L'évolution des princesses Disney.

Snow-White is the main character of the fairy tail who wears her name: “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. It was published for the 1st time in 1812 by the brothers Grimm but actually it is inspired by a Germanic myth. You all know the story of Snow White: A queen couldn’t have children but one day, she pricked her finger with a needle, and drops of red blood driped onto the freshly fallen white snow on the black windowsill. And she said: "How I wish that I had a daughter that had skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony.”. And some time later, she gave birth to a daughter she called Snow White. Unfortunately, she died a year later, the king married a wicked and vain woman who hated her step-daughter cause of her beauty. She asked a hunter to bring her a wood and to kill her. But he decided to spare her and she stayed by seven dwarfs in the wood until the queen find her again and tried to kill her with a gifted apple. But fortunately, a charming prince was riding horse in the wood and saved her by kissing her blood red lips.

Snow White and the seven Dwarfs is considered as an oedipian fairy-tale by most of the psychologists. Indeed, we can observe a conflict between the daughter and the stepmother at the beginning, who stayed at the narcissistic stage, than the beginning of the puberty: SW wanders alone in the wood. Then, she lives in a non menacing environment with the dwarfs, but is victim of the plans and attacks of the queen. The red apple is the last tentation: the moemnt when the young girl accept to enter adulthood. Then there is a latency moment (the coma), and finally, she accedes to physic and psychic maturity with the arrival and the rescue from the prince.

But will remember the young girls who look at the film? The evolution of the adolescent from birth to sexual life? No! She will just retain that Snow White is perfect woman who is beautiful (she corresponds to the the female ideal of the epoch), she is so nice, pure and on top of all that, the dwarfs are crazy about her because she takes care of them: SW is the perfect HW: she cleans, she makes the beds, she cooks and she waits all day long for her mans. Does she work? No! Di she was mistrust of the queen? No! Did she think carefully before eating the gifted apple? N! We are not making judgment on SW. We are just depicting her qualities which corresponded to the conventions of the feminine ideal of the 1930: a beautiful woman, with a perfect appearance: a skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony, and with housewife's qualities: taking care of the house and of her mans, waiting for the prince charming.

We’ll take a quick look at Aurora, the sleeping Beauty and Ariel, the little mermaid.

You also all know the story of the sleeping beauty: this classic fairy tale was written by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, it was published for the fisrt time in 1697 but the earliest known version of the story is Perceforest, composed between 1330 and 1344. The fairy tale was adapted into a Walt Disney animated film in 1959. At her baptism, Aurora, the daughter of the royal couple, got a gift from each of her seven fairy godmothers : beauty, intelligence, grace, capacity to danse, sing and play instruments very well: the perfect woman isn’t she? But she was also cursed by an old fairy who has not been invited : she before her 16th birthday, she will prick her finger on the spindle of an enchanted spinning wheel and die. What a beautiful representation of the family circle! But you surely noted that she just got 6 gift and not 7. Because the 7th had kept her when she has seen the evil fairy Maleficent. She could modify the curse and Aurora just fall in sleep. So she is represented as a beautiful young woman who waited 100 years for a prince charming. This fairy tail also depicts the adolescence: the first menstruations and a long period of waiting until the arrival of the man.

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