Volume 24, Issue 2, April 2010, Pages 125–134
Moms do badly, but grandmas do worse: The nexus of sexism and ageism in children's classics
Abstract
While
the origins of the absent or dead mother in literary classics have been
explored at length, less attention has been paid to the role
grandmother figures play once the impact of the mother has been
minimized or eliminated. In many of the most influential tales our
children read, female elders, unlike the mothers, are granted the right
to live but are cast in hopelessly stereotypical terms. The result is a
handful of characters with a handful of attributes that perpetuate
themselves throughout literary history, crowding out more diverse and
multi-dimensional portrayals. Doing away with important female
characters reveals a deeply entrenched sexism which is then compounded
by a hefty dose ageism when female elders are permitted to appear only
to be diminished. Women in children’s classics fare badly, but old women
do even worse.
Keywords
- 101 Dalmatians;
- Absent mothers;
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn;
- Ageism;
- Ageist stereotypes;
- Brothers Grimm;
- Bruno Bettelheim;
- Children’s literature;
- Children’s classics;
- “Cinderella”;
- Crones;
- Fairy tales;
- Feminism;
- Grandmothers;
- “Hansel and Gretel”;
- Heidi;
- “The Little Mermaid";
- “Little Red Riding Hood”;
- Maternal death;
- Matricide;
- “The Old Woman and the Forest”;
- Orphan literature;
- “Rapunzel”;
- Sexism;
- Witches
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