A Modernised Image of Women’s Prototypes in Fairy Tales: Anne Sexton’s “Cinderella,” a Feminist Perspective

This paper is a feminist study of Anne Sexton’s poem, “Cinderella,” published in Transformations (1971), and of the archetypal gender roles in fairy tales. The researcher focuses on the views of A. Dworkin and M. Lieberman, which complement each other. She traces, from a feminist point of view, the different prototypes of men and women. Those archetypes are the idiotic characters of the prince and the father on the one hand, and the sweet angel / princess and the transparent character of the fairy godmother, with her absolute kindness versus the bewitching power of the stepmother and the stepsisters, on the other. Sexton, the “middle-aged witch,” (Sexton, “The Gold Key” 2), subverts the system of punishment and reward depicted in fairy tales. It is pre-known that the stepmother and her daughters should be punished for their apparently tyrannous plans. However, the researcher realises that the only sin of those women is that they are decision makers. Therefore, their active presence, which develops the events of the story, leads to their repulsion by the phallocratic power.
The two prototypes of men and women are ironically punished, when they follow the norms of masculine society, which advocate complete respect for the doctrine of phallicism. Moreover, in Sexton’s feminist transformation of Cinderella’s story, the actions of those male archetypes are degraded from any sense of nobility or kind heartedness and they turn to be selfish and foolish. Sexton, the wise witch, hopes that her mature readers will change their views, after reading her transformed fairy tales. Consequently, sexton criticises the phallocentric system of powers, which places man, at its top, as a narcissit patriarch whose role is to oppress women. However, Sexton’s feminist discourse, which deconstructs indirectly, the masculine language of fairy tales, is an active step to replace the male domineering power of her society with thoughts of equality between men and women in the course of time.