made up character, the other person speaking declares that it is so cliche to label her with all of those things, "I have to seriously query this word poor ...  Poor is relative. She lived in a house ...  socioeconomically speaking, she was not poor," (406-407). After that attack on technicality, she is changed to middle-class. 

Almost every fairy tale takes place in some far away land or cottage deep within the forest or hidden away from the troubles of the world. These two stories in particular follow the specific setting in the stereotypical forest. While one is in a kingdom beyond the forests, the other is in a simple house in 

the forest. In Perrault's story it is not explicitly stated that the kingdom is by the woods, besides in the title, until the prince's journey is told in depth, "scarce had he advanced towards the wood when all the great trees, the bushes, and brambles gave way of themselves to let him pass through;" (401). This forest happened to play along with the supernatural vibes as it seemed to be enchanted. The trees separated for the prince to pass through and immediately closed after he passed so that none of his people could follow him. In Atwood's piece the setting is given in the first line, the one meant to be the opening of a story, "there was once a poor girl, as beautiful as she was good, who lived with her wicked stepmother in a house in the forest," (406). Since this piece is meant to challenge all the stereotypes of a normal fairy tale of course this was the setting that was included. However, also going along with the pace of piece, the location was argued to be changed, "forest is passe, I mean, I've had it with all this wilderness stuff.It's not a right image of our society, today. Let's have some urban for a change" (406). As it was stated there aren't many normal instances in today's society where people live within the forest, that is unless they are avid hunters. Once again this is an example how the two pieces play off of one another with their stereotypes and challenging each other with every cliche that is brought up in one of the stories.

While there are several similarities within the two pieces, they do not both cover all of the same topics that are prevalent in most fairy tales. Since Perrault's piece is an actual short story, it had a real plot. The story goes through the entire lifespan of the princess and even after she and the prince meet and get married. The other story, is not really a story, but more like an argument. It only addresses the beginning of the story and how they typically start. So there is no talk of princes or fairies because they don't get far enough into an actual story. It also goes more in depth about the physical appearance of the princesses in stories, besides the presence of absolute beauty. They spoke of straying away from the use of a dominant culture and also the strict use of negative female images. The two are both prominent in discussing or exemplifying the stereotypes of fairy tales but they do not discuss all of the same characteristics. 

Within several fairy tales there is a specific pattern that they usually follow. They all have a girl who is from the beginning, as beautiful as can be. There is always the battle of good versus evil in any story in order to have some type of conflict. More often than not, the setting is similar between fairy tales. These two stories had a certain back and forth kind of aspect between them. Perrault's story would have the typical fairy tale attributions, then Atwood's piece would be there to challenge those specific traits that are present. The two stories came together because they prove almost all of the stereotypes for almost every fairy tale that exists. While one gives the actual story, the other rips apart all of those common attributes in order to try and achieve a more modernized version of a typical fairy tale.

