Restoring Fractured Gender Order: A Brief study of gender roles in the Brothers Grimm Cinderella and Briar-Rose and The Arabian Nights tale of Shahriyar and S
This 17-page graduate paper considers the roles of women in four specific tales: the Grimm versions of “Cinderella” and “Briar-Rose” and The Arabian Nights’ tale of Shahriyar and Shahrazad and “The Tale of the Ensorceled Prince”. This essay considers the ways in which gender roles in the four narratives can be used to comment on gender ideals in the societies which produced the narratives. Beginning witha brief textual history of each book, the essay notes that the complex literary histories of each book have made gleaning precise historical or social facts from either text difficult. However, the essay posits that by juxtaposing tales, and noting similar thematic patterns, one can suggest some of the key concerns of the societies which produced the tales. This essay then surmises that although similarities exist between the four tales, The Arabian Nights’ tales valorize male community, and suggest that women are inherently destructive forces which must be controlled. At the same time, the women in these texts have more agency than the women in the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales. In both “Cinderella” and “Briar-Rose” women in female communities are rewarded for being passive and feminine, and punished for attempting to seize any power or agency. Women are rewarded by male rescuers and by supernatural forces, and are thus encouraged to endure injustice patiently. In all four stories, the emphasis on proper gender roles and on punishment suggests that women were seen as suspect, and gender roles were seen as fluid enough to threaten the societies and families which were based upon them.
