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Kaitlyn Gorgone 2/25/13
Seven Little Ladies and the Handsome Prince
Once Upon a time in a far away land, there lived a prince with his evil
step-father. The evil step-father had a mirror. He would ask this mirror who was
the handsomest in all the land. The mirror would reply with, “You my lord” but as
Prince Caspian grew to be handsome and a great warrior, the evil step-father
became jealous. So one day, he went to his mirror and asked, “Mirror Mirror on
the wall who is the handsomest of them all?” The mirror did not reply the same
as before, but said, “My lord you may be the king of all the land but Prince
Caspian is by far the most handsome.” When the King heard this he was furious,
so he called his huntsman to find Prince Caspian in the woods and kill him.
Standing in the middle of a field grazing on lemon grass is a deer. The air is
still and the land quite as Prince Caspian stood at the edge of the forest. He
then slowly pulls back his bow taking a deep breath to aim at the deer. Then all
of a sudden, an arrow flew passed his head. Prince Caspian turned around to
see who it was just as an arrow grazed his arm. He starts off running the opposite
direction to get away from the huntsman. Once Prince Caspian got far enough
into the forest, he turned around to make sure he lost the huntsman, but out of
the corner of his eye he saw this little cottage. He thought to himself, “what a
great little safe haven.”
There was no light in the little cottage so Prince Caspian lit a candle. As
the light reached across the room he saw all the mini furniture, seven little beds
with pink all over, seven little chairs at a kitchen table, and seven little plates
waiting for someone to eat off of them. The beds had names on them. The
names were, doc, bashful, sleepy, sneezy, dopette, grumpy, and happy. Even
though the prince was very curious as to whom these little creatures were, he
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also was very tired. So the prince pushed all the beds together and lay across
them to fall asleep.
Prince Caspian was slightly awoken by the seven little voices singing their
way home. Oblivious as to what that singing was, he fell back asleep. Then
seven little dwarfs came walking into their home, stunned to see a handsome
young being sound asleep in their beds. Dopette says, “He is so handsome we
have to let him stay.” So the seven little dwarfs had a huddle meeting to decide
if Prince Caspian was to stay. The verdict was he could stay as long as he kept
the house and cooked while the seven of them were out coal mining.
That night the King went to his mirror one more time, certain of the answer
he would get, so he asked, “Mirror mirror on the wall who is the handsomest of
them all?” The mirror responded, “My lord you may be the king of all the land
but Prince Caspian is by far the most handsome. He hides away in a little
cottage with seven little people.” More furious than ever the king said, “Than I
am just going to have to kill him myself.” The king then stormed away to get
ready for his far journey in the morning.
Prince Caspian was awoken by the sun light beaming across his face. It
took him a minute to realize where he was, but then soon got to his duties for the
day. He washed the dishes, prepared dinner for the night, swept out the house,
and washed the windows. Just as he finished, an old man appeared outside,
Prince Caspian went out to see if he needed any help. Little did he know the old
man was the king. Prince Caspian walked over to him to make sure he was
alright and the old man said, “I need rest, can you help me sit down?” So Prince
Caspian went to go help him sit down as the old man stabbed him in the side
with a knife, then ran off to leave Prince Caspian for dead. The dwarfs came
home to find the prince lying on the ground bleeding. So they took Prince
Caspian into the cottage and bandaged him up and put him to bed.
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The king so happy to have killed the prince himself, went to his mirror and
asked, “Mirror mirror on the wall who is the handsomest of them all?” The mirror
responded, “Even with your evil plan the seven little female dwarfs knew how to
fix his wound and saved his life, still making him the most handsome in all the
land.” Furious once again with the defeat, the king went storming off to get
ready for his mornings journey.
“Good morning little ladies, thank you for saving me yesterday” said the
prince. The seven little ladies replied, “You are more than welcome but, do not
fall for those tricks again for only danger is upon you now.” Then the seven little
ladies went off to work leaving Prince Caspian to his daily chores.
As Prince Caspian was cleaning the cottage he saw a distressed young
lady, beautiful as could be. So he went out to see if she was lost, not knowing
that it was the king again. Little did the king know that as soon as someone
would touch him the spell would be broken and he would be revealed. So as
the prince reached for her hand the spell disappeared showing the wicked old
king. Prince Caspian then pulled out his sword and cut off his head, faster than
you could blink an eye.
