Okay, what is up with this weather? Winter Weather?!
35 F at night, 44 F during the day. It's nearly June for great gallopys' sakes. My Laune can't take weeks on end total sun block out. Yeah, I know. Suck it up, H.

So yesterday in my german class we discussed the role of female characters in fairytales. In german a fairytale is called, Märchen [roughly pronounced: mare-hen]. We found the german titles for some of the well-known fairy tales quite amusing. For example: Cinderella is Aschenputtel, Sleeping Beauty is Dornröschen [literally: prick flowerette], and Snow White is Schneewittchen. Mind you, our class consists of four females of formal education and a male teacher who studied philosophy. We all grew up hearing these stories. The images and the prejudices that these stories create can be thought of as down right absurd. But they also seemed to have followed us in life even though us four females would be considered strong figures in society. Why is that?

Our class agreed that it has to do with this nearly impossible line that females must walk between feinfühlig and empfindlich. Say what? Leave it to the german language to be so damn specific. So feinfühlig would translate to delicate or sensitive and would be construde as a positive characteristic in a female. Let's say, something you'd want a care-giver to be.
Empfindlich has the same translations as feinfühlig but goes further and could also mean susceptible, touchy, thin-skinned, and my favorite: weak. Obviously, characteristics not commonly found in a Hero or Heroine, eh? Is it possible to be both strong and sensitive? I believe it is. But it would be difficult to develop that particular character in a short word-of-mouth tale. Maybe I'm wrong, but is there a female character in our classic fairytales that is both strong and sensitive? I think not. Giving the time period that these stories were spoken and then finally written to paper, the female character was primarly described in the subbordinate context.

So I'm having a hard time remembering fairytale female characters and whether or not we would consider them a heroine. I remember the Princess and the Pea, the Ice Queen, the blonde in Rumplestiltskin. Who else? If you have a little girl or boy, would you read these older fairytales to them?
I'm on the fence. But I think I would still read the classic fairytales to a child but explain/discuss the story afterwards. Afterall, I still have some fond and vivid memories of these tales (also, remember "Faerie Tale Theatre" with Shelley Duvall) and I would hope our future offspring have the opportunity to experience them as well. I would hate to see our ancestry's imagination lost to politcal correctness.

Download Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
English / German