ONCE UPON A GENDER IDEOLOGY: A STUDY OF SELECTED FAIRY TALES VIS-À-VIS MOVIE ADAPTATIONS AND MODERN RETELLINGS

In a patriarchal society, women are tutored since their childhood that their security after attaining maturity lies in marriage. Herein germinates in a woman’s mind and heart the seed of sacrificing her entire calibre and efforts in exchange of being with her prince charming. The female sex solidarity gets badly hampered when they compete with each other for the best marriage prospect. Also, in a chauvinistic society like ours, an affluent and handsome man sans inner virtues is taken as the perfect epitome of a prince charming. As a mouthpiece of patriarchy, classical fairy tales illustrate marriage as the fulcrum in the life of all fairy tale princesses. If a fairy tale princess is innocent, beautiful and virtuous, she rides off with a prince and live happily ever after. Not only this, these tales majorly portray women drudging at the same housewifely chores. It is significant to mention that unquestionable depiction of a stepmother as a heartless villain and a witch having natural evil propensities in the classical fairy tales needs to be busted. During the last few decades, these classical versions have been adapted in a number of movies and retellings which claim that they debunk the myth of being happily ever after only with the prince charming and challenge the patriarchal ideology that occupational segregation by gender is an inevitable consequence of biological differences in skills between women and men. They also claim that in their versions, the evil women share their side of the story thereby acquitting them of the heinous crimes they are supposed to have committed against the innocent and virtuous fairy tales’ princesses. It is believed that this book will assist those who are inquisitive to explore the realm of fairy tales from a feministic perspective. Your kind suggestions will enrich my study.