
Although fantasies are portrayed as sweet and innocent, they can have devastating effects on young girls, including their psychological development. Children are influenced at an early age on how they should behave based on their sexual orientation, and fantasies play a large role.  Growing up, girls look up to and idolize the heroine in their favorite tale, often a princess.  Male and female characters in fantasies often follow stereotypical roles based wholly on their gender.  However, the stereotypical female character is not a good role model for young girl to aspire to become.  The heroine is oftentimes flawlessly beautiful, weak, and dependence on the hero.  The characters in The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods, by Charles Perrault, are perfect examples of stereotypical protagonists.  However, There Was Once, by Margaret Atwood, challenges the role of women in traditional tales told to children.  By looking at two tales with stereotypical weak female leads, readers can see how fantasies effect socialization by creating sexist views on gender roles due to unrealistic beauty images, dependence on men, and the treatment of women who deviate from societies’ gender restrictions 

The heroine, a princess, in The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods is described as “the most beautiful person in the world” and “finest sight was ever beheld…  whose bright and, in manner, resplendent beauty, had something in it divine” (Perrault 504-507).  This beauty stereotype is the most common in fantasies.  Jessica Hooker, author of The Hen Who Sang: Swordbearing Women in Eastern European Fairytales, says that female beauty stereotypes in children’s tales have “an important effect on children as they mature [which] seems indisputable” (178).  In There Was Once, Atwood initially describes her protagonist as “as beautiful as she was good” (511).  These idealized characters offer the sexist belief that women should “[depend] on beauty and meekness” (Hooker 178).  However, these standards are impossible to live by and become weights that get heavier as girls grow older, pressuring girls to be perfect and pointing out all their flaws.  This can cause girls to be feel degraded and lead to eating disorders and bad body images.  In There Was Once, Atwood challenges the traditional heroine characteristics and changes her protagonist from “as beautiful as she was good” to an “average-looking” girl.  Atwood changes her female lead because she says that children “[imitate] physical role models” (512).  This change gives young girls a more realistic role model to aspire to be like, excepting their differences which make them unique.  Young girls should not have to choose between “what men expect her to represent and what [they] actually [wish] to be” (Deszcz 37).            

“Most of the fairytales popular in Northern America impress upon children of both sexes that a woman’s place in the world is restricted and subordinate” (Hooker 178).  Hooker also says that female protagonists are expected to be the “ideal spiritless woman” (187).  In The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods, the princess is never told of her curse, therefore never given the opportunity to save herself.  This makes her helpless and dependent upon her prince to come rescue her, which “promotes the universal models of female dependency” (Deszcz 28).    Justyna Deszcz, author of Salman Rushdie’s Attempt at a Feminist Fairytale Reconfiguration in Same, says that classic princess fantasies “praise female subjugation to male power, ‘encourage women to internalize only aspirations deemed appropriate to our ‘real’ sexual functions’” (28).  “Girls are encouraged to be inactive-depending on beauty and meekness to secure themselves a man who will define their loves” (Hooker 178).  Limiting the roles females can carry in fantasies also limits the goals and ambition of girls as they grow older.  Deszcz says that “fairytales glamourize female helplessness, beauty and submission” (28).  These traditional submissive roles not only cause girls to doubt their abilities, but tell them they are not capable of taking care of themselves and must depend on a man.  Society’s sexist gender roles encourage girls to “become utterly helpless and incompetent, depending on [their] husband for everything” (Hooker 179).Young girls are “deprived of [their] ‘inherent right to be not a doll but a fighter’” (Deszcz 37).  This reveals that women are not naturally subordinate, rather it is society that constrains them.  Femininity is not “either a source of embarrassment or an alibi; it is only a biological fact” (Deszcz 39).  Deszcz argues that sexism is a shared responsibility and that society should not “estrange one sex from the other, but to empower both men and women” and eventually de-emphasize male domination (41).  She also says that “instead of acknowledging women’s right to equality, which is relatively easy, [men] must accept the inequality of [their] own status, which in turns means understanding that [their] ‘equality is the masking term for [women’s] oppression’” (Deszcz 35).  Society needs to put aside the stereotypical female roles encouraged by fantasies and accept sexual difference.                 

What happens to women in fantasies when they deviate from their traditional roles?  Atwood, in There Was Once, says that she is tired of negative female images, such as stepmothers (512).  She changes her antagonist from an evil stepmother to an evil stepfather, thus eliminating the stereotypical jealous and deceptive female villain.  Women who do not follow the strict sexist restraints in fantasies are presumably evil because they take on a traditionally masculine role.  In The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods, Perrault made both of his villains women, one motivated by jealousy and the other power hungry.  One quality most female villains share is ambition, however, having ambition is a positive attribute.  Hooker argues that women that deviate and take on a traditionally masculine role are an “intolerable threat to male physical dominance” (178).  These women are put back in place by being punished for their threat to maleness, often with death at the end of the tale.  However, this sends girls a mixed message about their ability to set high goals from themselves, be ambitious and have confidence throughout life.  Another quality many female villains share is their age.  In The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods, the first villain was an old fairy who was believed to be dead and the second was the prince’s mother, the Queen who was on ogress.  In There Was Once, the female villain is also older, a stepmother.  Age is one of the main differences between the female protagonist and antagonist.  The heroine is often a beautiful teenager while the villain is the opposite, a jealous, old, unsightly woman who tries to destroy the heroine’s good fortune.  The villain’s traits threaten the female ideal, thus deviating from the stereotypical female norms of beauty and dependence on men.

“Fairytale images or motifs have become significant cultural factors that mediate between culture, social groups and individuals in the process of constructing our perception of reality” (Deszcz 31).  This shows that female fantasy roles lead to broader social and cultural issues.  However, the only way to end sexist gender images is to expose them.  Desczc says “woman is doomed to remain outside culture, no matter whether she is perceived as positive of negative,” and this is because society views women as “‘male defined masks and costumes’” (28).  The only way to break free of these sexist restrains is to change societies’ view on women.  We can start by getting rid of the tradition fantasy concept ‘Someday my prince will come’ and offering young girls a more empowered message to pursue.  Fantasies often pressure girls to become image-driven, when young girls need to be taught that their value does not depend on how beautiful, helpless, or how many social standards they conform to.         
