In many contemporary discussions of parenting, there is often a particular focus on children’s exposure to violence. Parents, teachers, and even news anchors assert that children in the 21st century are exposed to violence in unprecedented ways

Yet, throughout each story we have read thus far, the writing has been far gorier than anything I have ever seen in a children’s movie or video game. For example, Red Riding Hood eating her grandmother for a snack and drinking her blood, or The Little Mermaid feeling knives puncturing her feet at each step until they begin to bleed. Gore has held a significant place in children’s stories for hundreds of years.

I wonder if the violence in these stories impacts children differently than in contemporary examples because it is not senseless. Every instance of gore or violent actions has a clear attachment to right or wrong, so instead of promoting violence, these stories actually warn children against it. This is the difference between the violence in these stories versus the violence that children may see on video games, or in TV shows. Although, I still wonder, does violence have any place in media designed for children? Even though it is attached to a moral code, will any sort of violence that children are exposed to affect them?

After reading the numerous adaptations of Sleeping Beauty, I’ve become increasingly curious about how we could interpret Charles Perrault’s: The Sleeping Beauty in The Wood from a gender studies perspective.

Undoubtedly, the general theme of Sleeping Beauty has played into the nature of the female curiosity invoking disasters, such as The Little Mermaid wanting to explore new waters or Little Red Riding Hood taking a different path/playing along with the wolf. However, the most thought-provoking subject I would be interested in exploring is how the characters of the fairies highlight “appropriate” gender roles and conduct. More specifically, how the king exonerated responsibility in all of the adaptations for forgetting about the last fairy foreshadowing the curse on his only child. In Perrault’s telling of the tale, the older fairy was forgotten because she was never spotted leaving her tower, assumed to have died or been cursed(123).

The character of the older fairy should be considered a powerful and wise being, but she is old, without beauty, a social outcast, irrational, and non-confrontational.

 Instead of the Grimm’s fairy that “cried out in a loud voice,” she “mutters threats” and curses the princess when her turn to bestow a gift arrives. The other fairies are humanized and domesticated and seem prone to childish competition. Furthermore, the gifts they give her make her suited for a construct of the perfect wife and woman at the time. Similar to what the little mermaid had, the fairies gave her beauty, the disposition of an angel, gracefulness, great dancing ability, and for her to sing like a nightingale.

It is up for debate why the “good” fairy in Perrault’s telling hid and waited for the older fairy to curse the child instead of calling her out, placing some protection magic, or simply just waiting behind her. 

I find myself still contemplating the idea of deconstruction. I think I understand on the surface what it means. I just can’t stop thinking about the implications of it in a more metaphorical sense.

It helps me to think of deconstructionism as viewing words like puzzle pieces. Each puzzle piece holds a little bit of information, but it only means something when it connects to another puzzle piece, and that one to another, and another, and so on. This is understandable to me. Except you’re not putting together a complete puzzle; there is no complete puzzle. You just have the text: a box full of puzzle pieces. It presents no one true meaningful satisfying picture at the end. The puzzle pieces are signifiers and the “whole” puzzle is the signified. The signifiers give each other meaning in that you can tell each puzzle piece is distinct from the next, but the whole picture is ambiguous. There is no universal picture uniting the puzzle pieces except that they all came from the same box and are meant to fit together. You can interpret the whole puzzle in any way you want, but those interpretations will contradict each other, and ultimately, the puzzle will fall apart. 

Deconstructionism, to me, appears to say that any meaning set up by a text will inevitably fall apart into nothing, net zero. And as life is one big text, life falls apart into nothing, too. I don’t know how to feel about that.