Often when you ask people what a fairy tale is, they will say that it is “Cinderella” or “The Lion King”, but what exactly is a fairy tale, what characterize the genre fairy tale? That is what this essay is about.
“Once upon a time” is often the sentence a fairy tale begins with. In a fairy tale you will often meet the numbers 3 and 7; for example in “Snow-white” you meet 7 dwarfs. And in “Simple-Simon”, he finds 3 things before he comes to the castle where the princess lives. Often in fairy tales one character is jealous of another’s beauty or goodness; for example in “Cinderella” the stepsisters are jealous of Cinderella being so beautiful. The characters are often put to a test of some kind. In “Cinderella” the prince’s test is to find Cinderella, and Cinderella’s test is to live her stepmother and sisters. The characters are also often transformed into something better than what they really are. For example is Cinderella transformed into a better dress and looks like a really beautiful princess. Both in “Cinderella” and in “Simple-Simon” someone marries into royalty and that is also something that will happen often in a fairy tale. And a fairy tale is not a fairy tale if the evil person is not punished. A fairy tale can also be politically correct, for example in a fairy tale the fairy-godmother is called a fairy-godperson and he or she will ask: “So, you want to go the ball, eh? And bind yourself into the male concept of beauty? Squeeze into some tight-fitting dress that will cut off your circulation? Jam your feet into high-heeled shoes that will ruin your bone structure? Paint your face with chemicals and make-up that have been tested on nonhuman animals?”. All fairy tales end with the same sentence: “And they lived happily ever after”.
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