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Fairy Tales and Feminism: New Approaches. Edited by Donald Haase, Series in Fairy-Tale Studies. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004. 268 pp.
"As I have sketched it, the agenda for feminist fairy-tale scholarship parallels in large measure the agenda for fairy-tale studies itself (31). With this statement, editor Donald Haase closes his excellent survey of feminist fairytale scholarship, the first essay in this volume. Haase's statement is telling in that while Fairy Tales and Feminism brings together a reevaluation of the feminist critique of fairy tales, it simultaneously attempts to lay a path for what has been, and will be, the contemporary study of the fairy tale. Simultaneously restricted and enhanced by its feminist focus, Haase's collection, stemming originally from an issue of Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies (14.1 [2000]), is an excellent representation of the current status of fairy-tale studies as well as a review of the scholarship of fairy tales and feminism since discourse in this area came to critical notice in the 1970s.
This volume uses the umbrella of feminism to bring together a wide range of critical approaches and to cross national and textual boundaries. Ruth B. Bottigheimer's essay provides a historical dimension to the fictional and critical stereotype of the fairy-tale heroine in its investigation into the effects of the historical changes in women's control over their fertility in Europe. Lewis C. Seifert too engages the European tale in his work on seventeenth-century French literary tales by women. Like Bottigheimer, as well as Jeanine Blackwell, who examines the literary tales of German writers, Seifert moves beyond the simple examination of women's tale telling as subversive and asks scholars to delve into the ambiguities and contradictions contained...