Charles Perrault’s “The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods” and Margaret Atwood’s “There Was Once” are both pieces that contain fairytale elements despite their purposes and period differences. Perrault’s fairytale, written during the 1600s, focuses on a king and queen who finally give birth to a princess and later her gruesome mother-in-law tries to eat her and her family. Atwood’s satire, written during the 1990s, focuses on how fairytales are too unrealistic and how they create false ideas of beauty and life which affects the way people think or feel effectively. The listener makes it hard for the storyteller to tell the story by interjecting with comments that suggest that the story should be an autobiography or that the terms are incorrect or inappropriate.

There seems to always be a mother figure that antagonizes the main female character, who is typically quite beautiful and charming. In the piece by Perrault, the queen-mother, the princess’s mother-in-law, was the princess’s enemy. The queen-mother says that she “will eat the Queen with the same sauce [she] had with her children (Perrault 200).” In the piece by Atwood, the stepmother is made out to have a negative role in the story. The storyteller in “There Was Once” says that the main character “lived with her wicked stepmother in a house in the forest (Atwood 1).”

The works take place in different periods and have different purposes. This is suggested in “The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods” through the language of which it was written. Charles Perrault uses words such as “hitherto,” “shall,” and “sabbath.” His use of outdated words also reveals that the story is intended for people of that time period. The main points of the fairytale are that it is acceptable to wait for good things or people to come along and that good triumphs over evil. Margaret Atwood shows that “There Was Once” is a more modern piece by her use of language. She uses words such as “passé,” “socioeconomically,” and “anorexia.” In addition to the satire being a modern work, the main point that the listener in the story makes is that fairytales have become outdated and unrealistic. They are not relatable because all people are different.

Charles Perrault’s “The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods” and Margaret Atwood’s “There Was Once” share their similarities but they also have their differences.  “There Was Once” highly criticizes classical fairytales like “The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods.” A fairytale is a story in which improbable events lead to a happy ending. Though they are traditional, Fairytales have become outdated and unrealistic. Fairytales must change with the times to appeal to different generations and to be understood correctly and clearly. 
