Good Parents To Snow White example essay topic

When one thinks of parents, one thinks of parents as the source of protection and love. However, in many fairytales, parents are portrayed as unreliable, and sometimes the biological mother or father is the actual culprits of their children's ill fate. For example, why would Little Red Riding Hood's mother actually let her young daughter travel in the woods, in winter, by herself? The mother knows there's a chance that her daughter could get raped, beaten, or killed.

In "The Tiger's Bride", the father of Beauty loses her to the Beast in a game of cards! How reliable is that for a father? In Cinderella's case, the parents are even more responsible for the hardship she goes through. We often think that the step-parents are the malevolent force in the plot such as Cinderella's step-mother causes her grief and torment.

While this might be seemly true, if one looks deeper into the plot, the realization that the real mother and father are responsible begins to surface. Even in the Disney version, where was the Cinderella's father when her step-mother treated her horribly? Could he not control his new wife and protect Cinderella? Readers have been tricked into thinking that the step-mother is the real demon when the biological parents deserve to be punished. Cinderella is really a story about a lustful father and evil, selfish mother. In "Catskin", when the queen is on her deathbed, she tells her husband that he must never marry again unless he finds another who can fit her ring.

This selfish act leads to extremely bad circumstances for the king and his daughter. At last, when the King has finished grieving and wants to remarry, he sets out to find another who might fit into the queen's ring. When the father realizes only his daughter can fit the ring, he loses sight of morality and wants to subject the both of them to incest. He must realize that forcing his daughter to marry him is a severe sin no father should ever commit, yet his carnal desires lead him astray. The father is also selfish; he chooses his own happiness over his daughter's. The only choices "Catskin" are either to marry her father and sink into incestuous sin or run away; thus, she must run away from her own father.

She has to escape from her own father to be safe. In another tale similar to "Catskin", called "Donkeyskin", the queen tells the king before she dies that he must never remarry unless he finds a woman superior to her in goodness and beauty. Again, the woman is very wicked for wanting to limit her husband's happiness. She wants her husband to be bound to her forever even if she is dead. This sort of wickedness only leads the king to fall in love with is daughter. Only she is superior to the queen in goodness and beauty.

Even though "Donkeyskin" is a fairytale, the terms which the queen bound the king are totally subjective. The king could think anyone is superior in goodness and beauty; it didn't have to be his daughter! Again, the father chooses desire over fatherly duty; his only concern is to be happy no matter what the costs. He does not think about the implications of his incestuous lust and how it would devastate his daughter. The daughters in both "Catskin" and "Donkeyskin" are the moral ones; the people who have their heads straight. It is up to them to maintain purity and sanctity of the social norms.

The mother could be seen as even more responsible and wicked than the father for she is one who stirs up trouble in the first place. She is the one who sets up the situation for her husband's remarriage. But the father is not without fault; he became a vile, lustful man after his daughter. The only good one is the child herself. Even in the Disney version, the step-mother and step-sisters are very mean to Cinderella. They make her do all these tedious tasks such as picking peas out of the ashes and such, but these tacks are merely annoying.

They do not rape her or put her up for prostitution; there is no immoral task forced upon Cinderella. What are some tiresome tasks when compared to being degraded to incest? The severity of Disney's Cinderella situation seems less than Catskin's. And what of a father who wagers his child on gambling?

That is exactly the unfortunate case for Beauty in, "The Tiger's Bride" by Angela Carter. "Father lost me to The Beast at cards" is the first line of the story which sends off a gloomy and disheartening feeling. The father sacrifices his daughter so that he may be freed from the Beast. This act manifests the irresponsibility and extreme selfishness of Beauty's father. Snow White's father is not at all a loving father either. After his wife dies of illness, he remarries a woman who treats his daughter quiet horribly.

In the Disney version, the jealous queen takes away Snow White's beautiful clothes and jewels and sends her to the servants' quarters. Where was the king when all this happened?! Would he not stand up to the queen to protect his biological child? The mirror which the queen asks everyday, "who is the fairest of us all?" could be interpreted as the king. A constant struggle between the queen and Snow White exists as to who is treasured more by the king. The step-mother fears that her husband might love his daughter more, and when she thinks this might be true, she sends Snow White into the forest to be killed.

Again the duty of a father would be to look after his daughter despite that he is a king. Did he fail to notice that his daughter was missing and why was there no search for her? In "The Snow Child" by Angela Carter, the male known as the Count creates Snow White; it is plausible that readers view him as her father for he created her. But by and by, he corrupts her and she begins to lose her purity.

Material possessions such as a fur coat and leather boots given to her from the Count signify the changes in the child. She appeared into the story stark naked and ends up fully clothed. This transition indicates that the child has been altered, perhaps corrupted and has lost her innocence. At the end of the story, she has an accidental death. But even death can not stop the Count from using her body one last time for his own pleasure, "the Count got off his horse, unfastened his breeches and thrust his virile member into the dead girl... he was soon finished". This rather sickening description reveals that Snow White's father tainted her purity by exploiting and abusing her sexually.

If the Count is her father, then the Countess must be seen as her mother. Her jealousy of the child led to the accidental death; Snow White fell off the horse when she attempted to pick a rose at the Countess' request. The Countess' intention was to kill Snow White for she asked Snow White to fetch her brooch in the frozen pond", 'Dive in and fetch it for me's he sad; she thought the girl would drown". Neither the Countess nor the Count was good parents to Snow White. Little Red Riding Hood's parents, although, not really mentioned in the stories, still are also responsible for her death. In all the versions, she lives far from Grandmother thus requiring for her to walk through the woods.

She is simply a little girl, why would her mother say, "I want you to go and see how your grandmother is faring, for I've heard that she's ill. Take her some cakes and this little pot of butter". If Grandmother is so sick, why doesn't the mother go to visit and comfort her? She must know traveling through the woods is not very safe for she says, "when you " re out in the woods, walk properly and don't stray from the path". When bad things happen to the little girl, the responsibility can not be all put onto her. Small children and even teenagers rely on their parents to watch out for them and keep them safe.

In Little Red Riding Hood's case, her mother could be seen as sending her daughter to her death. But of course, we can not be too harsh on these fairytales for then; there would be no fairytale to read after all. However one thing is certain, the parents are not at all portrayed as the reliable figures that they should be.