Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies

by Cristina Bacchilega

Postmodern Fairy Tales seeks to understand the fairy tale not as children's literature but within the broader context of folklore and literary studies. It focuses on the narrative strategies through which women are portrayed in four classic "Snow White," "Little Red Riding Hood," "Beauty and the Beast," and "Bluebeard." Bacchilega traces the oral sources of each tale, offers a provocative interpretation of contemporary versions by Angela Carter, Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, Margaret Atwood, and Tanith Lee, and explores the ways in which the tales are transformed in film, television, and musicals.

Genres: Nonfiction, Fairy Tales, Womens, Folklore, Research, Theory, Feminism

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bacchilega outlines her main questions for this research in her introduction: "Three questions direct my efforts. What kind of images of woman and story do these rewritings/revisions project? What narrative mechanisms support these images? And finally which ideologies of the subject underlie these images? In short, this book explores the production of gender, in relation to narrativity and subjectivity, in classic fairy tales as re-envisioned in late twentieth-century literature and media for adults."

To this end, she analyzes the retellings of 4 fairy tales: Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast, and Bluebeard. She unpacks the works of writers such as Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, and Robert Coover, just to name a few, in order to determine in what ways the authors use fairy tales to subvert the gender strategies of the original tales. She argues that these tales are postmodern in their deconstruction of gender politics within fairy tales. She focuses specifically on 'mirroring,' how these tales subvert by mirroring the originals, "while at the same time make the mirroring visible to the point of transforming its effects."

You need to have read The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter before diving into this academic study. Bacchilega relies heavily upon Carter's retellings in every chapter. You can get by without being familiar with the other modern writers, though it's easy to find the short stories she uses online.

This is an excellent study for those interested in fairy tale research on gender. It is dense, particularly the introduction, but worth tackling.

[Mira Vanneste · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very fascinating perspectives! Some specific things that really intrigued me:

- fairy tales are ideologically variable desire machines & magic mirrors: their permutations depend on human desires that are shaped by varying histories, ideologies and conditions
- study of Beauty’s characterisation and inner transformation: the tension between her virtues/duties and own choices/desires

Such an interesting book that I will come back to!!

[İlkim]

Kesinlikle okumadan önce bu konularda akademik bir birikim olması gerekiyor. Bana ağır geldi, en beğendiğim kısımlar çocuk masallarının bazı aykırı anlatımlarıydı.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first compulsory text for my masters module: Contemporary Fairytale Literature. This text explored and analysed postmodern adaptations of traditional fairytales: Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast and Bluebeard through a feminist lens. It was enlightening for me to learn where the fairytales I read and enjoyed as a child originated from; the hidden meanings within them; how the patriarchy objectified and oppressed women within these stories; but finally how women have reshaped the narrative.

[Sefa YILMAZ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bacchilega's account of postmodern fairy tales is useful because it shifts attention from individual rewritten plots to the narrative mechanisms that produce gendered expectations. Repetition, framing, narration, and the distribution of sympathy matter as much as whether a heroine escapes the castle. The book shows that feminist revision can work by exposing the structure of storytelling itself: the apparent inevitability of a familiar ending becomes questionable once the narrative voice changes. I appreciate this emphasis on form, though theoretical terminology sometimes threatens to make different retellings appear more similar than they are. Not every revision disrupts its source to the same degree, and irony is not automatically emancipatory. Still, the central insight is valuable. A story can challenge domination not merely by changing who wins but by changing which desires are intelligible, whose testimony is trusted, and what kinds of endings are allowed to seem natural. A central risk of postmodern reinterpretation is confusing formal instability with political change. Multiplying narrative perspectives can unsettle authority without necessarily altering the social conditions to which authority belongs. Bacchilega's framework is most useful when that distinction remains visible, allowing the critic to ask how the pleasures of a rewritten ending relate to the world beyond the page.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I truly enjoyed this one, I felt like I was underlining half the book! Read it in one chapter installments during slow days at work and then finished it today while sitting outside with the dogs on a windy fall evening. With my trusty Bic pen at the ready<3

In her very dense first chapter Bacchilega explains each component of the theoretical framework she uses in the book, which, despite how intimidated I was, lays the groundwork for methodical analysis and slow but steady reading.

[Elly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cristina Bacchilega is one of my FAVOURITE scholars.

[Janin · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting exploration of the feminine in fairy tales. I most enjoyed the sections related to modernizing and rewriting the narratives.

[Tatyana Naumova · Rating 3 out of 5]

Довольно неровные пласты исследования, но в целом недурственно, хотя автор властно стянуло в феминизацию.