Term 3, Lesson 3


Today we spoke about gender stereotypes and how they are represented in 'Sleeping Beauty' such as there is no character development:
you inject your own opinion on what the character would be like
you make up your own story about them
and for other people who have an actual ‘bad thing’ in their life

For today's exercise, you are to read the story and then answer the questions below:

1 After reading the story, make a list of all the qualities that the story is suggesting are important in women. When making your list, think about physical qualities and the personality qualities that appear to be important.
• Beauty, the whole story is based on Snow White being more beautiful than her stepmother
• Cooking and Cleaning for the seven dwarfs, the only way a woman who has escaped being murdered is making her cook and clean to be able to stay with them
• Marriage, she woke up from being poisoned and moved in and married a man because he told her to and because he was a prince

2. Next, make a second list that identifies traits/qualities in women that appear to be undesirable in the story. When making this list, you can think about what the opposite qualities would be to the ones you listed in question one and you can also consider the wicked Queen. Like your first list, consider physical characteristics and personality.
• Unattractiveness, the queen whats to kill Snow White so she can be ‘the fairest in the land’ and that she disguises her self as an ‘ugly’ old woman so she is unrecognisable
• Laziness, when Snow White first go to the seven dwarfs house and they know she's there because she messes their stuff up
• Being single, when the queen died the king remarried and Snow White pretty much just had to agree to marry the prince otherwise she wouldn't know what would happen to her

3. Now, see if you can make a third list that identifies traits/characteristics (both physical and personality based) that appear to be important in the male characters of the story.
• tall
• strong
• handsome
• power

4. After looking over the three lists, are there any conclusions that you can make about what the story is trying to teach its audience about the roles of men and women? Explain in as much detail as you can.
• women: not very bright, very agreeable, beautiful, quiet, must cook and clean, must marry early
• men: tall, strong, handsome, gets what he wants

5. How would you describe Snow White's relationships with:
*The wicked Queen: unfriendly, not close at all
*The dwarfs: almost like a business relationship, but they care about her a lot not wanting her to be found by the queen
*The Prince: they barley know each other


6. Considering this story is still most often read to little boys and girls, do you think it provides a realistic view of men and women? Why/why not?
It does not provide a realistic view of men and women as it is unrealistic, and not true when it come to real life situations.

7. Can you think of any modern stories (film/TV shows/books) that you know of that promote similar messages about men and women as Snow White?

All the fairy tales old and some of the new versions of them such as Cinderella promote similar messages about men and women