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Snow White: Gender Roles In Fairy Tales

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When most people think of fairy tales an assumption is commonly made that the tale will focus on a damsel in distress (usually a female), waiting to be saved by the heroic and charming prince. Currently, society believes that a woman shouldn’t have to wait to be saved by a heroic prince. Contrary to what many people believe, the heroic prince character, doesn’t have to be a prince, and male or female, it is essential to the advancement of the plot of many fairy tales, because without them many fairy tales would remain stagnant, and essential the part of most fairy tale: the “happily ever after,” would never happen.
In the Frog King, the curse is broken when the frog is kissed by the princess. Often, assumptions are made that the prince always comes to the princess’s rescue, which is wrong, when referring to the Frog King. The princess’s main purpose in the story is to advance the plot by breaking the curse put on the prince. Gender doesn’t play a role in who is being saved, which further suggest that the role of the prince in a fairy tale is not only reserved for a prince, rather, it is reserved for character that advances the plot. …show more content…

Later on, the curse is lifted from Snow White, when a guard accidentally trips, and jolts her casket, her body then moves, and it is revealed that she was choked by an apple that need to be dislodged from her throat. The prince himself did not physically save Snow White, but his directions lead to her salvation. Without the prince’s burning desire to be next to Snow White for the rest of his life, story would have remained stagnant: Snow White wouldn’t have had the apple dislodged from her throat, which in turn would leave the reader without a conclusion to the story. Without the charming prince to come to Snow White’s rescue, there would be no

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