Alexandra Laylor
Professor Kylee Pastore & Anna Voisard
FIQWS Fairytale 10105 & FIQWS Fairytale 10005
17 November 2022
The Case of a Human Doll: Sleeping Beauty, Object of Male Desires
Imagine a doll. What is it? Does it have a name? A doll has no personality; it exists because we made it so. It serves as a means to express our desires and thoughts, but when it is all old and maimed, we lose our love for it and quickly replace it. The process starts anew. Hello, new doll; I am your owner, and you are my object of desire. Sleeping Beauty, within her fairytale, perfectly fits the definition of a doll. Her owner, according to Perrault and Basile versions, would be her male savior—often shown as a Prince but sometimes could be a king. Sleeping Beauty is a tale where its female lead is subjected to female objectification by her male savior, where her role is diminished to that of a mere object of his desires, goals, and views.
Sleeping Beauty is presented as an inferior being whose faith was prophesied as someone to be owned by her future savior (a Prince). This is evident in Charles Perrault’s “The Sleeping Beauty in The Wood,” where he writes:
The Prince . . . but then an elderly peasant began to speak, saying: ‘Your Highness: more than fifty years ago, I heard my father say that in the castle there lay a Princess, who was the most beautiful in the world; she was to stay asleep for a hundred years, and would be awakened by the son of a king, for whom she was destined. The young prince. . . he took it for granted at once that it was he who would succeed in this splendid adventure, and inspired by love and glory he resolved to find out at once how things stood (Perrault 88).
“Even in the traditional classics that children read is imbedded the underlying assertion that women are inferior” ( Donlan 604). But why do authors like Perrault, Grimm, and Basile tend to write their female lead as inferior compared to their savior prince?
Authors like Perrault and Basile are classic examples of patriarchal men who often prefer to have female representatives as something to be owned rather than someone who can own. This stems from men’s opinions of independent, outspoken females. Dan Donlan, in “The Negative Image of Women in Children’s Literature,” reasons that: “Aggressive females, unlike . . . equally ineffectual young heroines, pose a threat to men” (609). When authors erase this out-spoken quality in their female characters or have them represented in the evil ones, who would later be slayed, it represents the elimination of a threat to the male character’s superiority.
Another way in which Sleeping Beauty is objectified by her male savior can be seen in Giambattista Basile’s “Sun, Moon, and Talia,” where Talia, the name of this version’s Sleeping Beauty, was used as a mere tool in fulfilling the king’s desire to satisfy his sexual hunger, despite her not being in a position to give consent or her own opinion on the matter; “Crying aloud, he beheld her charms and felt his blood course hotly through his veins. He lifted her in his arms, and carried her to a bed, where he gathered the first fruits of love” (Basile). Talia is made passive through her slumbering state. This act of passivity renders her vulnerable to the whims of the world, especially to the action of the king that found her. Through her passive state, the king feeds his sexual desire, one brought on by her breathtaking beauty.
This understanding of the connection between desirability and passivity is touched on in “Fairy Tales and the concept of femininity,” where Neshantha Harischandra argues: “And ‘beauty,’ is associated with “desirability” by the male. Thus, the female is seen as a sex object. . . In this instance, the word ‘object’ is apt, because the woman does nothing active towards being ‘desirable’” (Harischandra). In the case of Talia (a female), her not being active is due to her being asleep, and her beauty makes her desirable to the king. With this, her unconscious body is used as a sex object for the king. Talia, being used as tools/objects in fulfilling men’s sexual desire, reflects how women in society’s past and today’s society are often treated as a means of satisfying men’s/males sexual desire.
More signs of Sleeping Beauty being objectified by her male savior can be seen in Charles Perrault’s “The Sleeping Beauty In The Wood,” where the prince instantly hailed Sleeping Beauty as good-natured because she was beautiful, “the most beautiful sight that he had ever seen: a Princess who seemed to be about fifteen or sixteen years old, and who in her radiant splendour had something luminous and divine about her. Trembling with wonder and admiration, he approached and knelt down beside her” (89); While the prince’s mother was hailed as someone to fear and not trust because she is an ogress— creatures known to be ugly and awful—“but he never dared to entrust her with his secret . . . he was afraid of her, because she came from a family of ogres, and the King had married her only because of her great wealth” (93). This mirrors how women’s worth in society is often judged not by their morals, action or how they develop as a person; instead, they are judged by their looks, age, body, and wealth.
