Gender Stereotyping

3 Pages 717 Words

Gender Stereotyping in Children’s Literature

In order to complete this assignment, four children’s books were chosen and read. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty were chosen to represent traditional children’s literature with The Prince of Egypt and Pocahontas representing contemporary children’s literature. The stories of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty have very similar plots. In both stories, the main character, an attractive young female, encounters a dilemma and must wait for the strapping prince charming to arrive and undo the damage. In Snow White, she is awoken from an evil spell by a kiss from price charming. In Sleeping Beauty, her male companion, Price Phillip, must also awake her from a deep sleep. Both of these stories show a female in distress with her only hope of success coming from a male. These classic stories contribute to the classic stereotyping of females being dependent on males. Not only do they lack reality, but also they do not provide adequate role models for young girls. These two stories are examples of perfect fairytales where the male rescues the female and then they live happily ever after.
Aside from the fairytale element, these stories are lacking in other departments as well. For example, the character Snow White is made to do traditionally female jobs such as cleaning, sewing and cooking by her evil stepmother. Snow White decides to escape from her stepmother and opts for living with seven little men. She performs all of the domestic chores for the men while all seven of them work outside of the house. This furthers the idea that women are meant to serve men and work within the house. In the story of Sleeping Beauty, Aurora is a beautiful princess that must be hidden away in the forest to protect her from a wicked spell. The spell says that she will prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die before her sixteenth birthday. Princess Aurora returns to the castle on her birthd...