"Someday My Prince Will Come": Female Acculturation Through the Fairy Tale

Lieberman, Marcia R. “‘Someday My Prince Will Come’: Female Acculturation Through the Fairy Tale.” College English 34.3 (1972): 383-395. JSTOR. University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia. 9 April 2008. <http://www.jstor.org>

This article talks about how popular fairytales such as Cinderella and Snow White are now elevated to mythical proportions in the eyes of children. The author analyzes The Blue Fairy Book, a book that contains many of these famous fairy tales, in the attempt to see what sorts of lessons children are being taught. Lieberman, working under the assumption that children care especially about endings, finds that marriage may be seen as the ultimate goal for children who read these fairy tales, since most of them end with the couple getting married and living “happily ever after.” Courtship is emphasized in these fairy tales, and thus a child may yearn to be courted, since it is often portrayed in fairy tales as the most exciting time in a female character’s life, culminating in marriage.

Lieberman’s beliefs about what children learn through fairy tales are the sorts of beliefs that they also may learn as a result of seeing Disney’s Cinderella. In fact, the textual version of Cinderella is one of the tales included in the book that Lieberman analyzes. The idea that marriage is the ultimate ending, and that courtship is extremely important, are the exact sorts of ideas that may influence a child when he or she watches Cinderella. Romance is portrayed as very exciting in both the textual tale and the film, and thus a girl may come to value romance as extremely important in her life, and she may learn ideas on what romance should be like, especially the idea that marriage and “happily ever after” are the ultimate form of existence for a female.

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"Someday My Prince Will Come": Female Acculturation Through the Fairy Tale