Philippine E-Journals

The ‘makings’ of a heroine: Comparative analysis of the constructed identity of female protagonists in Brothers Grimm and Disney fairy tales

Pelasalome L Alayan | Antoinette Rose Danielle A Balancad

Discipline: Literary Discourse Studies/ Stylistics

 

Abstract:

Brothers Grimm and Disney fairy tales have been familiar to many all over the world, including the Philippines. For each generation, these fairy tales have been told to growing children. Using the notions of French Feminism and the Narrative paradigm, the researchers attempted to determine the constructed identity of the female protagonists in the Brothers Grimm and Disney fairy tales. Through content analysis, it was found that the female protagonists in Brothers Grimm and Disney fairy tales are constructed as ‘beautiful’, passive, and whose life goal is to find a husband, following the stereotypical image of women as stay-at-home female doing house chores. In this sense, following Feminist criticism, the two genres analyzed provide a false sense of womanhood that may have consequences to the imagination of self by typical Filipino girls who would be exposed to these texts.