Gender In The Work Of Perrault

10 Pages 2465 Words

t only did Perrault’s works reinforce the ideals of civilité, the arena in which they were told, and the manner in which they were told did so as well.
As courageously as he may attempt to empower the female characters of his fairy tales, the social norms of his time still hold dominion over the true success of women. Though Perrault writes tales with latent messages of female empowerment, upward female mobility, and the overall success of women, one must be wary of how these positive advancements are defined. In most cases the success of a female character is gauged in terms of how that success relates to the male gender. There is no independent success for Perrault’s female characters because during his time, a time in which civilité defined an entire society’s values, the only success a female could attain was through a male.
Perrault’s Cinderella illustrates through fairy tale the movement of a female from the poor lower class to the revered aristocracy. The manner in which Perrault presents this crossing of social strata is quite revolutionary for his time. Perrault not only makes Cinderella an upwardly mobile female, but he does so by empowering another female character; the fairy Godmother.
The fairy Godmother in Cinderella is an important character in terms of female empowerment in that it is she, and not a male character, that elevates Cinderella in the social hierarchy. Fairy tales of Perrault’s time tend to show strong bias against females with power. A female with power is usually evil, and a detriment to other female characters. Perrault though, in this work not only assigns authority to a female (the fairy Godmother), but has that female assist another female (Cinderella), thus conveying two messages; one of righteous female empowerment, and one of female philanthropy.
The story begins with Cinderella dressed in rags and covered in cinder: a quite displeasing physical image. Her station in life ...