Kay Stone, in her article “Things Walt Disney Never Told Us,” expresses how male saviors ( in her case, she uses the terminology ‘hero’) are not judged by their appearance but rather by their actions and how they develop as a person; while for female (heroines) they are not developed in any way, and most remain perfect, beautiful and passive (Stone 45). Stone gives a good insight into the strict line that separates the clear description—made by Disney, Grimm, Perrault, and Basile — of how a hero (who is a male) must act and how the heroine, a female, must act. In their versions, the heroine is diminished to just perfectly waiting for her reward, which she will receive when he rescues her. Specifically speaking, as it pertains to Sleeping Beauty, the prophecy of a prince being the one to save her from her curse was given. The princess and her parents somewhat accepted this prophecy as a means of correcting the curse—if it ever came to pass. However, Sleeping Beauty needs not worry because her beauty and youth will win over her male savior, and he will reward her with the act of breaking the curse. But would Sleeping Beauty’s acceptance of the prophecy not suggest that she plays an active role in putting herself in a position to be objectified by her male savior?
Fox, in “The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children’s Fairy Tales,” gives a different perspective by suggesting that “In this way, women internalize norms [like being restricted by the value feminine beauty] and adopt behaviors that reflect and reinforce their relative powerlessness, making external forces less necessary” (qtd. in Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz 712). An example of this can be seen in Julia Leigh’s film Sleeping Beauty, where a college student named Lucy (who is Sleeping Beauty) offers herself up as a tool/object to be used by different men: a scientist, club/bar men, old rich and lonely men. She does this to gain money. Her being a beautiful woman who is willing aids in her favor to get these jobs. It is made apparent in the film that Lucy puts herself in a position to be objectified by the men around her (Leigh).
However, Kendra Reynolds, in her article “A Rude Awakening: Sleeping Beauty as a Metaphor for the Slumber of Post-Feminism,” argues that Leigh’s film serves as a means of waking women’s liberation and reactivating postfeminism, which seems to be in a state of slumber due to women in today’s society reflecting the symbolism of women in the patriarchal view (Reynolds). Sleeping Beauty in Leigh’s film represents how women sometimes put themselves in a position to be objectified by men; however, this behavior results from the restrictive norms already set in society for women by men, which limits their opportunities for control in their world.
Overall, the act of men objectifying women is a known one in today’s society and the past. However, the concept of this action has also been seen in written literature like fairy tales. One such fairytale is “Sleeping Beauty,” where the male savior objectifies the tale’s female lead, where she would equate to more of a tool than that of a human. The act of female objectification is showcased in different versions of “Sleeping Beauty” such as Charles Perrault’s “The Sleeping Beauty In The Wood” and Giambattista Basile’s “Sun, Moon, and Talia,” where the female lead is marked as an inferior being to which her savior will ultimately own. It can also be seen when she is just a means by which he can fulfill his sexual desires. Last but not least, the female lead was also subjected to female objectification when her worth and character arc was based on beauty and youth. Even though authors like Perault and Basile write the female leads in their versions of “Sleeping Beauty” as an equivalent to an object/tool for their male savior, they would represent how men of old society view who/what a woman should be. In the past, women were not seen as equals to their male counterparts, nor did they have the same rights as their male counterparts. However, despite the changes for women and men to be seen as equal individuals, men in today’s society still objectify women, which makes them seem less human, and less of an individual. This shows how the imbalance between men’s and women’s equality has not changed and will not change as long as women are treated as such.
Works Cited
Baker-Sperry, Lori, and Liz Grauerholz. “The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children’s Fairy Tales.” Gender and Society, vol. 17, no. 5, 2003, pp. 711–26. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3594706. Accessed 23 Oct. 2022.
Basile, Giambattista. “Sun, Moon, and Talia.” Edited by D. L. Ashliman. Translated by Richard F. Burton, Sleeping Beauty, https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/type0410.html.
Donlan, Dan. “The Negative Image of Women In Children’s Literature.” Elementary English, vol. 49, no. 4, 1972, pp. 604–11. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41387825. Accessed 23 Oct. 2022.
Harischandra, Neshantha. “Fairy Tales and the concept of femininity.” Nivedini-A Sri Lankan Feminist Journal, vol. 9, no. 1, 2001, pp. 58+. Gale OneFile: Gender Studies, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A83761800/PPGB?u=cuny_ccny&sid=bookmark-PPGB&xid=dc04e33e. Accessed 6 Nov. 2022.
Leigh, Julia, director. Sleeping Beauty, Paramount Pictures, 2011, https://link.tubi.tv/K1uJUddhYub. Accessed 31 Aug. 2022.
Perrault, Charles. The Complete Fairy Tales. OUP Oxford, 2009, pp. 84–97. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=302377&site=ehost-live.
Reynolds, Kendra. “A Rude Awakening: Sleeping Beauty as a Metaphor for the Slumber of Post-Feminism.” Journal of International Women’s Studies, Vol. 16, no. 1, 2014, pp. 34-46. Women’s Studies Common, https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol16/iss1/4. Accessed 25 Oct. 2022.
Stone, Kay. “Things Walt Disney Never Told Us.” The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 88, no. 347, 1975, pp. 42–50. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/539184. Accessed 23 Oct. 2022.
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