Fairy Tale Princesses Will Kill Your Children

by Jane Gilmore

This is not a book for children, but it is a book for everyone who was a child once upon a time.



Jane Gilmore, author of Fixed It and Teaching Consent, takes aim at fairy tale princesses and hits right at the heart of the myths that underpin women's poverty and men's violence.



Though a piecing combination of analysis and storytelling, Jane Gilmore peels back the layers of enchantment and exposes the ugly truth behind the fairy tales that have been embedded in our culture over millennia of telling and retelling.



After laying bare the history, context, and effect of fairy tale princesses, the reworked stories of Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast shine a light into the darkness and show us the dangers of the fairy tale princess myth.

80 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 26, 2023

About the author

Jane was the founding editor of The King’s Tribune, which started in 2007 as a newsletter for a Elwood wine bar and ended in 2014 as a national online magazine with a roster of hugely talented writers and a large and loyal readership.

She was now a freelance writer, with a particular interest in feminism, politics, media and anything else that happens to catch her eye.

Reviews

[Tempy]

Raw and insightful. Something that made me laugh at times but also made me want to cry. I like to think I see through a lot of the tropes this book so clearly lays out, but even I was able to find some I had missed or wilfully ignored. An uncomfortable but necessary read.

I feel some people will call this “an attack on fairy tales and children’s joy” but I don’t think it’s not being able to enjoy the media we grew up with, but rather no longer viewing it in isolation.

[LittleRedWolves]

This author brings up a lot of salient shortcomings of media and society in general but this book fails to justify its own premise.

Fairy tales have always been propaganda for various causes throughout history, but that makes them a product of the time they were created, and deserving of examination. They are not the cause of harmful ideology or systemic failures. Correlation does not equal causation.

The author rewrites of the stories are neither a successful satire, nor feminist rework. They are fundamentally misandrist and misguided in their attempts to criticize what came before.

I truly gave this book a shot but had to DNF a little over half way.

[Melanie]

Bleak but on point.

[Stef Rozitis]

This was a bit heavy-handed but thoughtful and therefore worthwhile.