Research Article


DOI :10.26650/LITERA2020-0006   IUP :10.26650/LITERA2020-0006    Full Text (PDF)

Unveiling the Implicit Political Agenda: A Comparative Analysis of the Construction of Gender Roles in Grimm’s Ashputtel and Giuseppe Pitré’s The Magical Little Date Tree

Esin Kumlu

In 1981, American therapist Colette Dowling proposed the term “the Cinderella Complex” to the field of psychology to investigate how millions of women have fallen into the trap of the hidden fear of independence. Deriving its name from the fairy tale Cinderella, the term also has begun to elucidate how the discourse of fairy tales has created a ‘nonconscious ideology’ and designates gender roles in society throughout the ages. In relation, this study scrutinizes the comparative analysis of the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale Ashputtel (1812), widely known as Cinderella, and Giuseppe Pitré’s The Magical Little Date Tree (1875), the Italian version of Cinderella, through the lenses of plural investigation methods which encapsulate the feminist literary criticism and the cultural materialist approach. It analyzes how the dominant ideology, the patriarchal discourse represented by the Brothers Grimm through Cinderella, constructs a nonconscious ideology to subjugate women to become passive, weak, submissive entities, not only in fairy tales but also in daily life. This study suggests that the hegemony of the dominant ideology is reversed by Pitré’s protagonist Ninetta, who subverts gender roles through creating a language, a voice of her own and encouraging her sense of independence and self-reliance. Therefore, she surpasses the limits of Cinderella, who is gendered by the hegemony, and sheds light upon how fairy tales construct gender-appropriate behaviors in society.


