Fairy Tale Princesses Will Kill Your Children is a book written by Australian author Jane Gilmore that retells the Disney princess classics. Gilmore discusses, disseminates and rewrites Disney’s original “top five princesses”: Snow White (1937), Cinderella (1950), Sleeping Beauty (1959), The Little Mermaid (1989) and Beauty and the Beast (1989). The similarities between all these stories include a beautiful, unselfish, motherless young girl, beset by a jealous older woman and saved by the Handsome Prince. As Gilmore puts it “Other than identifying older women as the only real threat to young girls, each story is about the Princesses’ path to true happiness in the form of marriage to the Handsome Prince.” The most insidious of these princess stories is Beauty and the Beast which teaches girls to stay with men, even in the face of abusive behaviour.
The first four of these OG princesses are covered in my Happily Ever After Series in which I reframe the princesses in a more active role, as shown below. In addition to Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and The Little Mermaid, I also look at Rapunzel, and Hansel and Gretel. While Beauty and the Beast is excluded from my series, it does appear in the form of Little Red Riding Hood (don’t worry, it will all make sense in the end!)
Snow White and Sleeping Beauty
Men falling deeply in love with unconscious young women is considered normal in both the stories of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. If submissive princesses are all the rage, then you can't get more passive than these almost-dead princesses. Both heroines are sexually assaulted whilst unconscious and then wake up to happily marry their attacker. Gilmore goes into the details of the original stories, and needless to say, it's alarming. If we say 'let sleeping dogs lie,' then surely sleeping women should left well alone!
Cinderella
The story of Cinderella combines the popular rags-to-riches tale with the classic make-over trope. The makeover storyline occurs when the unassuming lead female character undergoes a radical, yet superficial, physical transformation involving makeup, new clothes, and a visit to the hairdresser, which suddenly makes her undeniably attractive. This is obviously what happened to Cinderella, as the Handsome Prince was unable to recognize her only days after the ball, when she was again dressed in rags. An example of a modern-day Cinderella story is Pretty Woman (1990) whereby a lady of the night is saved by a dashing, rich man, who gives her an expensive makeover and transforms her into a respectable trad-wife.
In my artistic depictions of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, the Handsome Prince is removed from the picture. In the painting below, Cinderella is shown as a young girl with a mirror image of herself, holding a glass slipper. She is shown here as her own saviour. You can read more about this depiction of Cinderella here.
The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid is a moral tale, the meaning of which has changed over time. According to Gilmore, The Little Mermaid was originally a religious allegory written by Hans Christian Anderson. The Little Mermaid falls prey to an evil older woman and is tricked into giving up her voice for her chance to win the affection of the Handsome Prince.
In the original story, the Prince marries someone else and the Little Mermaid, now without a tail and the love of the Prince, throws herself into the sea and drowns. As she is dying, an angel appears and tells her (in Gilmore’s words) “if she devotes herself to doing good but invisible deeds for humans for 300 years, she will be allowed to go to heaven.” The moral lesson here is to never dream of a better life. Women are to accept what they have and not wish for more.
In Disney’s less depressing version, the Little Mermaid gets the Handsome Prince in the end. Throughout her journey, she is accompanied by a little male fish called Flounder who acts as an ineffectual chaperone (like Olaf in Frozen) in lieu of a parent. Like the other OGs, she does not have a mother, aunty or even a female friend that can offer useful advice. She is just another lonely Princess surrounded by males and jealous older women.
In my artist's depiction of the Little Mermaid above, in lieu of her voice, I have given her text from a nursery rhyme. She Sells Sea Shells is a well-known tongue twister inspired by the Victoria-era fossil hunter named Mary Anning. As a pioneering paleontologist, Anning was responsible for the discovery of several categories of animals. However because she was a woman, she received little credit for her achievements at the time, but has since received acclaim for her work. Her voice was lost and is found. Both Mary Anning and Ariel, joined together in this artwork, are two women by the sea, both trying to find their voice in a male-dominated world.
Rapunzel
Rapunzel is one of many 'woman trapped in the tower' stories which may have originated from the story of Danae in Greek mythology. You can read more about the similarities between Danae and Rapunzel here. In Rapunzel's case, she was trapped in the tower by an old witch and was later rescued by a Handsome Prince. There are no surprises here. In some of my imagined retellings, I replace the Handsome Prince with a female ally who helps her escape.
Hansel and Gretel
Hansel and Gretal is a German tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812. The story of Hansel and Gretel sits outside the classic Disney princess genre, however, it shares many similarities with the aforementioned top five princess stories. In place of a loving mother, the siblings have an evil stepmother who asks their hapless (and blameless) father to abandon the children in the woods. This part of the narrative shares similarities with the other princesses’ stories in which the fathers show little interest in protecting their children born from their first marriage. Like Snow White, these children are abandoned in the deep dark woods and left to die. Hansel and Gretel are then preyed upon by an evil older woman, which appears to be a common threat in medieval times since it is a recurring theme in the Grimm Brothers stories.
While the Handsome Prince does not appear in this story (he is too busy assaulting unconscious young women), Hansel does manage to rescue his sister, thereby enacting the common damsel in distress storyline whereby the man comes to the rescue (albeit minus the Handsome Prince in this instance).
Beauty and the Beast
The final story in Gilmore’s novella is Beauty and the Beast. According to Gilmore, variations of this story have appeared in many cultures, including such stories as The Woman Who Married the Snake in Indian folklore, the Fairy Serpent in Chinese culture and the Russian story called The Secret Flower. In all these versions the youngest daughter is given to a man-beast in exchange for a debt and eventually, the daughter’s steadfast love for the man-beast lifts the curse imposed by an evil witch and transforms the beast into a Handsome Prince. Oh how lucky for the daughter!
Disney’s version stays true to this storyline. I never did like Disney’s Beauty and the Beast movie, even as a child. The singing and dancing cutlery did not distract me from the uneasy feeling that something dark and dangerous lurked underneath Belle’s relationship with the beast.
Even to a child, there is an obvious imbalance of power between Belle and the Beast. The Beast has a huge financial and physical advantage over Belle. Less obvious is his higher social standing and worldliness. As an older male with a complex back story, he has more life experience and credibility than Belle, a young girl who has lived a sheltered life. The man-beast employs all these advantages to keep Belle in his thrall.
Gilmore eloquently points out what my childlike mind could not articulate: Belle is in an abusive relationship with the threatening and controlling beast. It is a relationship founded on coercive control. Beast’s happiness and salvation rely solely on Belle’s selflessness and compliant behaviour.
I could not bring myself to paint any version of this tale in my Happily Ever After Series. Instead of Beauty and the Beast, I focused my attention on a different beast: the wolf. Making a connection with the tale of Little Red Riding Hood, Belle becomes Little Red Riding Hood (the nameless girl) and the Beast is the Wolf. In my retelling, Little Red tames the wolf into an obedient domesticated dog, eliminating the threat but turning it into an ally. Perhaps this is the version that Disney tries to sell us, except that the beast is a formidable, wealthy, powerful man and not a trainable dog.
Fairytales have always been a reflection of their times, shaped by the cultural fears and values of their origins. By revisiting and reshaping these stories through a feminist lens, both Gilmore and I critique outdated paradigms and create space for more empowering narratives. In my reinterpretations, I aim to honor the essence of these tales while offering a fresh perspective—one where the heroines take control of their destinies, defeat their "beasts," and create their own happily ever afters.
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