Help! The Princess Myth

[michelle]

Hey guys, I have this English Assignment and I thought you might be able to help me out...

The topic is image and meaning I have to explore the concept of the Princess Myth and my section is on the Fairytale Princess *surprise surprise* ...

Basically I need to write about the 'image' of these princesses, ie. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella (or any others you can add)

So far I've come up with these questions to outline:
- what images do these fairytale princesses portray?
- how are these images reinforced through media and society? (eg through Disney)
- how do these images affect what our perception of a modern-princess (Traditional - Diana, Grace Kelly, Mary Donaldson or Rebellious - Zahra, Stephanie of Monaco) should be?
- why has society chosen to the portray princesses in this way?
- what does this say about how society has and continues to see women?
and etc

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Ludwig Von Drake]

there is usually a theme of death and rebirth and often need a kiss to be brought back to life.

[michelle]

I was thinking more along the lines of say Snow White's image of 'damsel in distress' or Cinderella's 'rags to riches' and Sleeping Beauty as the subservience and etc ...

thanks anyway!

[2099net]

Michelle, one thing you may want to consider is the political and social climate in Europe at the time most of these fairytales had their origin.

If you go back to medieval times, England had only just been unified into one kingdom from 4 or 5 smaller ones (round about 1000AD). Italy wasn't the single country we know today until much later (1850AD).

What this means is that for a time Europe had many more families of Royalty than they had now - and a side effect of the various unification of kingdoms means that many quasi-royal titles were created - Lords, Counts, Dukes, even simple hereditary knighthoods... all are a concequence of European unifications - families and individuals lost power, but were given titles to compensate them.

What this means is that when the fairytales were first told, it's likely that the stories involved people with such titles, as such an individual was likely to live near by. It's likely that when first transcribing the stories for the first time, the Grimms changed the characters to Kings and Queens, Princes and Princesses simply to add more interest to the stories and characters.

So that sort of explains why traditional European fairytales feature so many Princesses.

[michelle]

hmmm ... interesting point, although i'm not sure how to use it ... thanks netty

maybe if I rephrase the question I might get some more bites ...

What do you associate with the word 'princess'? and
How has Disney, media and society affected your views?

meh ... I tried ... well I do have seven weeks ...

[Loomis]

hmmm ... interesting point, although i'm not sure how to use it ... thanks netty

maybe if I rephrase the question I might get some more bites ...

What do you associate with the word 'princess'? and
How has Disney, media and society affected your views?

meh ... I tried ... well I do have seven weeks ...

Seven weeks! Jeez, you're keen! (This coming from Mr. "do the 5000 word essay 2 nights before"...and still get a DN of course ).

You are in year 10 or 11 I think, so I won't get all "I've done a thesis an you haven't" But try not to make your question too broad, because you leave yourself way too much to cover. I think the way you broke down the questions the first time was pretty good.

Also, maybe you should consider how the princess myth is stronger in those countries without royalty (you are looking at Disney, so obviously the movies are from the US, but based around European myths. I've always thought the US was fascinated with royalty simply because they don't have one of their own, so they create some of their own - e.g. The Kennedys).

Anyhoo, just a thought...