The Frog Princess Analysis

Frog Princes and Princesses

In many fairy tales, the beauty of the heroine is always emphasized. Not only for the heroine, but the hero is always a handsome prince. The heroine is also portrayed as young and weak, and the hero is handsome, rich, and brave. But does this impact the way men and women are viewed in society in a good or bad way? Fairy tales can important values and morals, and no matter how the women are portrayed in these tales, they should never be underestimated. Therefore it is important to keep gender stereotypes in these stories. The gender roles portrayed in “The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich” by the Grimm brothers, “The Frog Princess” by Alexander Afanasev, and the Disney version “The Princess and the Frog”, define the men

In “The Frog King” you have your typical beautiful, naïve, young, spoiled princess whose father is a king, and gets her happy ending by coming across a frog who turns into a handsome prince after being aggressively tossed against a wall. In “The Frog Princess,” the heroine does not play the typical, helpless, submissive character in the story. She’s the bride of a prince who does not love her and does something about her situation that teaches the prince a lesson. In “The Princess and the Frog,” we also see a young woman who practically fends for herself; Prince Naveen learns from her along the way, she humbles him down and helps him mature, and accomplishes her own happy ending. “Gender stereotypes deprive children of the freedom to express themselves and force them to behave in ways that are gender appropriate rather than ways that best suit their personalities” (Louie 75). Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” does an excellent job portraying different gender roles to children that you don’t see in a typical princess story. Just because you are a man does not mean you cannot be in the kitchen cooking, or be rescued by a woman. Just because you are a woman does not mean that you need to rely on a man to accomplish your