“The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood” by Charles Perrault and “There Was Once” by Margaret Atwood can be compared and contrasted because of their different purposes and tones in telling a fairy tale. “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood” follows the typical conventions of a fairy tale by telling the story of a perfect girl who faced with challenges by evil villains until she is ultimately saved by her perfect prince and they live the commonly told “happily ever after”. “There Was Once” is a satirical short story that involves the dialogue of two people, one trying to tell a fairy tale and the listener constantly interrupting and making comments about the unrealistic qualities of the fairy tale genre. By analyzing the different ways that the two stories are told, it is obvious that “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood” follows typical genre conventions while “There Was Once” attempts to mock them. The relationship between these two texts allows us to realize unlikely events of fairytales and how they create a false idea of beauty and the way the world works.

These two works start off in a similar by describing the usual beginning of a fairy tale. Both involve the main character being a beautiful, perfect girl who is faced with a villain in their life. In Atwood’s piece it is a wicked stepmother and in Perrault’s it is an evil fairy. The way that the evil characters of fairy tales are described is often very similar. “The old fairy’s turn was coming next, with a head shaking more with spite than with age...” (Perrault 504). The characters seen as evil are most commonly old and unattractive. This is a stereotype that allows children to believe that someone is good if they are physically attractive and bad if they are not. A stepmother is also a commonly used evil character in fairytales. The fact the evil characters in the fairy tale are most often female also provides a negative female image in a young person’s mind. All of these types of characters used most often is this genre allow people to think in a way that there is only good people and bad people in the world and no grey area lies between them. This is not an appropriate way to teach younger individuals to think about the world. Being unattractive or old does not make you a bad person and similarly, being young and beautiful does not make you a good one. 

The differences in “There Was Once” from a normal fairytale begin right after the initial storyline is told when the listener comments on the setting by saying, “Forest is passé, I mean I’ve had it with all this wilderness stuff. It’s not the right image of our society” (Atwood 511). The listener is using a very critical tone here to say that this genre of fairy tales is very outdated. The setting of a forest or a castle, like the setting in “A Sleeping Beauty in the Wood”, is not very realistic for this day in age, when most people live in the city or the suburbs. He also comments on the setting of the house and how girl is described as poor. Today, a poor person is not described as someone who lives in a house with a fireplace, but instead outside on the streets. This is only the first instance when the story aims to show us how unrealistic fairy tales are.

The listener then critiques the use of the word beautiful to describe the girl in the story. “Women these days have to days have to deal with too many intimidating physical role models as it is, what with those bimbos in the ads. Can’t you make her, well, more average?” (Atwood 512). The idea that every girl in the fairy tale must be physically perfect creates the idea that every girl should strive to be more physically appealing than anything else. This genre teaches young girls to value the wrong things about themselves. You never hear about the princess in the story being smart, or independent, or hard working. She is always admired for her ideal looks and must be saved by a man in order for the story to end happily. This programs children from a young age to believe that life is happy and carefree and fairly perfect, and we should be, too (Loder). 

It is also common for the fairy tale to end with the princess finding her prince. In “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood” the price and the princess get married after he saves her from death and they live happily forever. The listener in “There Was Once” interrupts the storyteller before it is over and says, “This ends in marriage, right?” (Atwood 513). It is expected that every happy ending involves the dream girl finding her dream guy and them living together forever. This idea makes us believe that we cannot be happy without finding the “perfect person” to make us feel complete. There are a lot of things wrong with teaching young people this unrealistic part of life. A girl should not be taught to look for a man her whole life to make her happy, she should instead be doing things that make her happy and finding out who she is. Having independence is key part of growing up and being happy. We should be teaching children to learn how to stand on their own before finding another person to depend on. Also, it is very common in modern times that couples get divorced. “Happily ever after” is completely unrealistic phrase in terms of relationships. While happy marriages do happen, they require hard work and sometimes they still don’t work out the way we planned. Life is challenging and a “prince” will not be the answer to all of our problems forever. 

In conclusion, the comparison of these two texts can allow us to see that the typical fairy tale genre told in “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood” is highly unrealistic and outdated. Atwood’s satirical piece highlights these ridiculous expectations of life by creating a character to interrupt the story whenever he believes something is wrong with it. By the end, the story teller has nothing left from the original fairytale he was going to tell because everything about it has been proven to be impractical. The listener critiques everything about it from the setting to the description of the characters. He argues that it is wrong to stereotype the good people in the story as beautiful and the evil ones as older females, such as a stepmother. Fairy tales are the wrong way to teach young girls how to act and perceive the world. They should be taught independence and self-love and not to judge people so harshly into categories of bad or good. These texts prove that real life is nothing like a fairy tale and society should stop teaching children the wrong ideas about beauty and the way the world works.
