Snow White Gender Roles Essay Example for Free

Snow White Gender Roles Essay The story of Snow White begins as all other fairy tales. The lovely queen bares a beautiful little girl but doesn’t get the chance to see her grow up. Snow Whites father remarried a beautiful woman and she just knew she was the most beautiful woman ever. Snow White became older and her beauty began to show more and more as the days went by, more beauty then the queen had. Of course the queen became very upset with this and ordered that Snow White was killed so that she can take back her place as the prettiest in the land. The hunter found Snow White in the woods but he couldn’t kill her. He told her to run away and to never come back home and gave the queen a pig’s heart instead. Snow mad her way to a little cottage and stayed there until the queen found out what happened she found her and poisoned her. End the end the queen died and Snow was saved by her prince and rode off into the sunset. Now in this story there are many males’ roles and only two females and they have many roles they each portray in a fairy-tale. Snow White’s gender roles included; the evil queen, the hero, and the damsel in distress. The queen is usually mean throughout the entire story, but in this one she wasn’t always this way. When snow white was little the queen was a somewhat nice/decent person until she Johnson pg.2 realized her step daughter looked better than her. Now in reality this is possible maybe not in the since of the step mother killing the child but getting rid of them. They more envy she gives off the more disturbing she becomes because she is no longer focused on her on wellbeing but hurting someone else. Sometimes females get so carried up with what other girls are doing trying to make them look bad but they forget all about taking care of themselves. The queen thought that killing snow white would make her life easier but it only got worse every time she tried until she met her death. Women get to the point where trying to make someone else suffers and end being the one hurt in the end because they put too much effort. The hero in this story would be of course the handsome prince who saves little snow white and brings her back to life. In reality a woman’s hero is not necessarily someone who saves our live but the one who is there in our time of need. The prince knew nothing of snow white until he seen her in the glass coffin. He only shows up when she needs help kind of like now when a woman is need sometimes a nice man just comes along to help and to make our day better. The seven dwarfs were like family to snow. They gave her somewhere to stay and food to eat as long as she does the chores. In life if you have an issue there is always a family member that will take you and help you out through those hard times. Now as far as snow white herself would be the damsel in distress. A beautiful young lady who has someone out to get her but then is rescued by the man of her dreams. In her role there is nothing she can do except run away and let other want to they just were never taught to do so. A royal persons role in life is stand there give orders and to look nice. Therefore they don’t learn the basic roles of survival. So with the descriptions of all the characters we now see that the role of the men in this story is to protect Johnson pg. 3 roles of the women were to look pretty and do no outside work. The narrative’s point of view of snow white was kind of hard to understand but as I continued to read I understood exactly what he/she was trying to say. The witch from the narrator’s view was that she grew to be so evil is because snow became so beautiful so fast, she thought that everyone else would forget all about her and that she would never be loved again. The more the story went on the more jealous the queen got. It even got to the point to where she changed her identity just to set snow up for death. The narrator makes the queen seem like the absolute worst person on earth but she actually is just like any other woman who felt someone is threating her territory and took action to stop it. Snow White is supposed to be the typical princess who picks out the pretty dresses and waits for her handsome prince to come sweep her off her feet. The narrator describes her as the princess who has to work for what she wants. Princesses don’t run away from the castle because their step mother is trying to kill them. Snow had to hide herself in order to live. She had to find a home, food, and some way to support her until she got on her feet or found the prince she’s been looking for. The narrator described snow as a hard working young lady. She cooked, cleaned, and with the help of the animals she even redecorated the dwarf’s home. The prince in the narrator’s point of view is the one who knew what he was looking for he just didn’t know where to look for it until that day he found the little house sitting in the woods not knowing that he would find the love of his life lying in a glass casket. Although he wasn’t talked about much in this story, the narrator viewed him as brave young man who saved the most fairly of them all, and he was. Now the dwarfs in the narrator’s point of view were Johnson pg. 4 snow’s little helpers. Even though she found them first and kind of took over their home, they were still willing to let her in. They were sort of like her foster parents, how they looked after her and cared for her. Snow White has many descriptions on the actions that both sex in the story. For instance when the prince found snow she wasn’t in your typical big puffy ball gown dancing around the room with other women and she just so happen to stand out him. She was lying dead in a coffin made of glass and he fell in love with her there. When someone actually thinks about a prince finding his princess they don’t see him randomly going into the woods to find a coffin with a beautiful young lady lying their lifeless. She is supposed to be alive waiting on him to come to her home and take her as his wife. Princesses are to dressed in the most exquisite dresses and the long hair flowing down her back having everything she wants, snow wasn’t like that. Snow had on the simple little dress with short hair and in the story it seems like she didn’t actually get everything she wanted. She went through hell to get the man of her dreams from running from the hunter to the poison apple, even losing her mother when she a little girl. In society today the royal court isn’t really like the story at all. They don’t really have to work or do chores. Snow had to clean up after seven dirty men every day, that’s not a typical princess. Also when the queen dies and the king does remarry he doesn’t just put his child aside and worry only about his new wife. Snow’s father isn’t mentioned in this story really at all as if he just left soon as the mother died. Kind of like now how some kids start off with their father then one day he just up and disappears. The queen hiring someone to kill her stepchild, that Johnson pg. 5 doesn’t happen in the world today. The queen doesn’t really have the power to order someone be killed because it’s the king’s job. Snow found the dwarfs home in the woods and just walked in and started cleaning and eating, basically making herself at home. The dwarf’s come home expecting their home to be exactly the way it was when the left not for it to be cleaned, food cooked and for a strange woman to be in as if she belong there. In society today she would have went to jail for breaking and entering. The roles in this story are completely different not only in the world today, but from any other fairy there is today. The women actually took charge and worked for what they wanted. And as for the men they set back and watch the women proceed through out day to day making sure everything that needs to be done gets done, not your everyday royal family.