Damsel in distress

When Lanval breaks the sacred oath he becomes a “damsel in distress” and the Fairy Queen takes on the role of being Lanval’s “knight”. According to Marie de France, the Fairy Queen demonstrates chivalry as a knight would by coming at the last minute to “rescue” Lanval: “They were about to give their judgement…

Jayna had hardly slept in two days, she had intended on resting only until noon, then she, the unicorn and 23 would began the journey to Minos. The sun was low in the sky when Jayna was awakened by a shout, the neighing of the unicorn and the sound of a sword being drawn from its scabbard. She leapt to her feet and drew her own sword. A big human male with a sword squared off against 23, while a short man with his back to her, with broad shoulders and long arms faced off against Corny with a…

had increasing numbers of the female heroine such as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. However, this was not such a common occurrence until recently. Predominantly in romance novels, most iconic female roles played the ‘damsels in distress'. The influence of literature has allowed us to believe that woman are in need of saving and need a man in order to do so. This creates a civilisation where it becomes the accepted normal behaviour to assume that males are ordinarily the…

advice for marriage, beauty standards and so on. For example, the Disney movies from childhood illustrated images of skinny, fragile, and beautiful princesses. Men, in those very same movies, are portrayed as a prince that comes to save the damsel distress princess from trouble and marries…

An Analysis of “The Story of Mulan” In Chen Yu’s rendition of “The Story of Mulan”, a young girl takes her father’s place dressed as a boy to be in the army to defend her country from being invaded. She learns how to fight well in training which gave her advantages to learn rapidly all the while keeping her secret that she was a girl. Mulan shows that she is valuable to her fellow comrades when she uses everything that she has learned to help protect them. In the beginning of the story, her…

In “Song of Soloman”, Morrison tells a remarkable story reflecting the absence of a father figure in African American homes. Instead of looking at the absence of the black man in a blackm family, she depicts this men not as traitors or deserters, but as strong, exploratory spirits providing a solid foundation for their children, even if his absence affects them. Morrison introduces the imagery of flight, using this to capture a vast foreshadowing to the family’s changing aspects of “Song of…

Fairy Tales and Gender Stereotypes A stereotype is described as “A radically reductive way of representing whole communities of people by identifying them with a few key characteristics. Individuals from the group who [do not] fit that stereotype are then said to be atypical (Veselá, 2014).” When children are growing up they already realize the differences between their genders. When people grow up with fairy tales, young children do not think about all the stereotypes that are put in movies…

her a magical ring so she can travel back to him once she is done. He also magically transports gorgeous gowns to her father’s home in a chest. Another popular magical element found in fairy tales is the idea of a fairy godmother helping the damsel in distress and saving the day. Beauty in the tale meets her fairy godmother like creature who is “The dream fairy appears only twice, once on the night before Beauty and her father journey to the palace to reassure Beauty that she is doing the right…

In Indian mythology, all the demons gained one favor from a god. In the story “Devi”, a troublesome demon named Mahisha asked the favor that only the way he could be defeated is only by a powerful celestial woman strong enough to defeat him he was invincible from the god Brahma was, thought. After their failed attempt the gods realized they could not defeat Mahisha and they retreated back to their own worlds. The three supreme gods also known as “The Trinity” Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu decided to…

Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful hallowed princess named Snow White. Her father had died when she was a young girl and her step mother raised her alone. One day when Snow White was outside playing with the animals while singing songs, a prince riding nearby heard her angelic voice coming from the palace and was shook. He couldn’t help but gasp when he saw how beautiful she was, and thought for a moment about joining her in song. He began to approach the palace walls. He then realized…