Important About Female Characters In Books example essay topic

In the introduction of K. Ragan's book, "Fearless Girls, Wise Women And Beloved Sisters" (1998), she says that her starting point was that she used to get very angry when she was telling stories to her daughter, because the majority of the characters in the stories were men. Actually, she noticed that over 90 percent of the characters were male and that all major female characters were negative. She thought that these books were teaching to her daughter that she was nobody since most of the characters were male and there was nothing important about female characters in books. In talking with other mothers, she found out that they also felt the same way; actually some said that they were changing the pronouns from male to female, like herself. Most mothers believed that there was nothing they could do about this.

When she enlarged her search to libraries, she discovered that there was a little stock of heroines in libraries. Also the female role models were beautiful, passive and helpless victims like Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty. In her search for finding active female characters in libraries, one librarian told her that the reason for not finding any quality heroines in fairy tales was that those tales were written in a time when social majority insisted on silent, passive women. Her studies about folklore revealed the fact that while preparing anthologies male editors generally choose those tales that have male characters. In reviewing over 30 000 stories, she found out that the percentages of female characters in folktales were very small numbers. These forgotten heroines were courageous mothers, clever young girls and warrior women who rescue their villages from bad characters, like the German version of Grimm's fairy tales.

Although there is an unfair ratio, some people think that the gender is not important, because the children identify themselves with the main character regardless of the gender of that character. Some others believe that fairy tales represent the journey of discovering a character that has an active and passive part, regardless of the gender. However, if this true, the division between heroes and heroines must be fifty-fifty, which is not the case; actually it is one-to-nine. Ragan said that this observation shows that it does matter to editors, readers and listeners whether the active protagonist is male or female. She supported the idea that the sex of the characters matters to children. For example, her daughter consistently identified herself with female characters unless she has no choice or many boys did not want to go to movies with active female characters.

What finally motivated Ragan to write this book was the behavior of a little girl in her daughter's preschool. The teacher had asked everyone to select a character in the book. Most of the girls and boys selected the hero but this little girl searched the book and found a little girl's picture in a crowd, which is the only girl picture in the book. This event gave Ragan the confidence to start her book to aid parents, teachers, writers and storytellers. As the research and editing of this book advanced, she thought that she returned to folktales as an adult. She believed that in some way folktales meant to answer questions and satisfy a need.

After reading thousands of fairytales she decided that the heroines no longer had to be perfect. She found she could smile at a negative character and admire her persistence. Choosing The Folktales In searching and collecting folktales for this collection, she looked for books in English or those that have been translated into English. She spent a lot of effort to collect tales from all over the world so that the anthology will be multicultural. There were many criteria in her definition of a heroine. The first criteria were that the main characters must be female and they must be worthy of admiration.

Secondly, tale must center around the heroine. Thirdly the heroine must not die at the end of the story, since she discovered that her daughters became sad when this happened... A fourth criterion is about the storyteller; it must be a woman. As a final comment, she said that she believed this book is a mirror of different civilizations and centuries. Actually, considering her main motivation behind the book, we can say that the anthology completes the missing half of the mirror; the one that reflects the female part.