I just came across your Substack. Very interesting post.
A character that is common in Princess Journey stories that you did not mention is the Fairy Godmother. Consistent with your argument here, I think the Fairy Godmother makes an important pedagogical point to girls that there are older women who will help with guidance and glamour (here, meaning both beauty and magic) to evade the designs of the Evil Woman and win the heart of the Prince.
I considered the Fairy Godmother as a one way of implementing the Deus Ex Machina plot device. But you are right, the presence of this character might also be important. Yet, it seems to me that relatively few tales include the Fairy Godmother, but most if not all stories with a Princess-type of female protagonist include an Evil Woman.
So, the overall message is that for a young girl, an older, powerful woman could be an ally, but more often than not, she's actually an Evil Woman that she needs to be careful around. Pretending to be a Fairy Godmother is an old Evil Woman trick that the Princess must watch out for.
I've been thinking about this essay a lot (another sign of a cool essay, so thanks!) I thought you might think that the Fairy Godmother was a deus ex machina, like the Prince and his saving the princess. But on further reflection, I don't think that either the Fairy Godmother or the Prince are a deus ex machina, in part because I don't think that the Princess is passive. I think it's easy to mistake the Princess' behavior as passivity because it's not aggressive. As you note, this is not a story for boys. But what the Princess is in many of these tales is someone who is very actively being good, wherever the winds of fate take her. (I note that some scholars think the Fairy Godmother is derived from the earlier image of the Fates--who are also magical women.)
Snow White does not choose where she goes. But the huntsman can't bring himself to kill her, because she does choose to be very nice and good. When she finds the dwarves (or, in some versions, robbers or ugly hateful trolls) she wins them over with her kindness and goodness. The Prince's love for her is a result of her goodness, as well as her beauty: Why she is found by the Prince is because the dwarves loved her so much as to maintain her glass coffin. Similar ideas are seen in Cinderella, in its various iterations. In the Charles Perrault version, he's explicit about Cinderella's graciousness being one of her key virtues. I am not as familiar with non-Western fairy tales, but ones I do know still have this idea that the heroine wins through being good and kind. (In some stories, the heroine wins through her goodness even if she dies through the actions of the bad guys: she is restored to life or reborn.)
I note that throughout human history, girls and women have had little agency about how or even where they would live their lives. But what they did have agency over was how they would react. Winning over the warlord who's just conquered your village with your kindness and graciousness may not be a successful strategy, but trying to physically fight back is definitely not going to be a successful strategy. Being cheerful and gracious is the face of violence and tragedy is not passive, but a tremendous act of will. Not choosing your fate, but choosing to be good in spite of your fate is a great moral message, and one I think is central to Princess folktales.
I don't think that being nice and good is being active or displaying agency. This is like the most basic thing everyone is expected to do all the time - even more so, if you are a Princess type of character. They are just doing what they are supposed to do - they are nice, passive and submissive. They are also young and attractive. Both being young and attractive and following social norms (including submissiveness) is what gets them rewards from other characters, both in fairy tales and real life.
Nonconformism, going against the grain - that's agency.
Being nice is relatively easy, now--we live in a nice time, much nicer than most of human history. Being nice to your kidnapper (as Belle is in Beauty and the Beast), or to your stepmom and stepsisters who are horrible to you (Cinderella), or, in actual history, to the invaders who killed the people in your village and kidnapped you is another thing entirely. Princesses in fairy tales are radically nice. Radical niceness--the niceness that allows me to love my enemies so much that they become my friends--that's the kind of niceness that is very difficult to accomplish, and takes a tremendous act of will. It is not passive.
It cannot be the case that only nonconformism is agency, because if it were it I cannot choose to do something that most people do--if I do I'm just passively going along with the crowd. But that's of course absurd: We mainly choose to do what others do, because we have the same basic needs and solutions to those needs. I'm not being a bold rebel by going against the grain and not having breakfast like all those mindless sheep; I'm just going hungry.
No, agency isn't going against the grain of what others want; it's going against the grain of your own more base animal nature. It's deciding to do what you should, and doing that, even when you don't want to. You think Cinderella felt like smiling at her awful stepsisters and cheerfully scrubbing out the hearth, or did she feel like screaming in rage at her abuse? She chooses to take the harder, but kinder, path.
