Art in the present day has taken a retrospective tone in that most artists acknowledge the essentiality of their predecessors when creating their own product. This comprehensive attitude toward art’s history serves as both quality control and an indicator of differences in the social, political and ideological climate of particular cultures and time periods. Generally these different periods in art’s history are categorized by the genre that typifies the ideals most prevalent during that period. Thus the fairytale, a genre often associated with the exploits of European royalty in a fantastical alternate universe, is commonly used to express feudalistic values and old-fashioned morals and ideas which are occasionally considered antiquated and no longer applicable. Charles Perrault’s classic fairytale “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood,” and writer Margaret Atwood’s short story “There Was Once” offer both an archaic and modern perspective on the genre, respectively. Atwood and Perrault’s works considered together indicate the evolving purpose of literature as evinced by varying adherence to literary conventions, distinct social environments and the significance of different literature in influencing an audience’s perspective.

The most noticeable dissimilarity between the two works is the straightforwardness of the material or lack thereof. “Sleeping Beauty” follows a fairly common narrative arc: a young, capable male character (generally a prince or king) must rescue a hapless or vulnerable young female character usually through the disenchantment of some curse or magic. In Atwood’s piece, on the other hand, the reader is not introduced to a setting and is given little context. The presence of a narrative is unclear, however both characters display colorful personality traits and a sort of wry social wisdom. The length of each story also seems to illustrate each writer’s dependence upon common conventions. “Sleeping Beauty” is a typically long-winded fairytale; it goes into every minute detail to give the reader all the context needed to understand exactly what transpires so that the story seems palpable and cinematic. Atwood’s piece however, does not explain character actions or provide descriptive images of what is happening but rather requires the reader to use dialogue to infer the situation using contextual details from such politically charged exclamations as “But I am so tired of negative female images” (Atwood 70). This is one of several interactions in the conversation that that indicate the characters’ views on contemporary social issues and attitudes common in recent generations. She also uncommon use of a minimal setup to her narrative which is a stark contrast of the traditional detail that is used in dramatic writing, something that is really only made possible by her faith that her audience has the background knowledge to understand her writing. The vast distinction between each writer’s reliance on convention is indicative of their chronological distance from one another and in what sequence they were released.

Another incongruity in the two works is their polarizing historical contexts. Perrault, a Frenchman, released his rendition of “Sleeping Beauty” was written in the 17th century, one marked by the colonizing of the Americas and absolutist monarchies in Europe. After a period in which feudalism dominated all aspects of social life, traditional views on race, gender roles, socioeconomic status, and political rights had remained relatively the same as previously throughout European history and would not be altered significantly for several centuries. For example, Perrault depends on such vilified descriptions of women as “he was afraid of his mother, for she came of a race of ogres, and the king had only married her for her wealth” (Perrault). The queen mother, much like the princess, is represented with traits that would today likely be condemned for their negative generality. Atwood refers to such “negative female images” (Atwood 70) with disapproval, although the character that expresses disdain for stereotypes also makes vague assertions, referring to middle-aged men as “twisted and repressed.” The reader can infer from this moderately hypocritical statement that the author understands that generalizations are not made exclusively by a particular group of people, but rather are a natural habit of humans. The author’s ideas are synonymous with the growing recognition of the diverse sets of beliefs and personal philosophies in the modern world.Thus, Atwood’s work can be seen as a critical reaction to one of the most beloved genres in literature through its analysis of its fundamentals, comparison to current ideologies and ultimate reconciliation with the ambiguous nature of personal perspective.

Finally, the juxtaposition of these two works reveals the larger role literature has in shaping the perspective of its target audience. What is written in any particular time period is often the best gauge of a society’s notion of what is behaviorally acceptable. “Sleeping Beauty” is hardly a piece of propaganda, but its familiar premise with its focus on the monarchial class do glorify figures of authority, and its elements of fantasy can often carry religious overtones. While the fairytale’s chief function is to casually entertain, it also serves to reinforce the morals of the culture it originated from. “There Was Once” is much more direct in its attempt to provoke certain thoughts in its audience, but at no point does it profess the correctness of a certain worldview. Atwood’s neutrality is made clear by the structure of the short story; the lack of information supplementing the dialogue allows the reader to draw their own conclusions about the views presented. This represents the growing concern for personal freedoms in modern society, which has cause literature to acquire a more open-ended and ambiguous tone.

Since literature uses language to express ideas, it is often the most useful for creating an argument or provoking a sentiment. To understand the history of literature is to understand the patterns and trends that result from the different political, social and demographic phenomena in history and what influence they have on the writing of a specific time period. The works discussed above also demonstrate that contemporary writing is intrinsically linked to the past: since writers are pressured to innovate and create original material, they must be conscious of past works and the ideas they express. 