Happily-Ever-After

So... this is a tad late this week due to some internet issues I have been having in my apartment. Anyways... I really enjoyed Tuesday's class discussion about how Anne Sexton transforms the fairytales of the Brother's Grimm to reflect a modern day audience. I took a Fairytale and Folklore Comparative Lit class last year and we discussed this in depth. Not specifically Sexton's poetry but how fairy tales have often been used to reflect the time they are written in and both the speaker and the audience's values. It's interesting that Sexton would choose to use the Brothers Grimm versions because they, in fact, manipulated earlier versions to reflect the German bourgeoisie's patriarchal values during the 19th century. They emphasized the importance of the nuclear family and female domesticity. Often, their tales initially showed the dissolution of the nuclear family and the subsequent effects on their protagonist. Take for example "Cinderella". Cinderella's troubles begin with the loss of her mother and the destruction of her family. However, she remains loyal to her mother and plants the tree on her grave, and in return her mother takes care of her; her gifts make it so Cinderella can go to the ball, fall in love with the prince, and be part of an "advantageous" marriage. It's really all about devotion to your family and continuing that tradition through a happily-ever-after marriage. I found Sexton's "Snow White" interesting because she's showing a different side of that argument. Snow White becomes a doll and her marriage appears to trap her in that form; marriage, it seems, is not always advantageous. Ultimately, she's dissolving the idea of nuclear family that figured so prominently in the Grimm fairy tales because the nuclear family appears to be dissolving in modern North American Society.