I'm influenced here by the fact that I'm a Christian, one of the billions of people who believe that God chose to become a human who willingly allows himself to be executed in a grisly way as an atonement for our sins and as a lesson about how we ought to behave. Obviously, I do not think that Jesus Christ is without agency in going to his crucifixion. He actively chooses that death because it is right, despite also dreading it and wanting for it to not be so.
Relatedly, all the princess stories discussed here have been Western stories, written in a Christian cultural context. You do not have to be a Christian as I am to recognize that that context includes God being triumphant through being a sacrificial victim, having been born to the ur-Princess of all Western princess stories, the Blessed Virgin Mary. She, also, is not without agency just because she says "behold I am the handmaid of the Lord" rather than "lol, nope" when asked to be the mother of Christ. She's knowingly choosing to take a very difficult path.
Doing whatever I want, regardless of what's best for others? That's not agency; that's just a lack of self-discipline.
Thank you again for this interesting post and discussion. It gives me a lot to think about, and I appreciate that.
I agree that being radically nice to your oppressors requires some agency. But I don't think that is going against the human nature. When confronting a very strong, dangerous opponent, the natural instinct is to yield, to be submit. Fighting back with direct aggression only makes sense when there is a high probability of winning. Being a nonconformist - spitting in the face of your kidnapper or powerful opponent and insulting him or his mother looks pretty badass in movies, but doesn't end well, both in fiction and real life. It's just not the smart thing to do.
I see how the Princess Journey echoes the passion of Christ, arguably the main narrative in the Western christian civilization. Both are showing that radical niceness towards oppressors will be rewarded at the end, and eventually you will be saved somehow - with the Divine Salvation or Deus Ex Machina. Both also are the expressions of Nietschean slave morality.
But practically, this is also not the smart thing to do, at least when the real odds of someone actually coming to the rescue are low. If you are sure that the help is on the way, maybe it makes sense to be radically nice and submissive and just wait. But more often than not, there is no help, or it's too late. In that case, the smart thing to do is to also be radically nice, but also watch your opponents and note their weakness and create a covert plan that will eventually allow you to trick them, overpower them or escape. This is what the Hansel and Gretel story is about.
Being nice isn't that easy. If it was, no one would be homeless.
When Snow White was homeless she actively was pleasant to have. I've known homeless people closely and they all could have had a place, but they suck.
I let a homeless dude of sorts stay in his car on my property, he proceeded to throw beer bottles on my property because he was trying to throw them on my neighbors. Not good, and not because there wasn't a garbage can closer than where he threw them.
A hilarious ironic figure to sell the princess journey is actually of all people a segment I once saw from the character? Of Andrew Tate.
Saying "I can never be homeless, because if I was I'd stay at a friend's and make breakfast every morning and that house would be clean when they were at work."
He said in other words "the Dwarves would keep me because I'd be Snow White."
No one is Snow White anymore and that's why everyone is alone and un help able.the Dwarves get the Prince to her, because if you're Snow White to people, they will help you and connect you to people who can help you. Being nice isn't easy, in the sense that most people aren't actually nice.
Men, most typically are taught to be heros, and heros often aren't homeless because they have a job. But if a hero is homeless, then being a hero is being Snow White.
A man disabled maybe, as an example, perhaps can't chop down trees and build a cabin, but he can still cook. He can still do womanly cleaning. And he becomes the unsung hero, in as much as no army is of any use without the many men who serve in logistics.
The Roman tradesmen in the military were of higher rank/pay than the infantry for a reason.
That part of the Snow White story is basically like: "If you're a pretty young girl, you can survive by becoming a stay-at-home-wife for some ugly low status working class guy(s), and if you're pleasant enough, you don't even have to put out!"
There is a cliche in comedy movies: guy 1 is suddenly homeless (i.e. kicked out after cheating on his wife) and has to crash at guy 2's couch. Then, guy 1 either becomes Snow White, which is a comical surprise for everyone, or is totally unpleasant, which escalates the tension between both guys, which leads to more funny arguments and mishaps.
