“Mirror, Mirror on the wall / Who Is the Freest of Them All?”: portrayals of Princesses in Grimms’ Fairy Tales and Contemporary Children’s Literature

Abstract

The Brothers Grimms' Kinder- und Hausmarchen seems to have promoted pa- triarchal bourgeois values as part of the so- cialization process in the nineteenth century, modelling children's gender identity and be- haviour over time. Taking into account, under the hegemonic representations of gender, that female identity becomes associated with a set of values and behaviours, this article presents an analysis of some portrayals of princesses in contemporary children's literature published in Portugal, by relating those portrayals with two well-known Grimms' fairy tales: Litt- le Snow-White and Little Briar-Rose. Our aim is to find out in what ways those images of princesses of the twenty-first century are substantially different from those conveyed by Grimms' fairy tales, analysing their emancipa- tory potential. Finally, we wish to apprehend which ideologies underpin those portrayals and to verify if they effectively lead to a new world vision by depicting women as real free human beings.