PDF View

References

  • Atalay, İ. (2019). Karşılaştırmalı edebiyat. İstanbul: Hiper. google scholar
  • Aytaç, G. (2019). Karşılaştırmalı edebiyat bilimi. Ankara: Doğu Batı. google scholar
  • Bem, S. L. & Bem, D. J. (1970). Training the woman to know her place: The power of a nonconscious ideology. In S. Cox (Ed.), Female Psychology: The Emerging Self (pp. 180–191). Chicago: Science Research Associates. google scholar
  • Bem, S. L. (1974). The measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42, 155–162. google scholar
  • Bem, S. L. (1998). An unconventional family. New Haven: Yale University Press. google scholar
  • Bettelheim, B. (1975). The use of enchantment: The meaning and importance of fairy tales. New York: Vintage Books. google scholar
  • Braidotti, R. (1994). Nomadic Subject. Embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory. New York: Colombia University Press. google scholar
  • Brown, R. W. (1986). Social psychology (2nd ed.). New York: Free Press. google scholar
  • Butler, J. (1999). Gender trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. google scholar
  • Castelnuovo, S. & Guthrie S. R. (1998). Feminism and the female body: liberating the amazon within. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers. google scholar
  • Cammet, J. M. (1967). Antonio gramsci and the origins of italian communism. California: Stanford UP. google scholar
  • Cavarero, A. (2002). Stately bodies. Literature, philosophy and the question of gender. (Trans Robert de Lucca & Deanna Shemek, Trans.). Ann Arbor: Michigan UP. google scholar
  • Chodorow, N. J. (1997). Gender, relation, and difference in psychoanalytic perspective. In Meyers, D.T. (Ed.), Feminist Social Thought: A Reader (pp.7-21). New York: Routledge. google scholar
  • Chodorow, N. (2012). Individualizing gender and sexuality. Theory and Practice. New York: Routledge. google scholar
  • Cordelia, F. (2010). Delusions of gender. how our minds, society, and neurosexism create difference. New York: Norton google scholar
  • Dollimore, J. & Sinfield, A. (1994). Political shakespeare: New essays in cultural materialism. Manchester: Manchester UP. google scholar
  • Dollimore, J. (2010). Radical tragedy: Religion, ideology and power in the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Houndmills: Macmillan. google scholar
  • Dowling, C. (1981). The Cinderella complex. Women’s hidden fear of independence. New York: Pocket Books. Faludi, S. (2006). The undeclared war against women. New York: Three Rivers Press. google scholar
  • Fetterly, J. (1978). The resisting reader: A feminist approach to american fiction. Blooming: Indiana UP. google scholar
  • Foucault, M. (2020). The will to knowledge. A history of sexuality I. (R. Hurley, Trans.). London: Penguin. [E-book version]. Retrieved from http://books.google.com.tr google scholar
  • Gould J. (2006). Spinning straw into gold. What fairy tales reveal about the transformations in a woman’s life. New York: Random. google scholar
  • Gramsci, A. (2005). The southern question. antonio, D. (Ed.). Verdicchio, P. (Trans.). Guarnica: Toronto. Grimm’s, J. L. C. and Grimm’s W. C. (2016). Grimm’s Fairy Tales. London: MacMillan. google scholar
  • Harris, M. (1999). Theories of culture in postmodern times. Walnut Creek, AltaMira. google scholar
  • Joosen, V. (2011). Critical & creative perspectives on fairy tales. An intertextual Dialogue between Fairy-Tale Scholarship and Postmodern Retellings. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. google scholar
  • Kristeva, J. (1980). Desire in language: A semiotic approach to language and art. Roudiez, L.S. (Ed.), Thomas G, Alice, J. & Roudiez, L. S. (Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press. google scholar
  • Lieberman M. (1972). ‘Some Day My Prince Will Come:’ Female Acculturation through the Fairy Tale.’ College English, 3, 383-395. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/375142. google scholar
  • Lurie, A. (1970). Fairy tale liberation. The New York Review of Books, December 17. google scholar
  • Marks, K. & Engels, F. (2012). The communist manifesto. A modern edition. London: Verso. google scholar
  • Marlow, C. (2017). Shakespeare and cultural materialist theory. London: Bloomsbury. google scholar
  • McRobbie, A. (2009). The aftermath of feminism: Gender, culture and social change. London: Sage. google scholar
  • Millet, Kate. (2000). The theory of sexual politics. In C. Barbara (Ed.), Radical feminism. a documentary reader (pp. 122-154). New York: New York UP. google scholar
  • Mouffe, C. (1979). Gramsci and marxist theory. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. google scholar
  • Opies, P. & I. (1974). The classic fairy tales. London: Oxford University Press. google scholar
  • Pitré, G. (2017). Catarina the Wise and Other Wondrous Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales. (Jack Zipes, Trans & Ed.). London: University of Chicago Press. google scholar
  • Rowe, K. (1979). Feminism and fairy tales. In Jack Zipes (Ed.), Don’t bet on the prince. contemporary feminist fairy tales in America and England (pp. 209-223). New York: Routledge. google scholar
  • Schmidt, D. (2002). (Ed.). Feminism, foucault, and embodied subjectivity. Albany: State University of New York Press. google scholar
  • Tatar, M. (2003). The hard facts of the grimms’ fairy tales: Expanded second edition. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. google scholar
  • Taylor, C. (2017). (Ed.). The routledge guidebook to Foucault’s the history of sexuality. New York: Routledge. google scholar
  • Ulanov, A. & Ulanov, B. (1983). Cinderella and her sisters. The envied and the envying. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. google scholar
  • Williams, R. (1960). Culture and society, 1780-1950. New York: Anchor Books. google scholar
  • Young, I. M. (2005).“Throwing like a girl” and other essays in feminist philosophy and social Theory New York: Oxford UP. google scholar
  • Zipes, J. (1997). Happily ever after: Fairy tales, children, and the culture industry. New York: Routledge. google scholar
  • Zipes, J. (2012). The irresistible fairy tale. The Cultural and Social History of a Genre. New Jersey: Princeton UP. google scholar
  • Zipes, J. (2017). The extraordinary Giuseppe Pitré. In Zipes, J. (Ed.), Giuseppe Pitré, Catarina The Wise and Other Wondrous Sicilian Folk & Fairy Tales (pp.1-11). London: University of Chicago Press. google scholar

Citations

Copy and paste a formatted citation or use one of the options to export in your chosen format