This is such a good comment. But I think there is another layer to this “being good” concept, and it’s related to why Piotr can’t see the significance. Being good is a form of submission. The whole point of the story is that girls become victorious through the appropriate kind of submission, not through direct action. Being clever and manipulative is great, but even better is to call in an air strike by submitting to the appropriate higher power. The message is one that is very hard for moderns to understand because we are so primed to reject the “fixed mindset”. We no longer have a conception of how to dominate by being submissive.
Thanks for your praise, Redbeard! Snooping through some of the stuff you've written, I see we've also both read some of Alice Evans' essays at the Great Gender Divergence which also informed some of my thinking on female "goodness," submission and power. As Alice Evans notes, in many cultures and throughout history, women have had to make nice with mothers-in-law--whether the mother-in-law in question would be an example of an evil woman or a fairy godmother if she were in a story. Living out a story about how you're gonna stand up for yourself by being cunning or something is just going to get you badly neglected, and maybe killed. Relatedly, the wily princess is going to escape to....where, exactly? She--like almost all human beings ever--is constrained to the geographic location she's in.
I agree that this is a difficult concept for moderns to accept, living under the illusion that we do that we can bend so much of our circumstances to our will.
Interesting thoughts! I agree that the Evil Woman has done a magnificent PR job on herself. If you’re interested in more analysis, Marie Louise Von Franz did a lot of work on fairytales focused on women’s journeys. Her work “the feminine in fairytales” is an excellent starting place.
Hers is a jungian interpretation so the role of the male at the end to save the princess may be less about finding an external savior but more of exactly what you describe - becoming less princess like and forming a union with her internal “male” energy which gives her the strength and the skill to overcome the evil witch.
I read that book years ago, right out of college and it was extremely helpful as I entered into the non-profit work scene. So was Women Who Run with the Wolves. Must-reads for women, especially if they come from a Cluster B family situation (or otherwise must deal with personality-disordered or jealous female relatives).
I am very excited because I hadn't thought about princess stories this way, and you are really onto something. But you're also missing a piece, and ironically it's the same piece feminists miss when they analyze these stories.
The Princess is NOT saved by pure Deus ex Machina, she is saved because she is a Good Woman -- being passive and obediant is an aspect of that traditionally, but more important than those is *charity.* Specifically, she uses her instincts as a Good Woman to offer assistance and comfort to outcasts (the animals in Cinderella, the dwarves in Snow White.) While the outcasts can't save her directly, they protect her and offer indirect testimony to people more powerful than the Evil Woman (the animals help get Cinderella to the ball and attract the attention of both the fairy godmother and the prince, the dwarves build the glass casket and mourn Snow White, attracting the attention of the prince). The moral of the Princess's Journey is to focus on building strong social relationships wherever you can, as it's the female agression equivalant of having a band of brothers.
So in a modern context, the Princess Journey's advice to the office princess would be to befriend the office IT department or janitorial staff. They will hopefully act to undo the damage the Evil Woman tries to do, or provide information or testimony that the Princess can take higher up the ladder above the Evil Woman's head.
I love this observation, Emily. Indeed, the princess’ superpower is that she is empathetic and caring to others, leading other characters who have very little power (because no one has literally no power) to team up with her.
Also—since so much of this discussion is embedded in ideas from evolutionary psychology—I note that this is in fact what non-human primates lower in the power hierarchy do, as well. Baboon females will build coalitions to fight off a new alpha male-wannabe (important, since the first thing a new alpha male tends to do is kill all their newborns); less-powerful macaques build coalitions to share resources rather than allowing them to be hoarded by a single powerful individual.
Okay, so I imagined the femme fatale, but it would not have occurred to me that it was because feminism had rehabbed or therapized the evil woman (and I was a big lover of fairy tales as a child and read the original versions many times over). I think the reason that I chose the femme fatale is because that's obviously the type dangerous to men, and for some reason I was thinking of who is dangerous to men rather than women.
