After the Kiss: Princesses Facing the Real World

Being a modern girl who doesn't live once upon a time, in a land far far away, and who doesn't happen to consort with witches or transfigured princes (that I know of), I'm reluctant to say that fairy tales have any impact on my life or the way I live it. My mother raised me to be a strong woman that could travel independently to a foreign country and live there successfully. I don't need to have a husband to complete my ambitions, and I don't need a husband to feel complete. But as much as I actively think that, I panic (momentarily) when I think of how I'm going to support myself. I panic when I hear another friend is getting engaged, and married, and pregnant. And part of me believes that I will be more successful, happier, more productive, if I have a satisfying family life. There I could solve problems, but ultimately, if something is too much to handle, I can say, "Well, my husband can help".

The literature I read as a child, and delighted in, often centered around a maiden, a princess, a half of a to-be-fulfilled whole. We are read these stories as little children, we act them out in games on the playground; who among our generation does not have fond memories of watching a Disney film? Like it or not, what we are exposed to as children, the stories and narratives we engage in have a profound effect in our later life. Despite what we want or learn or convince ourselves of, we hold on to the secret desire to dance in a grand ballroom in a gold dress, to talk to a fiesty crab, to see magic all around us.

So where's the problem?

I KNOW that some of you are saying, well, what's so wrong with that? Aren't these strong, confident women?

In the popular Disney film Beauty and the Beast, a reproduction of a story originally written by a Madame de Beaumont, we see an updated version of Beauty, that far from just being her father's prize rose is an avid reader, a woman who isn't afraid to speak her mind and turn away the beefy, chauvinistic Gaston. She's a positive role model for women and girls. She says,

"Madame Gaston!" His "little wife" / No sir! Not me! I guarantee it /I want much more than this provincial life / I want adventure in the great wide somewhere/ I want it more than I can tell / And for once it might be grand /To have someone understand / I want so much more than they've got planned " (from Disney's song, "Belle")

She has dreams and ambitions that will not be completed upon finding the perfect man. She even wants adventure, a historically masculine pursuit. Gaston is so easily villainized, and he is also easily rejected; he is not a suitable candidate. When her father is imprisoned, she sacrifices everything to save her father-noble, yes, but also perpetuating an idea of female helplessness. There is no dashing rescue attempt, no trying to fight her way out-Belle holds out no hope for a happy resolution and willingly submits herself to martyrdom. It then becomes incumbent on her to provide (in an almost maternal role) for everyone else's happiness in the castle-if she fails to love a monster, she will doom everyone to life as animate objects. This is a monster who was made to look that way because it reflected the truth of his personality. The message seems to be that because of the great healing power of the fairer sex, good, intelligent women should cleave to men who are cruel, unkind and arrogant, who "have no love in [their] heart" (said by the narrator in the beginning of the film).

Until the magical resolution, this is a sacrificial love that Belle cannot obtain and sexual success from-she is unable to bear children from a beast; the emotion may be there, but they cannot complete the relationship. Essentially, she loves something that cannot return her love as such because it cannot complete the symbiosis of a natural relationship. She becomes like Snow White, a virgin on display, beauty trapped in a glass cage. Even after he magically transforms, their marriage is the end of the story. We do not see Belle on any great adventure, off in "the great wide somewhere". She is someone's "little wife", a short ride from her old house.

More so than the original story (with a much weaker female lead, important only as a pretty, virginal face), the Disney version sets up a strong woman and completely obliterates her. And yet the audience, along with Mrs. Potts, is dabbing their eyes at the wedding. It is compelling story telling, and it has a dramatic, happy ending. However, that happy ending debases an intelligent woman by implying that the only thing her ambitions and mind would be good for was making a beast of a man into a prince. She will spend her marriage as she had her childhood, reading in libraries of adventures she wished she could take and places she wished she could see.

There is also a dangerous undertone-should women cleave to beast-like men because we believe we can change them? Isn't that, in fact, rationale to encourage women to stay with abusive husbands?

That being said, I'm a princess at heart. Yes, it's true, and I even have a library of beautifully written favorites, including Gail Carson Levine's Fairest, based on Snow White, and Ella Enchanted, a true classic based on Cinderella. She has a beautiful writing style and a whimsical imagination that gets back to the purest origin of fairy tales--the very basic desire in all of us to hope. Fervently, wildly hope.

There's also Cameron Dokey's hypnotic The Storyteller's Daughter, a retelling of Arabian Nights, about a blind woman that must tell a story every night to save her own life. Diana Wynne Jones and Patricia Wrede take more tongue-in-cheek approaches with Howl's Moving Castle and Dealing with Dragons, respectively, and all of these novels are beautiful stories for children to grow up with.

So where does that leave me? A princess without a crown, I'm not looking for my prince or even my talking magical animal sidekick. I'm just trying to figure out how to run my kingdom on my own terms.

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