EXPORT



APA

Kumlu, E. (2020). Unveiling the Implicit Political Agenda: A Comparative Analysis of the Construction of Gender Roles in Grimm’s Ashputtel and Giuseppe Pitré’s The Magical Little Date Tree. Litera: Journal of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, 30(1), 155-175. https://doi.org/10.26650/LITERA2020-0006


AMA

Kumlu E. Unveiling the Implicit Political Agenda: A Comparative Analysis of the Construction of Gender Roles in Grimm’s Ashputtel and Giuseppe Pitré’s The Magical Little Date Tree. Litera: Journal of Language, Literature and Culture Studies. 2020;30(1):155-175. https://doi.org/10.26650/LITERA2020-0006


ABNT

Kumlu, E. Unveiling the Implicit Political Agenda: A Comparative Analysis of the Construction of Gender Roles in Grimm’s Ashputtel and Giuseppe Pitré’s The Magical Little Date Tree. Litera: Journal of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, [Publisher Location], v. 30, n. 1, p. 155-175, 2020.


Chicago: Author-Date Style

Kumlu, Esin,. 2020. “Unveiling the Implicit Political Agenda: A Comparative Analysis of the Construction of Gender Roles in Grimm’s Ashputtel and Giuseppe Pitré’s The Magical Little Date Tree.” Litera: Journal of Language, Literature and Culture Studies 30, no. 1: 155-175. https://doi.org/10.26650/LITERA2020-0006


Chicago: Humanities Style

Kumlu, Esin,. Unveiling the Implicit Political Agenda: A Comparative Analysis of the Construction of Gender Roles in Grimm’s Ashputtel and Giuseppe Pitré’s The Magical Little Date Tree.” Litera: Journal of Language, Literature and Culture Studies 30, no. 1 (Apr. 2025): 155-175. https://doi.org/10.26650/LITERA2020-0006


Harvard: Australian Style

Kumlu, E 2020, 'Unveiling the Implicit Political Agenda: A Comparative Analysis of the Construction of Gender Roles in Grimm’s Ashputtel and Giuseppe Pitré’s The Magical Little Date Tree', Litera: Journal of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 155-175, viewed 24 Apr. 2025, https://doi.org/10.26650/LITERA2020-0006


Harvard: Author-Date Style

Kumlu, E. (2020) ‘Unveiling the Implicit Political Agenda: A Comparative Analysis of the Construction of Gender Roles in Grimm’s Ashputtel and Giuseppe Pitré’s The Magical Little Date Tree’, Litera: Journal of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, 30(1), pp. 155-175. https://doi.org/10.26650/LITERA2020-0006 (24 Apr. 2025).


MLA

Kumlu, Esin,. Unveiling the Implicit Political Agenda: A Comparative Analysis of the Construction of Gender Roles in Grimm’s Ashputtel and Giuseppe Pitré’s The Magical Little Date Tree.” Litera: Journal of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, vol. 30, no. 1, 2020, pp. 155-175. [Database Container], https://doi.org/10.26650/LITERA2020-0006


Vancouver

Kumlu E. Unveiling the Implicit Political Agenda: A Comparative Analysis of the Construction of Gender Roles in Grimm’s Ashputtel and Giuseppe Pitré’s The Magical Little Date Tree. Litera: Journal of Language, Literature and Culture Studies [Internet]. 24 Apr. 2025 [cited 24 Apr. 2025];30(1):155-175. Available from: https://doi.org/10.26650/LITERA2020-0006 doi: 10.26650/LITERA2020-0006


ISNAD

Kumlu, Esin. Unveiling the Implicit Political Agenda: A Comparative Analysis of the Construction of Gender Roles in Grimm’s Ashputtel and Giuseppe Pitré’s The Magical Little Date Tree”. Litera: Journal of Language, Literature and Culture Studies 30/1 (Apr. 2025): 155-175. https://doi.org/10.26650/LITERA2020-0006



TIMELINE


Submitted22.01.2020
Accepted14.04.2020
Published Online24.06.2020

LICENCE


Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.


SHARE




Istanbul University Press aims to contribute to the dissemination of ever growing scientific knowledge through publication of high quality scientific journals and books in accordance with the international publishing standards and ethics. Istanbul University Press follows an open access, non-commercial, scholarly publishing.