But that's also because I don't think women really are THAT dangerous to other women...they certainly try to be, and far more often than men try actually, but most women *know that*. Whereas men seem to still remain either clueless about or at least vulnerable to femme fatales, out of hubris. It's interesting to me that you didn't think the "Mean Girls" thing was real. Every girl knows that it is. We don't need a movie or fairy tale to tell us this. It is super obvious if you are one, and we were all targeted by (passive) aggression from other women. It is one of the problems with why there is not and will never be a woman celebrity who can be truly popular in a cross-over manner with both men and women, the way male celebrities can be. As a woman, you can't reach the top echelons of popularity with men unless you're very sexy, and you can't reach the top echelons of popularity with women if you're very sexy, so it's an impossible bind. The status hierarchies for men as between men and women are roughly the same, but the status hierarchies for women, among men and women, are not just totally different but in many instances directly opposed. If you're too hot as a woman you don't downplay it by either purposely making yourself sexless like Taylor Swift, or otherwise making a very big deal of your non-availability, you will always have a ceiling on how likeable you are to other women, and there's no getting around it.
Anyway, what's interesting to me about this is that the PR whitewashing of the evil woman has apparently worked on men! I don't think any women buy it, we know that a jealous woman is dangerous. That is why I considered the femme fatale first, because she's the one who is more likely to be successful against her target. So in a sense it seems that some lower status women, by whitewashing the evil woman archetype, have actually pulled the ultimate power move of successfully rehabbing themselves with men, which helps them to undermine their real target (female competitors). Because if men believe them and not their targets (as you did in the story of your friend who left her job), the evil woman has won.
I think that there's a big difference between the mean girl type of female intrasexual aggression and the Princess Journey.
The mean girls type is female aggression 101, it's kind of obvious as they don't really conceal it, at least not how the Evil Women do. They also don't have much of an upper hand, except maybe forming or leading a group that they can exclude the target girl from.
The Princess Journey can only happen when a young woman meets an older incumbent woman other than her mother, when both are set to to compete against each other.
Nowadays, we spend childhood, adolescence and early adulthood in age-segregated groups with clear student-teacher status hierarchies. The earliest the Princess can meet the Evil Woman is when she joins the workforce (or when dad remarries after divorce and the stepmom moves in).
Evil Woman is the next (or maybe even top) level of female aggression. Not only she has the upper hand in terms of money, status, experience, connections and secret knowledge. She is able to conceal her actions and act covertly. If the Princess is passive and oblivious, she may not even know what hit her, or realize after it's already too late.
I'm sure that the Mean Girl aggression was always obvious to you, but I just don't think the Princess Journey/Evil Woman was as obvious as that. Moreover, times have changed and the politically correct fairy tale versions have only been made since like the 2000s. So the Gen Z girls might have learned something else from the same fairy tales you learned in the 80s.
As for "female status according to men" etc, I tried to prod Rob Henderson to write something about that once in his AMA thread but I don't think I managed to. I think this would be a very interesting read, but it would require lots of research and I don't think I'm qualified enough to write about it myself... yet.
As far as I understand, by "I don't think women really are THAT dangerous to other women" you mean that the Princess Journey/Evil Woman isn't really a thing. Excuse me, but aren't you, by any chance, a middle-aged high status woman in a senior leadership position that may possibly need to compete with younger women for status and resources? I find that very suspicious...
There have never been enough women in my field for there to be any competition between them. But also I'm in one where age and seniority just always wins in every context hands down and without question, so it's also kind of not an issue on that measure either among men or women. If you are 30 and someone else at your firm is 60 and there's a conflict or competition, the 60 year old wins without question. I guess it's just old fashioned that way, but seniority is status. I'm not considered senior in my 40s, I work with people in their 60s and 70s. In that way it's very different from tech or other fields that aren't like that and where you might even be penalized for age/experience. I had older women do things to really help and mentor me when I was starting off, and now I have some younger women I try to do the same. But probably we are all safeguarded against this type of thing because there simply is no direct competition between different seniority levels...like it would be impossible for a 28 year old to be promoted above a 45 year old so it's not an issue. Interesting bc I never considered that perhaps that very hierarchical seniority based system helps disincentivize and neutralize intra-firm competition.
