Given the lack of responses to my earlier Clever Gretel post, I let it be for a little while. Not much else has turned up, in terms of posting or commenting, so I'm just going to raise this one point (in a far from exhaustive fashion, mind), then post a fairy tale on Friday (after checking I can find something to say about it, of course).
In her foreword to Kathleen Ragan's Fearless Girls, Wise Women and Beloved Sisters, Jane Yolen takes the opportunity—an important opportunity for those of us reading—to remark upon the female hero,
Hero is a masculine noun. It means an illustrious warrior, a man admired for his achievements and qualities, the central male figure in a great epic or drama. A heroine, on the other hand, is the female equivalent. Or is she really his equal in the epic? We might as well have called her a hero-ess or a hero-ette, some kind of diminutive subset of real heroes. The heroine is the one who carries spears but does no hurl them. The one who dresses well but does not dirty her fingernails in the fight. The one who lies down in a glass casket, until revived by an awakening kiss. Or so the Victorian folk tale anthologists would have had us believe. …In the past twenty-five years there has been a re-evaluation of the female hero in folklore. Perceptive anthologists have begun to resurect the female hero, showing us some of the riches that are still in the storehouses of folklore, unremarked but quite remarkable. They have uncovered stories of the most admirable women homes, young and old, who have been strong actors in their own epic narratives [1].
In choosing the folk tales for the book, Ragan notes that "one of the greatest dilemmas was the definition of a heroine" [2].
Is Gretel a heroine? One of the comments I received about Clever Gretel, from Tasukigirl, says this,
I remember reading something about Clever Gretel and how it falls into the type of humor type tale that doesn't get a lot of attention compared with other tale types…I laughed when I read it, so I'd say it serves it's purpose. I wouldn't try to get caught up in the details too much because I don't think that's what it's about. A servant does something that could get herself in trouble and she's smart enough to get herself out of trouble. I think we're supposed to identify with Gretel more than any of the other characters.
I completely agree—Gretel is the character we identify with, easily. Gretel is smart. And no, I don't think we should get too caught up in the details. But in being so relatable, can we call Gretel a heroine, a role model?
I would like to think so.
True, she does something bad—she steals, she lies, she frightens. And yet, this is a common theme in fairy tales—heroes steal things, heroes lie, heroes frighten. Just last night, I read Minnikin, in which the hero steals a crone's single eye for self gain. Gretel has many good qualities too: she's assertive, she's confident, she's quick to think on her feet, she's in control. These are all things I would to be true of myself—wouldn't any woman?
Stories about warrior women, warrior heroines, are not as well known as they should be, and I do think that the image of Disneyfied heroine is too prevalent. I also think, though, that we too easily push characters like Gretel to the sidelines, laughing but not necessarily seeing.
And now, another "Das Kluge" tale—Clever Else.
Footnotes:
[1] Yolen, Jane. "The Female Hero and the Women Who Wait." Foreword. Fearless Girls, Wise Women, and Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World. Ed. Kathleen Ragan. n.p: W.W. Norton & Co. 2000. xviii-xix.
[2] Ragan, Kathleen. Introduction. Fearless Girls, Wise Women, and Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World. Ed. Kathleen Ragan. n.p: W.W. Norton & Co. 2000. xxv.
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