“Hi ho, hi ho it’s off to home we go” was the first good sound the prince
heard all day. When the seven little dwarfs came into the house the prince
explained everything that had happened and who he was. He told them that
he was going back to his kingdom to claim his throne and become king; he
even gave them the option to come back with him. They of course said no.
They like their life as is. So when King Caspian got back to his kingdom, he made
statues in the middle of the square to honor what the seven little ladies did for
him in his time of distress.
The End.
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Kaitlyn Gorgone 2/25/13
Seven Little Ladies and a Handsome Prince
When you think about a fairy tale, you think about how there is a
distressed, beautiful young woman. You would think about how there is always a
handsome prince that saves her, or how the young woman in the story would
always do the house work/chores while men did hard labor. These are
stereotypes. So what if the fairy tales had different gender roles? What would
happen to society’s norms and they way we think things are supposed to
happen? In regard to these thoughts, I wrote a revision to “Snow White and The
Seven Little Dwarves.” What I did was change gender roles in my revision. I
made females, males, and males, females. I made my revision that way to show
that men can do a “women’s job” and women and do a “man’s job.” When I
think of a fairy tale, I do not think that it is sexist. I just believe that as young
children we grow up watching and reading these fairy tales and we base life off
of them.
In the original “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” Snow White’s wicked
step-mother wants to kill her, so Snow White runs off to live with seven little
dwarves. The seven little dwarves allow Snow White to stay with them as long as
she cleans the house and prepares dinner while they are away coal mining all
day. The step-mother finds out that Snow White is still alive and she tries to kill
Snow White herself. Even though the queen would have succeeded, she did not
because a handsome prince came and rescued Snow White. But, in my fairy
tale revision I changed the gender roles around. The beginning is the same only
it is an evil step-father and a young prince. Then when the young prince gets to
the cottage where the seven little dwarves stay, instead of them being male,
they are females, and mine coal while the prince stays back to clean and cook.
My ending in my revision is different though. The prince saves himself from his
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step-father and then makes statues in a square to honor the seven little ladies for
what they did for the prince.
The article, Lexicon of Debates quotes Simmone de Beauvior and
Monique Wittig that, “one is not born a woman, but becomes one through
social and cultural processes.” (Kolmar and Frances 47) I agree with this quote.
It is one of the reasons I made the revisions in my fairy tale. We grow up
watching these fairy tales only to base our lives off of them. So when fairy tales
have women as the weak and dependent on a man to take care of them, then
the quote above proves to be true. Making the males, females and the females,
males in my story sets a different standard for young girls. If that is the way fairy
tales were actually told, would men be cleaning and cooking while the women
are the bread winners? Would women be looked at not only as mothers but
career women too?
Maria Tartar quotes Andrea Dworkin saying, “We ingested it as children
whole, had its values and consciousness imprinted on our minds and cultural
absolutes long before we were in fact men and women. We have taken the
fairy tales of childhood with us to maturity, chewed but still lying in the stomach,
as real identity.” (Tartar, xiii) As said above, most of us have done this. We base
our society norms off of these unrealistic dreams about life. We are not all the
best looking or the smartest but because we grow up in a society that believes
that is how everyone should be, we learn to believe in it. Most men believe
women should only cook, clean, and take care of the family when women are
more than capable to do hard labor or have a career. Since the time before
we could even walk as children these images were pounded into our heads
and we just never learn to think that life could be different. So who is saying now
that we have to live by these standards when there is no written law to abide
by.
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Life, maturity, and people; we live our lives based our other peoples’
dreams. We really should be living not on other people dreams, but our own.
When we are children, thoughts, manners, and social norms are put into our
heads. Then when we hit maturity, we never discover our own morals and
standards of living, so we live by the standards of other people and their norms.
In my revision of Snow White and the Seven Little Dwarfs I changed the
characters around because it is out of our normal social norms. I let the females
do hard labor and the males clean the house because it lets the reader know
life is not based off of someone else’s dream. I wanted the reader to get the
sense that they can lead their own life the way they wanted. I especially
wanted to let the females see they do not need a male to take care of them
when they can do it on their own. This brings light to the subject sexism and how
women have been treated for years. So I ask, how do you see fairy tales?
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Works Cited
Bartkowski, Wendy K. Kolmar and Frances. "Feminst Theory." Lexicon Of Debates
42-60.
Tatar, Maria. Introduction to The Calssic Fairy Tales. New York : W.W. Norton &
Company, INC, 1999.