Gender Roles In Grimm's Story 'Ash Girl'

In the past, men and women had distinct roles that they had to follow in their everyday lives, where women would be in charge of housework and caring for the children, while the husband would be at work. Even though time has passed, these issues surrounding gender and power have not. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s story, “Ash Girl” depict women as being weak and passive characters. Angela Carter’s helps to reinforce the Grimm Brothers’ ideas about gender roles and male dominance through her story, “The Company of Wolves” by focussing on the treatment and behaviour of female characters and the idea of marriage, but through a more violent approach. To begin, Ash Girl in the Brother Grimms’ version of Cinderella lives in a society ruled by men, where the dominant figures are kings, …show more content…
The Grimm Brother’s and Carter both demonstrate that women are unable to survive without men by their sides. This is evident in the beginning of the story when Carter describes the women in the village whose husband vanishes overnight. Instead of patiently waiting and hoping for her husband’s return, or possibly grieving his loss, she goes and “[finds] herself another husband,” (Carter 112) who later beats her for crying over her first husband’s death. Her desperation and eagerness to find another husband demonstrates how women are not complete and worth much if they are not married. It also shows how marriage is a way to seal off male ownership over the women, where the husband has the power to order the wife around, as well as beat her as he pleases. Thus, even though Carter’s story is not as child friendly as the Grimm Brother’s fairy tale, both stories come together to reinforce gender norms, patriarchy and male dominance by disempowering the female characters and shaping them to be passive and helpless characters in the story, as well as by constantly pressuring them into