I guess I've probably dealt with this kind of thing with mothers and older sisters of boyfriends though, who usually hated me. I had one boyfriend whose older sister absolutely could not stand me and tried all kinds of weird things to try to undermine me and make people hate me. I thought it was completely bizarre, as if she was jealous of her own brother or something, it didn't make sense to me.
I think another way this can happen though is a low status women who becomes obsessed with and stalks/tries to ruin the life of another woman that she's trying to basically replace. I've read stories in the newspaper of that kind of thing happening. There was a recent famous one where an immigrant nanny murdered the mother she was nannying for, trying to basically become her and have her life.
The law. I think there's lots where it matters. People would rather have a surgeon who has performed 5,000 surgeries than one who's only done 50. Same with a lawyer, it's hard to get anyone to hire you if you don't have many years of experience. I'd rather have a plumber with years of experience too, or someone cutting my hair, or a master gardener versus a newbie. Plenty of things where more experience and time developing expertise is considered better. Many of these we actually call "practices" because the understanding is that it takes years of practice before you really know what you're doing.
I would imagine the only areas where this ISN'T the case is where things are changing constantly, so there's not much benefit to historical hands on experience, like tech and media.
Excellent writing and a well-thought-out piece. It's full of twists and turns and surprises, taking the reader in various different directions. It's really top-tier work that many other writers out there could learn from, especially how to construct a cohesive story that keeps the reader guessing.
I do have my qualms with a lot of evolutionary psychology, however, and suggest taking those findings—and especially the pop-culture representations of those findings—with a hefty dose of skepticism.
Yeah, this is excellent and it definitely kept me guessing. More than this, though, I really loved your post-mortem on the PUA movement. That was stellar. So far, that's the best I've read from what you've written, but I'm sure there will be more to come.
Unpopular, yes, but I think there was a nugget of gold at the core of the PUA movement, even if it was overwhelmingly drenched in misogyny and just regrettable pseudoscience or atrocious interpretations of EvoPysch so much that the crust and mantle were rotten.
Still, I think men trying to get themselves to be more appealing to women isn't just not a bad thing, it's a very good thing. Long ago, I criticized the movement and the core of the criticism was that it was overwhelmingly male, with no input from women. I'd actually like to see men today try again to get that part of their lives together, but with input from women this time. I really sense doing so might help heal the gender divide, but I won't hold my breath.
"This leaves most women defenseless - indirect aggression is now morally unacceptable, while open, direct aggression is something most women are naturally not comfortable with."
A lot of what has happened since the 2010s has been flipping the script--making indirect aggression (female-style conflict) acceptable, while making direct aggression (male-style conflict) unacceptable.
This has culminated in the use of female weapons outside of the intrafemale sphere, culminating in Cancel Culture.
The ace-in-the-hole that attempts to thwart Mutually Assured Destruction resulting from fighting back is the "don't punch down" rule, where old norms of chivalry are invoked to prevent male retaliation.
What people learned is as long as you don't resort to male forms of aggression traditionally covered by chivalry, retaliation is "acceptable enough" as long as you play by the female rules. This has taken time for society to learn, but was eventually done.
This part about the Hero's story is excellent and makes me instantly think of how much of a modern invention this is. The Iliad doesn't have this format, neither do any of Shakespeare's tragedies. Tragedy is a lost art in the modern world, and we'd do well to rekindle it. The Iliad especially eschews the modern tension-resolution format. There is no victory, just a moment when the main characters break down and cry at the end. What's ironic is, those were the original heroic tales.
The biblical stories of Noah, Moses, David, and, of course Jesus, the Greek myths of Hercules, Odysseus, Theseus, Orpheus and Jason - all of these are ancient examples of the Hero's Journey. Pretty much every ancient culture had one or two of these. I agree that the ancient tragedy is something we lost, but the Hero's Journey has been on the map from the dawn of time.
Yes, you're correct on that count. The Odyssey absolutely is the shining example of this. The Iliad reminds me of Saving Private Ryan more than anything else—countless people die for not really any discernible reason, even to warriors themselves, then they have to reckon with the emotional turmoil at the end. And for Shakespeare, you're correct, while his plays don't follow the format, Edmund Spenser's poem of the time certainly does.
