Jun 18, 2025
Any generalization of fairy tales is going to kind of fundamentally fail unless you are very specific about the definition of fairy tales (if you're using märchen or another form of categorization) and which culture(s) you're using as your basis, if your analysis is including other cultures that a given international tale might have traveled to, the biases of the folklore collectors (...particularly if you're dealing with German folktales collected by the Brothers Grimm) and the potential ways that they might have been received by the people (often though not exclusively women) who were telling them.
#'fairy tales are about--' fairy tales are about telling a good fantastical story#anything else is variable#goodness is rewarded -- respect is rewarded yes.#so is cleverness. especially for women#resourcefulness#some of them are very ugly stories that might have been a way to deal with very ugly realities#(The King Who Wanted to Marry His Daughter)#and sometimes you do get strength rewarded as well#but if you just say 'fairy tales are XYZ'#i'm kind of going to assume you actually haven't read märchen as much as you think you have#particularly when XYZ is. blatantly. 'Let Women Be Feminine!'#as envisaged by a Catholic from the 21st century