I was recently given a bunch of children's books and among them were three short fairytales; The Princess and the Pea, Thumbelina and The Goose Girl.
Thanks to a childhood immersed in Disney Cartoons I knew that princesses were mostly white, had poor relationships with their stepmothers and were basically there to give up on their own ambitions when they met a prince.
There was some other weird business that I had forgotten about though.
In Thumbelina, a poor infertile woman goes to a "wise woman" for a child and ends up getting a tiny girl child out of a flower.
She devotes herself to making the little girl happy and all seems to go well until Thumbelina is carried away by a toad as a wife for her son.
Thumbelina isn't really fussed about losing her adopted mother she's more focused on not marrying the toad.
She gets put on a waterlily and whines to some passing fish to cut it loose so she can drift away.
After she makes it safely to the shore she realizes she has always been looked after and that she needs someone else to mooch off.
She finds a lady mouse and proceeds to eat all her food whilst not doing anything useful.
The mouse suggests she go and marry her neighbor the mole.
Thumbs isn't into the mole but she needs a place to crash so she puts up with him. In the meantime she finds an injured bird, nurses it to health and then flies away with it to the land of the flower people.
When she arrives they give her a new name to replace the one given to her by "the man."
She meets the prince and gets married to him right away at the ripe old age of 14 or something.
Hopefully her adopted mother discovered the joy of cat ownership.
In the Princess and the Pea there is an young prince who is obsessed with finding a "real princess" he goes around meeting nice royal ladies and judging the hell out of them.
He returns home despondent while a storm front blows in.
During the height of the storm there is a knock on the door and this dripping wet woman is there claiming to be a princess.
She's like, "y'all got any princes up in here? I'm in the market. I also need a nap."
They put her on this huge stack of mattresses with a pea stuffed under one of them and she doesn't even care that she has to climb the equivalent of three stories to go to bed and could possible break her neck if she rolls off one of the sides.
In the morning the queen asks her how she slept and she answers that it felt like there was a rock under the mattresses.
The queen decides, I kid you not, that only a true princess could detect a mushed pea under a stack of mattresses and that this weird girl who doesn't have the sense not to be out on a stormy night would be perfect for her son.
She meets the prince, he digs her super sensitive pea detecting skills and they get married a few minutes later.
And then there was The Goose Girl.
The queen in this story raises her daughter by herself and manages to rule the kingdom but still decides to fall back on the tired paternalistic bs and send her daughter off to be married to some dude she's never met.
There must have been some budget cuts in the kingdom because she sends her daughter off on a talking horse with two donkeys and an ill tempered woman servant.
I guess the next kingdom over is pretty close and there aren't any thieves about or whatever.
The queen also gives her daughter a cup and lock of hair which she manages to lose pretty early on in the journey.
The servant stages a mini uprising and forces the princess to change places with her. The princess does this without putting up a fight and they procede to meet the prince.
No one suspects that the bad mannered, illiterate servant isn't really the princess.
No one suspects that the washed and groomed maiden with her isn't really a servant.
The prince proceeds to court the servant while the princess works with geese and gets harrassed by a local farm boy.
She summons the wind and makes his hat blow away. Then she goes and talks to the severed head of her horse. As you do.
Finally, after the princess has basically spelled out the score to anyone with eyes, the king begins to suspect that something is up.
In the end, the princess marries the prince (who has a weak chin and beaked nose) and the people all love her because, "she was so beautiful and gentle" (read: non threatening.)
To sum up, if you are a princess you should be as helpless and meek as possible. The most important thing is to look pretty and get married before you hit 20.
It seems the indoctrination started early for me.
Between the Bible and Grimm's Fairy Tales it's a wonder I managed to escape a similar fate to these simpering wimp princesses.
It's good to be a commoner.
Thanks to a childhood immersed in Disney Cartoons I knew that princesses were mostly white, had poor relationships with their stepmothers and were basically there to give up on their own ambitions when they met a prince.
There was some other weird business that I had forgotten about though.
In Thumbelina, a poor infertile woman goes to a "wise woman" for a child and ends up getting a tiny girl child out of a flower.
She devotes herself to making the little girl happy and all seems to go well until Thumbelina is carried away by a toad as a wife for her son.
Thumbelina isn't really fussed about losing her adopted mother she's more focused on not marrying the toad.
She gets put on a waterlily and whines to some passing fish to cut it loose so she can drift away.
After she makes it safely to the shore she realizes she has always been looked after and that she needs someone else to mooch off.
She finds a lady mouse and proceeds to eat all her food whilst not doing anything useful.
The mouse suggests she go and marry her neighbor the mole.
Thumbs isn't into the mole but she needs a place to crash so she puts up with him. In the meantime she finds an injured bird, nurses it to health and then flies away with it to the land of the flower people.
When she arrives they give her a new name to replace the one given to her by "the man."
She meets the prince and gets married to him right away at the ripe old age of 14 or something.
Hopefully her adopted mother discovered the joy of cat ownership.
In the Princess and the Pea there is an young prince who is obsessed with finding a "real princess" he goes around meeting nice royal ladies and judging the hell out of them.
He returns home despondent while a storm front blows in.
During the height of the storm there is a knock on the door and this dripping wet woman is there claiming to be a princess.
She's like, "y'all got any princes up in here? I'm in the market. I also need a nap."
They put her on this huge stack of mattresses with a pea stuffed under one of them and she doesn't even care that she has to climb the equivalent of three stories to go to bed and could possible break her neck if she rolls off one of the sides.
In the morning the queen asks her how she slept and she answers that it felt like there was a rock under the mattresses.
The queen decides, I kid you not, that only a true princess could detect a mushed pea under a stack of mattresses and that this weird girl who doesn't have the sense not to be out on a stormy night would be perfect for her son.
She meets the prince, he digs her super sensitive pea detecting skills and they get married a few minutes later.
And then there was The Goose Girl.
The queen in this story raises her daughter by herself and manages to rule the kingdom but still decides to fall back on the tired paternalistic bs and send her daughter off to be married to some dude she's never met.
There must have been some budget cuts in the kingdom because she sends her daughter off on a talking horse with two donkeys and an ill tempered woman servant.
I guess the next kingdom over is pretty close and there aren't any thieves about or whatever.
The queen also gives her daughter a cup and lock of hair which she manages to lose pretty early on in the journey.
The servant stages a mini uprising and forces the princess to change places with her. The princess does this without putting up a fight and they procede to meet the prince.
No one suspects that the bad mannered, illiterate servant isn't really the princess.
No one suspects that the washed and groomed maiden with her isn't really a servant.
The prince proceeds to court the servant while the princess works with geese and gets harrassed by a local farm boy.
She summons the wind and makes his hat blow away. Then she goes and talks to the severed head of her horse. As you do.
Finally, after the princess has basically spelled out the score to anyone with eyes, the king begins to suspect that something is up.
In the end, the princess marries the prince (who has a weak chin and beaked nose) and the people all love her because, "she was so beautiful and gentle" (read: non threatening.)
To sum up, if you are a princess you should be as helpless and meek as possible. The most important thing is to look pretty and get married before you hit 20.
It seems the indoctrination started early for me.
Between the Bible and Grimm's Fairy Tales it's a wonder I managed to escape a similar fate to these simpering wimp princesses.
It's good to be a commoner.
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