Most traditional fairytales play along with the typical storyline of a princess in need of help when suddenly a prince comes along to cure her of all dangers and the two end up living happily ever after. Throughout these fictional stories, magic, enchantments and folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, trolls, elves, giants, witches, or talking animals are often included in a similar and predictable sequence of events. These far-fetched stories or tall tales also do not take place in actual times, but rather “once upon a time.” Lately, however, there has been criticism towards fairytales and if they are healthy for children to be reading and watching. More so in girls than boys, there is a “princess phase” young girls go through in which they read and hear about how perfect princesses look and live. Two stories from The Carolina Reader, Charles Perrault’s The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood and Margaret Atwood’s There Was Once, illustrate similarities and differences between the two stories and how traditional fairytales do not demonstrate a good representation of reality.

The plot of The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, by Charles Perrault, underlines the typical fairytale, in which it involves a princess, a folkloric character of a cannibalistic, child-eating Ogress, and a prince to save her from a deep sleeping curse. The princess figure automatically encompasses the stereotypical characteristics of innocence, purity, and virginity, similar to every other princess-related story, and the setting of a castle in a forest depicts danger surrounding the castle, “neither man or beast could pass through; so that nothing could be seen but the very top of the towers of the palace” (Perrault 506). With the magic of the prince and the curse, though, “the great trees, the bushes, and brambles gave way of themselves,” (Perrault 506), allowing the prince through the protecting and secure forest to the castle. Now this all seems pretty typical for a fairytale; however, the plot twists as a cannibalistic Ogress is brought into the story. This distorts the well-known happy ending of the prince and princess getting married and living happily ever after. Still though, Perrault’s image of a fairytale involves the usual make-believe, unrealistic figures and outcomes that are typically incorporated in what people know fairytales to be. 

Very dissimilar to the fairytale plot utilized by Perrault, Margaret Atwood’s There Was Once goes against the standard fairytale. Atwood’s piece starts out, “There was once a poor girl, as beautiful as she was good, who lived with her wicked stepmother in a house in the forest” (Atwood 511). As she begins with all the normal elements that create a fairytale, she quickly argues them away, changing the classic storyline that most are familiar with. Her modern day fairytale proves that fairytales do not only have to be fictional pieces, but can take place around people every day. In comparing Atwood’s story to Perrault’s, similarly, both use their settings to further describe their major female characters. Instead of a forest to keep Perrault’s Princess safe, Atwood took a turn for reality and inserts a middle-class, average looking girl into the suburbs. She argues that these girls are always described as poor and helpless, yet she lives in a house with a fireplace and “socioeconomically speaking, she was not poor” (Atwood 511). Atwood loses the obvious fairytale model completely by shifting her focus off of perfection and onto depicting an average relatable female character. This new character instead lives in a “house in the suburbs” (Atwood 511). This setting assists in showing the realistic flaws placed on the character as she is put in an environment where her innocence, purity, and virginity could be easily corrupted. Atwood uses the urban environment to convey that the character does not retain perfection, but ordinary humanity. While Perrault strives for a perfect female character, Atwood produces a practical and achievable one. 

Atwood’s modern day fairytale focuses on going against the usual pretty princess waiting around for a prince to live happily ever after with. Vanessa Loder, from The Huffington Post, wrote about comparing these helpless princess’ with the ignored values in fairytales and how, “rather than hard work, resilience, courage and powerful vulnerability, what is that telling our children — son and daughters — about how women ‘should’ behave and what they ‘should’ focus on?” (Loder). She would change the words of her two-and-a-half year old daughter’s books and instead read, “Snow White lived with her prince at the castle, sometimes they were happy, sometimes they were sad, sometimes they were angry, scared, silly, or grateful,” (Loder), instead of the original, “Snow White lived happily with her prince at the castle” (Loder). By emphasizing to her daughter that not everything that happens in life is happy and perfect, she gave Snow White a more realistic life by reading off that sometimes she was sad, angry, scared, or silly, as well. While fairytales are mostly written for younger children, they also censor out suffering that is intrinsic in the human condition. This teaches children that it is not normal to be sad, hurt, angry, and scared, and in turn, isolates them by producing an environment that promotes shame and an impression that they are not good enough because they cannot live up to the ideals characterized in these stories.

From a similar perspective, Cristina Ferrare, author of the book Realistically Ever After: Finding Happiness When He’s Not Prince Charming, You’re Not Snow White, And Life’s Not a Fairy Tale wrote about how fairytales give the illusion that reality can behave in the same way as in the make-believe world. Ferrare explains that people want to believe what they are reading in these fairytales and apply it to their own life. However, this is not true at all and often leads to unfulfilled expectations, “the man you love may not always turn out to be Prince Charming, and being an adult can sometimes be downright disappointing or even scary” (Ferrare). She tells in her book that she told her daughters about how she wished she had more of a realistic view of life as a young woman and mom because this might have saved her from a lot of heartache. Ferrare wished she could of reached for what was real and more satisfying than expecting perfection in herself and others. Fairytales give off the hope that life is perfect and people need to be perfect; but this just leads to frustration and sadness most of the time when one expects too high of everything all the time. Of course there are wonderful things to experience all throughout life, like first kisses, graduations, family, birthdays, etc., but despite all of these remarkable things, life is far from a fairytale. There are harsh realities in life, for example, threat of war, racism, hunger, and terrorism; these are all very real and frightening. Ferrare claims, “From the moment that I could breathe, I believed in fairy tales. I wanted to life ‘happily ever after,’ and I sure went after it. From the career, to the man, to the house, to the kids I was determined to have a storybook life” (Ferrare). Once she grew older, though, she realized that life is not as if appears and living a dream is impossible, no matter who you are.

Both Charles Perrault’s The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood and Margaret Atwood’s There Was Once could be compared to explicate how traditional fairytales can hurt the mind by not depicting the true reality of life. With all the perfection, high expectations, and hopes that come out of reading and hearing about fairytales, it is hard for one to not fantasize and try to turn their world into a fairytale. This false representative of reality will never keep someone happy if they believe that something will always have a better outcome. So behind all the cliché plots, magic, enchantments, fairies, witches, and talking animals, is an underlying criticism that perfect, helpless princesses and strong princes coming to remove the curse will impede upon children’s expectations of real life.
