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In the past two decades narrative has become a significant new field of research. We have learned that the narrative mode of discourse is not only characteristic of fiction and history writing, but also omnipresent in human affairs: it is central to political theory and praxis as well as to our cognitive activities. Hayden White claims that narrative schemes, with their coherency, integrity and closure, impose meaning on real events. Historical events are real not because they occurred but because they were remembered and are capable of finding a place in the chronologically ordered sequence of narrativity (White 20). Starting from Hay- den White's idea that meaning is attached to narrativity itself, I will examine how a fairy-tale narrative, the Cinderella story, imposes its scenario on the events in Joyce Carol Oates's Black Water.; Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman, and Lorrie Moore's Who will Run The Frog Hospital?}
George Lakoff observes an underlying fairy-tale scenario in the reports on the Gulf Crisis that facilitated the public's acceptance of the war.- In a fairy tale scenario, a crime is committed by the villain against an innocent victim. The hero makes sacrifices: he undergoes difficulties, typically making an arduous journey to a treacherous terrain. The villain is inherently evil, perhaps even a monster, and thus reasoning with him is out of question. The hero is left with no choice but to engage the villain in battle. Lakoff claims that a "Rescue Scenario" based on a fairy-tale frame was imposed on the events of the war. Iraq was the villain, the US was the hero, the crime was kidnap and rape. He calls attention to the discrepancies between the scenario suggested by the me- dia and "reality" (Lakoff 8). Similarly, while analyzing the fictional narratives, I would like to point out an underlying fairy-tale scenario.
Many feminist writers criticize fairy tales because of their gender-stereotyping potentials. They argue that the passive and pretty heroines who dominate po- pular fairy-tales offer narrow and damaging role-models for young readers (Stone 229). Fairy-tales reinforce, according to them, a self-destructive pattern of behavior taught to girls (Waelti-Walters 7). According to Colette Dowling gender expectations and the promises of the Cinderella story are psychologically harmful to women. Instead of trying to create a...