From the moment my oldest daughter was born eighteen plus years ago, I have been reading to my children. I read them all of the stories that I had listened to and loved when I was a child. I read them newer stories too. I didn’t give much thought to the gender of the characters in the story, other than the fact that I rarely read “girl” stories (Madeline, The Lonely Doll, etc.) to my sons.
But last week, when I was at the library, a book literally jumped off the shelf at me, Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters. It is an anthology of folktales from around the world featuring heroines. And by heroines, I mean female heroes, not Disney inspired Cinderella princesses.
In reading the introduction, I was embarrassed by the fact that I had never noticed that Dr. Seuss books, the ones that we read so often that my children had them memorized, used male pronouns almost exclusively. When I mentioned this to my fourteen-year-old daughter, though, she gave me that “no duh” look and said “Yeah, except for Lola Lee Lou, Maizie and the sour kangaroo. And they’re all either vain or lazy or mean.”
The author, Kathleen Ragan, noticed this too. She went out in search of stories that feature strong females. What she found was that the most readily available folktales and fairy tales present women as passive, beautiful and helpless. In addition, she found that the ratio of male protagonists to female was severely skewed, with at least 90% of the stories featuring heroes. Through her research, Ragan found that many of stories have been altered to diminish the power of the feminine. In the original German version of Little Red Riding Hood, for example, she encounters another wolf the second time she goes through the woods and this time, she vanquishes it herself.
I have been reading this book to my daughter. She has been listening with the ears of a child who is finally hearing her own language. She has been drinking up the stories, nourishing a soul that had become an arid wasteland of want. We dragged the book with us to a doctor’s appointment and she actually sat in my lap -- all five feet-ten inches of her, with her head scrunched down resting on my shoulder -- so that she would be close enough to make sure that she hadn’t missed a word.
I cannot change the past. I can affect the future. I can give my daughter inspiration and honesty, heroines in all their flawed beauty.
Thank you Kathleen Ragan.
* Photo from Amazon.com
6 comments:
Totally. Getting. That. Book.
Love the image of your giant "baby" sitting in your lap, head on shoulder as you read aloud. Take an A!
And thereby you be a hero, which I'm sure you already are.
Wow. Wish I had had that book when I was your daughter's age. And yes...you are a hero.
I'll have to look for this one.
I am putting this on my amazon list. Thank you! How awesome.
There is another blogger I love, Laini at "Grow Wings". She is an author, and her books feature a female hero, Magpie. It is just the right age for your girl, and it is a great read!I loved it. You should look it up. "Faeries of Dreamdark." ;)
:)
I have this book, too, as I still love fairy tales even though my children are grown.
Another you and your children might like is "Tatterhood and Other Tales," edited by Ethel Johnston Phelps. It's fairy tales about princesses who are brave and strong and in control of their own destinies, who don't have to wait for handsome princes to save them.
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