Reading Highlights

The following may not cover all of the assigned readings for the lesson. Always be sure to check your syllabus schedule for reading specifics.

Stuart Hall | Marina Warner | Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar | Marcia Lieberman

Stuart Hall

This is a section from Stuart Hall's book Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, some of you might have read the whole chapter in the Picturebook course, but we will focus here on his discussion on Roland Barthes' idea of myth here. As Hall notes, Roland Barthes reads myth from a semiotic perspective: he sees myth as a "meta-language" (a second-order language). "Meta-" is a prefix you often see on terms used in cultural critique. "Meta" implies a self awareness of the idea represented by the root word. Metacognition refers to "thinking about thinking." Metafiction would be a story that explores the idea of what it means to be a story. Myth as a meta-language, means that myth is not merely a classification of stories, but is a system used to represent ideas. According to Barthes, when we talk about "myth," we are using language to talk about how language works. This view turns "myth" into a powerful cultural tool for teaching people about what human life ought to be about. Hall notes one of Barthes' big ideas concerning myth: that myth turns history into nature. Taking this idea to Cinderella, Barthes would argue that the story doesn't question the roles that Cinderella assumes, making it appear that she is "naturally" passive and patient and that is how all women should be. We can take this analysis a step farther and argue that female characters who do show some agency, in this case the stepmother and two stepsisters (they want a prince and they are going after him), are punished for going against their nature.

Marina Warner

Have Barthes' idea of myth in mind when you read Marina Warner's essay, "Monstrous Mothers: Women Over the Top." In this essay, Warner notes that our modern culture has noticed that women have been pressing for greater power and agency over their own lives. She argues that dominant culture has responded to this movement by putting forward myths about the danger of women who lust for power. This argument can be summarized with the following two statements:

1. "Women in general are out of control, and feminism in particular is to blame," and
2. "Men are no longer in control and, mothers are not what they used to be."

At first glance what Warner says about the mythology of ungovernable female sexual appetite seems suspicious, but note the examples she uses from popular movies and stories. Warner's reading of myth is influenced by Barthes' ideas about myth as a meta-language that turns history (or culture) into nature. She moves one step farther than Barthes though, by advancing a social project that recognizes that myths are not fixed (remember the article by Haase on who owns myths!) but can be transmuted into new stories that point to different ways we humans can live with each other.

Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar

Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar offer a different lens to look at Snow White. They read the story as a beauty myth. To them, the story suggests that beauty is the virtue of young women and loss of it turns old women into witches. From this perspective, Snow White and stepmother can be read as a mother/daughter split and as two sides of the same character. Anne Sexton's poem Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (p.96) ends with Snow White looking into the mirror. What would happen next if there were a sequel to Snow White? Following the expectation of fairy tale, she would probably have to be the villain.

The real villain of Snow White is time. Women age and as they age, younger women replace them as objects of beauty and desire. The stepmother's attempts to kill Snow White are actually attempts to forestall aging. Of course this is doomed to failure. You can see this process in Trina Schart Hyman's illustrations. The stepmother is shown earlier in the book as dressed in simple clothing with a minimum of make-up and jewelry. In the next to last illustration we see an older stepmother, not ugly by any means, but older and now wearing much fancier clothing, much more make-up and lots of jewelry. She no longer has the beauty of a young face and body and so "puts on beauty" as a way of staying attractive. What Sexton picks up on in her poem is that Snow White is destined to become the stepmother, competing hopelessly against younger women who will come along and replace her "as the most beautiful of all." Snow White then is a "myth" that repeats itself with each generation of girls and women.

Marcia Lieberman

In her article 'Some Day My Prince Will Come': Female Acculturation through the Fairy Tale, Marcia Lieberman took issue with two essays printed in the New York Review of Books by Alison Lurie, who had recommended certain tales in Andrew Lang's 19th-century collections as feminist as the females in those stories appeared to be strong characters. Lieberman did a close study of the tales and found that most traditional fairy tales spread false notions about sex roles: most of the heroines were passive, helpless, and submissive, and in many cases they functioned largely as a prize for a prince. However, shall we reject fairy tales altogether? Are there possible positive effects of the tales? Do readers receive the tales in a fixed way? And if we take the complete Grimms' fairy tales, for instance, or tales from different cultures, or tales not so popularized, will we find some tales that portray female characters differently? These are some questions to consider after reading this article. You might wish to post your thoughts on this in the threaded discussions.