Feminine Bits: The Passive Bodies and Active Revisions of Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, and Red Riding-hood by Alyssa Danielle Ross A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Auburn, AL August 6, 2016 Copyright 2016 by Alyssa Danielle Ross Approved by Marc Silverstein, Chair, Professor of English Chantel Acevedo, Professor of English Sunny Stalter-Pace, Professor of English Christopher Keirstead, Professor of English Tiffany Sippial, Professor of History Abstract Using an interdisciplinary approach that includes sociological data, feminist and postmodern theory, and historical context, I analyze gendered representations of violence and sexuality in contemporary fairy tales, arguing against woman’s often-unconscious perpetuation of our own oppressive stereotypes, such as the victim, virgin, seductress, and witch. My study recounts the matrilineal roots of several folk tales with female protagonists – Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, and Red Riding-hood – and addresses the first recorded versions written by Charles Perrault and the Grimm Brothers. These character histories aid my analysis of the subsequent feminist revisionary narratives and verses. Each of the revisions I address, compared with the Grimm or Perrault referent, demonstrate a transvaulation of values for women. Revisionary narratives react to the preexisting, passive depictions of folk heroines in an attempt to change the way we view and understand women and their relationship to sex and violence. This article advocates for representations of women in situations of low-risk anger expression. My analyses also give specific consideration for whether feminism and heteronormative culture allow women a space to represent their anger and, if so, of what that space consists. ii Acknowledgments I would like to thank my mentor and chair, Dr. Marc Silverstein, for his constant support and encouragement. His input has enabled me to develop an academic project that I believe has great merit in future scholarship. In addition, I am grateful to Chantel Acevedo for her willingness to foster both my academic and creative writing projects over the past five years. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Sunny Stalter-Pace for her engagement with, and constructive feedback on, the analysis and academic arguments within my project. iii Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................................... iii Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: The Passive Bodies and Active Revisions of Cinderella ........................................ 19 Amputations and Happy Endings: Cinderella verses by Roald Dahl and Anne Sexton 24 The Woman Inside the Glass Slipper: Narratives by Kelly Link and Tanith Lee .......... 40 Chapter 2: Action and Identity in Contemporary Revisions of Snow White (Oyeyemi) ........... 52 The Androcentric Gaze, The Queen’s Mirror, and the Woman Reflected .................... 61 Familiar Violence: Aggressive Actions and Sexual Behavior in Snow White ............... 81 Ageism and the Competition for Male Desire (Carter, Sexton, Oyeyemi) ..................... 90 Chapter 3: Gendered Violence and Sexuality in Contemporary Versions of Rapunzel .......... 102 Sex Acts in the Garden, Discipline in the Tower ......................................................... 108 Disciplining Mechanisms and Gender Development in Recent Rapunzel Variants .... 119 Chapter 4: Big Red, Little Wolf: Narrative Transformation in Red Riding-hood Revisions .. 132 The Woman Wolf: Red Riding-hood narratives by Angela Carter and Tanith Lee ..... 139 The Flesh Inside the Wolf’s Belly ............................................................................... 154 References ................................................................................................................................ 175 iv Introduction Contemporary fairy tales, which reinforce and deviate from their oral, folk ancestry, advance the discourse on women’s sexual development and expression of aggression and violence. My discussion focuses on the varying depictions of female protagonists in revisionary fairy tales from the 1970s to present day. The following chapters identify a variety of folk heroines – Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, and Red Riding-hood – who are rendered in situations of violence and sex in contemporary tales, with an emphasis on how these representations differ from the first recorded fairy tales. An array of recent folk-infused poems, short stories, and novels respond to the nineteenth century “feminine ideal,” which assumed separate spaces for each sex, public for men and private for women. This censorship of women’s experience continues in contemporary culture, evidenced by a 2014 study1 that revealed an increase in the underreporting of rape statistics in America. Such findings have led me to examine the messages that folk representations offer to women regarding their sexuality and aggression within a potentially oppressive context. In more recent years, women have attempted to recover power through altering their perceived relationship to sex and violence, which is evidenced in the stereotype of the 1920s flapper, a woman who was represented as both sexual and independent. Second wave feminism arose in the 1960s to further subvert the feminine ideal by revealing the sexist power structure that limits women’s space and experience. However, it was not until the 1990s that third wave feminists sought complete sexual liberation for women, which encouraged the acceptance of 1 Yung, Corey Rayburn. "How to Lie with Rape Statistics: America's Hidden Rape Crisis." Iowa Law Review 99.3 (2014). Print. 1 lesbian experience and multiple sexual partners. In the Brothers Grimm and Perrault tales, both of which preceded the historical movement towards sexual equality, the heroine is always the recipient of violence, and never its agent. Contemporary revisions empower women by changing their relationship to sex and violence in complex and often contradictory ways. While many of these alterations are successful, some accomplish the opposite of their intended goal. Narratives that feature heroines who appropriate forms of sex and violence that are associated with male dominant discourse are less empowering than those that attempt to take a new stance entirely. By taking a less socially acceptable position, rather than representing female protagonists that merely enact conventional masculine tropes, revisionary authors have more potential to bring about social change. Through analyzing my primary texts, I intend to discover the binary ideological systems (i.e. abusive/passive, sexually deviant/virginal) that limit representations of female protagonists and the methods by which these systems can be evaded in favor of a more complex view of womanhood. The differences and/or similarities in character development that I will discuss convey important information about the way our society views women and, by extension, the way women are socialized to acts of sex and violence. Several of the revisionary fairy tales in my analysis feature families and relationships characterized by societal norms as “dysfunctional.” I attempt to understand the role of sex and violence in the determination of these seemingly defective relationships, such as the act of incest in Anne Sexton’s “Rapunzel” and the necrophilia fantasy in Angela Carter’s “The Snow Child.” Several of these taboo relationships surprisingly offer high-functioning fantasies for women (and often men) and allow for more flexibility in the creation of gender, effectively evading the binary ideological structures that restrain our capacity for representation. While certain fairy tales contain powerful, productive relationships that society would typically characterize as 2 “dysfunctional,” there is also a negative side to these powerful relationships, which confirms the equally oppressive potential of sex and violence. The representations in my discussion were developed within the historical context of either second or third-wave feminism. I explore issues of sex and violence in relation to these movements, considering whether or not they promote certain sexual/aggressive acts as empowering. Third-wave feminism is known for incorporating more sexual, racial, and gender diversity into the movement. I want to consider whether this diversity extends to expressions of aggression, a feminist issue which is so obvious as to be ignored. Some of the feminist theory that will inform my work comes from authors such as Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, Julia Lesage, Adrienne Rich, Jane Flax, and Rosi Braidotti, among others. Genre and geography are two contexts that influence my analysis of representations of women in recent fairy tale literature. I am sampling texts from American, British, Scottish, and New Zealand authors and a variety of forms and genres – from short story horror to poetic children’s literature – in order to determine the ways in which these contexts alter the messages being sent about women and their relationship to sex and violence. Certain genres, such as horror, seem to necessitate more violent