Piecing Together the Grimm's Quilt

Female passivity in Grimm's fairy tales has been compounded by the editing and fragmentation of the original text. Our twentieth century society, for the most part, has rejected many tales that depict women in positive, active roles. Although the traditional tales do portray women in stereotypical roles and plots, it is unfair to dismiss the Grimm's collection, when viewed in its entirety, as being entirely sexist. As a result of our society's editing, the original canon has been limited to about five standard tales from the collection of over 200 tales that the Grimm's originally published. The few tales that depict women with autonomy and intelligence have been edited out and are not the tales that show up on children's lists of well known tales. Sexism in fairy tales becomes a question of editing and the values of the editors, rather then the intent of the original collectors.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Oregon

Year dc:date.issued

1991

Author dc:creator

• Milbrath, S. Toril Jeanne

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Farwell, Marilyn R.

• Fairy tales
• Grimm's quilt
• Female passivity
• Sexism
• Fiction
• Brothers Grimm

Statement dc:rights

• Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-US
• UO theses and dissertations are provided for research and educational purposes and may be under copyright by the author or the author’s heirs. Please contact scholars@uoregon.edu with any questions or comments. In your email, be sure to include the URL and title of the specific items that you are inquiring about.

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1794/31856

OAI record oai:identifier

https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/server/oai/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=dim&identifier=oai%3Ascholarsbank.uoregon.edu%3A1794%2F31856