The Princess Story: Modeling the Feminine in Twentieth-Century American Fiction and Film SarahRothschild. New York: Peter Lang, 2013.

Abstract

The Princess Story: Modeling Feminine in Twentieth-Century American Fiction and Film Sarah Rothschild. New York: Peter Lang, 2013.Princesses have won attention of little girls, creating a phenomenon that many find troubling. In The Princess Story, Sarah Rothschild offers a historical account of princess stories in fiction and film, arguing that they form an important subgenre of fairy tales that influences and educates American females throughout their lives. Rothschild contends that the figure of princess has five primary incarnations from five different eras, three belonging to feminists of different waves and two belonging to Disney Studios, whose patriarchal princess stories serve as counterpoint and resistance to feminist creations (2). She uses princess story to chart American culture's changing meanings of and its struggle between feminism and patriarchy, progress and tradition.Rothschild begins with a chapter defining princess story and messages it sends. The princess character, she writes, embodies extreme femininity and reflects and inculcates socially desirable behavior and beliefs in and about girls and women in culture that produces (1-2). Princess stories teach and reinforce gender roles at pivotal times in lives of girls and women. According to Rothschild, at transitional times in developmentsuch as toddlerhood, early adolescence, marriage, and birth of a child or grandchild-females may experience gender intensification that draws them to princess stories. Thus, princess tales affect women and their perceptions of themselves over course of their lifetimes. They also reflect shifting ideology of a culture. As historian Miriam Forman-Brunell notes, Historically, princess worship has emerged during periods of uncertainty and profound social change (13).Rothschild's first chapter, Little Princess-. A First-Wave Feminist Girl, focuses on Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1905 novel featuring Cinderella story of Sara Crewe who moves from riches to rags and back again. Her story, like other princess tales, offers lessons on what makes an exemplary girl. However, Rothschild argues that Sara's story is no simple Cinderella tale because her strong sense of identity and intentionally cultivated qualities of character and imaginative power make a princess worth emulating, both within and without world of book (15). Although Frances Hodgson Burnett is not typically categorized as a feminist, life, which coincides with years of first-wave feminism, embodies qualities associated with it: determination, independence, and a strong self-perception. She infuses Sara with these same characteristics, making story a prototype for princess stories to come.Disney's first princess stories, topic of Rothschild's second chapter, reflect mind of their creator, Walt Disney. In analysis of Disney's Snow White and Seven Dwarfs (1937), Cinderella (1950), and Sleeping Beauty (1959), Rothschild argues that feminism takes a step backward. She contends that these films were created by a man with a conservative world view; they combine elements of traditional fairy tales with mid-twentieth century traditional mores to valorize his conservative agenda (54). …