‘The Sleeping Beauty’ is a fairy tale orally narrated from
generation to generation which is liked by children of all time and all
geographical location. In Nepal, the very story is compiled by Madhav Khatiwada
in his text ‘World Famous Fairy Tales.’ Although the story begins in a
classical way and has good plot, it has its loopholes too. The story presents
female character as a protagonist but fails to provide justice to her
character.
The title
‘The Sleeping Beauty’ is negatively representing the female character. ‘Beauty’
is used to materialize the females. It indirectly indicates that females are
merely the objects to gaze on. So they must be beautiful. Similarly, ‘Sleeping’
is a word meaning laziness, tiredness, weary, passive, still, etc. Here, we can
easily understand that the protagonist is lazy which she is not expected to be.
Females are expected to be beautiful, full of ornaments and hard-working by the
patriarchal society. The same insight is presented here too forgetting that the
females are not a commodity to objectify and they possess equal rights as
males.
Male
characters in the tale seem to be kind whereas females are the cause of rise
and fall of the action. Females are presented some negative attributes to move
the story forward. At surface reading, we may feel that males and females are
presented equally however it’s not the truth. The writer seems very clever to
use his diction so as to confuse the readers.
He
invited not only his kindred, friends and acquaintances, but also the wise
women so that they might be kind and well disposed towards the child. There
were thirteen of them in kingdom, but, as he had only twelve golden plates for
them to eat out of, one of them had to be left at home.
The above lines use the words like “kind”, “wise”, etc.,
however they also provide a condition to ruin the good atmosphere. The word
“thirteen” itself indicates the meaning that least females are good enough.
“…but also the wise women” in the first line of the above quote indicates that
the females aren’t supposed to have a gathering or a party. Here the writer is
biased towards females. So, the text is unfair towards females’ beliefs and
actions.
‘The Sleeping Beauty’ has created
the “princess ideal,” which is a representation of gender that young females
should idolize. It also portrays women in a negative light. So, this is an
unrealistic and inappropriate promotion of harmful body images and a narrow
ideal of marriage as a happy ending for women. Not only this, the male
characters in the text upholds the role as “alpha-male” and they stand for all
things that are stereotypically patriarchal. The alpha-male is known for having
physical power, social dominance, as well as status and leadership. With the
female heroine’s inability to act assertively, she has to rely on external
rescues and this makes female subordination romantically desirable. Prince from
‘Sleeping Beauty’ is the definition of a stereotypical leading male character.
He is wealthy, regal, and saves Aurora from eternal sleep.
As Lisa Tuttle asserts, we need “to interpret symbolism of literary
texts so that it will not be lost or ignored by the male point of view”. Here,
in this tale also, many things remain in shade only because the text epitomizes
the males’ prospective. The princess faces her downfall because of her action
i.e. pricking herself with a spindle. She was taken care by the three little
fairies when she was in eternal sleep. This illustrates that the females are
subjected for caring and rearing the relatives, family members and the dear
ones.
There she lay, so beautiful that he could not turn his eyes
away, and he stooped down and gave her a kiss. But as soon as he kissed her,
she opened her eyes and awake, and looked at him quite sweetly. Then they went
down together, and the king awoke, and the queen and the whole court, and
looked at each other in great surprise.
The above lines signify that the authority or power of a
male character. He is presented as if he is a god so that with a single kiss he
could have revived the princess from eternal sleep. After the princess woke up,
she did raise any questions to the male character. Here the author renders his
pre-occupied male ideology to place the females in subordinating position or in
the second position.
Similarly, the text fails to articulate the voice of females
because of its linguistic structure. The symbolic system of language expressed
by the text is not sufficient to give space for the females and is making them
just passive objects. The writer provide household filthy conversation to the
female protagonist and her mother whereas a macho type of conversation to the
male protagonist. The princess and her old mother engage in a talk of “spindle”
and “spinning”. But in the dialogue of youth, there lies bravery when he says
“I am not afraid, I will go and see the beautiful Briar Rose.” In this way, the
writer established the female position as secondary stereotyping them as
household workers. This binary opposition is a clear discrimination to the
females which just advocates males’ superiority and power in the society. On
the contrary, it places the females’ in subordinating position making them
powerless.
The feminist critic Luce Irigary believes that women are
not sufficiently represented by “existing symbolic systems of language” and
women are not given proper place in the patriarchal world. She insists on the
subversive potential of the women who must work within the phallocentric
symbolic system into which the women are placed. She also criticizes the phallus as
restrictive monolithic singular and fixed. Furthermore, she rejects fixity of
phallocentric meaning. She argues that women can get sexual pleasure with their
multiple sex organs. For her, it is the stupidity of patriarchy to define women
according to their lack of phallus as well as it is mistake to define their
language, their existence under the symbolic system according to masculine
model.
Taking the Luce Irigary’s argument into consideration, the
tale “The Sleeping Beauty” fails to judge the multiplicity and diversity of
women. The story writer repeatedly uses the words that symbolizes phallus and
dehumanizes the women. The words like “old tower”, “rusty key”, “spindle”,
“horses”, “dogs”, “bed”, and “thorns” are used to establish males’ superiority
complex over females. These words indicate the phallic symbol which means
females are inferior to males because they lack phallus.
In the same way, the writer defines the females with the
symbols like “black hen”, “evil”, “flowers”, “pigeons”, “kitchen”, etc. These
symbols, as mentioned by Luce Irigary, considered to be feminine. These words
either speaks about the dark part of the life, lack of phallus, something deficient
or household. ‘Black hen’ refers to a female being that is considered something
not good according to Hindu mythology. The word ‘evil’ itself signifies
something worse. Words ‘flowers’ and ‘pigeons’ are feminine words which
indicate something pleasant, beautiful or someone who is responsible to deliver
a message. In the same way ‘kitchen’ word is directly associated with females.
Male patriarchal society regard females as the beings who spare their whole
life in the kitchen. So these words placed the females’ in powerless position
mentioning them as ‘something lacking’ or ‘incomplete’.
The feminist critic Hélène Cixous also refers to the 'woman'
as being the physical expression of her own voice." Contrary to her
definition, this text presents the woman as a dependent voice, an object to
gaze on, a subject who has to face downfall, and so on. At conclusion, the text
consists prejudice to the females and is totally biased.
Works Cited
‘Hélène Cixous.’ Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 29 Nov.
2016. Web. 16 Dec. 2016.
Warner, Arielle. “Someday My Prince Will Come: A Feminist
Critique of Women Portrayed in Disney Animation.” 22
Dec. 2013.Web. 16 Dec. 2016.
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