Marcia Lieberman's Criticism In Fairy Tales

Furthermore, in the article, Joosen references, without analyzing the veracity of her claims, Marcia Lieberman, a feminist especially concerned with some of the patriarchal features - supposedly - common in all of the Grimms' tales. Joosen quotes Marcia Lieberman's essay "Some Day My Prince Will Come" emphasizing three of the most relevant points of criticism in fairy tales: "the so-called beauty contest" (132), "the typical constellation of characteristics in fairy-tales women" (132), and "marriage as the ultimate reward for being beautiful" (133). Nonetheless, Lieberman's critique, so extensively used by Joosen, only concerns itself with a narrow spectrum of the Grimms' tales. In fact, part of the stories collected by the two German brothers

For example, when the sorcerer kidnaps the girls, he just "touches [the girls] and [they] jump into his basket" (Grimms 193). The lack of articulated spells is even more blatant when the third sister finds her two siblings chopped to pieces and she brings them back to life solely by "gathering all their body parts and put[ting] them in their proper places" (Grimms 194). Therefore, even though Tatar affirms that "the spell, curses and charms in the Grimms' collections are the most obvious example of the power of language" (Tatar 60), "Fitcher's bird" shows how even traditional fairy tales recurrently lack spells that "create a real physical change" (Tatar

Indeed, the ending of the story is based on the three girls concocting their escape through their intelligence and the cleverness of their words. For example, the two sisters - after being saved by the third girl, who also convinced the wizard to carry on his back a basket full of gold in addition to the other two sisters - repeat twice, from their hiding spot "I'm looking out my little window and I see that you're resting. Get a move on." (Grimms 195) in order to prevent the wicked sorcerer from resting. Similarly, the third sister - while dressed as Fitcher's bird - deceives her bridegroom and the guests by replaying twice the same conversation - which is, arguably, the most meaningful example of the power of language in the