This makes me think: there are two traditions in literature, the narrative, heroic structure of Odyssey and the existential one of Shakespeare, Iliad, that's less about plot and overcoming and more about inner psychological turmoil. Jean-Paul Sartre's book Nausea is a chief example of this, there's really no plot to it, just a bunch of inner strife.
Those works can resonate really well in times of uncertainty and when people realize that life doesn't come with happy endings.
But yeah, definitely an old format that sprung from pre-literary myths, spot-on.
Consider that the Iliad is one part of a much larger cycle. It starts in media res, the main characters are already heroes, and IIRC the only character arcs which reach culmination are by the end are Patroclus and Hector. All the others heroes - including Achilles, Odysseus, Agamemnon, even Troy itself - continue their stories elsewhere.
Seriously, imagining an "evil woman" I immediately thought of someone like Samantha Power, Susan Rice, or Madeline Albright: the sort of hard-edged female executive able to rationalize actions in support of a supposed higher cause.
I imagined an unpleasant woman (<https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/confessions-from-an-unpleasant-woman>) determined to drive home the “you will stay well away from me if you know what’s good for you” message, perhaps accompanied by a big, mean dog not afraid to bite your leg off if you fail to scramble quickly enough to make room for its master. I chose _femme fatale_ as the closest approximation.
It's interesting as I read your essay that my own experience living in a female-centered enviornment for 50 years so counters your analysis. An important distinction that is never considered when discussing the impact of feminism is the crucial difference between Radical Feminism and what I name, "Commercial Feminism". Radical feminists rejected the mean girl/jealous/passive aggressive/"cat fight" trope and saw all women, regardless of background as impacted by 5000 years of male patriarchy. All women were sisters, and our commitment to each other was/is to connect and support. Our commonality was superior to our inculcated, male-identified identity created to keep us alienated from each other and subvert women's unity in rejecting oppression. The superficial interpretation of feminist liberation by corporate profiteers/major media completely erased the Radical Feminist vision of liberating both women AND MEN from stiltifying, limited, biased, cultural expectations that disallowed expressions of any human's full humanity. The most common story now is as you describe, but more a caricature of the hero replaced with a woman as a swaggering macho, "women-can-be-violent-too" female drug lord, serial killer, bank robber or con artist - the worst of human behaviors. I appreciate your thoughts on fairy tales and the continued impact on children. I'm not a scholar like Max Dashu, but I hope more people create new stories offering inspiring examples of the best of human expression, regardless of perceived gender.
Hiyao Miyazaki's many female protagonists, especially Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Sheeta of Laputa, manage to be agentic and straightforward, yet still feminine and collaborative individuals, while being neither girlbosses nor mannish. They prevail via compassion and bravery rather than wiles or strength.
One thing that I think we're coming out of that was a toxic byproduct of the Successor Ideology is forfeiting one's agency in order to become a bigger victim.
I don't know if people decided forfeiting agency wasn't worth the cost, or if the "victimhood as the coin of the realm" resulted in so much counterfeiting as to completely debase the currency of victimhood, but assertion of agency has fortunately come back in vogue.
People of "victimized groups" who are realizing this are finding themselves a leg up on those who have not.
A) As evolutionary psychology states (and you call out), the older woman vs. younger woman battle is an archetype from which younger women can learn. Kudos for identifying it and bringing it to light.
B) Per your thoughts on strategies for the Princess to win, I asked ChatGPT to look at other Princess-type fairy tales and identify strategies for the Princess. Here is what is offered, along with examples (it includes the Deux ex Machina one as well). I think there are some sound ones here.
1. Cleverness and Wit
These heroines outsmart their adversaries or use intelligence to escape dangerous situations.
--Snow White: Snow White escapes the queen’s repeated attempts to kill her by relying on the help of the seven dwarfs and eventually being revived by the prince.
--Thumbelina: Thumbelina cleverly escapes the toad and other unwanted suitors by befriending animals who help her.
2. Resilience and Endurance
Heroines survive hardships through patience, inner strength, and perseverance.
--Cinderella: Cinderella endures mistreatment and continues to work hard, ultimately rewarded for her patience and kindness.
--The Wild Swans: The heroine endures silence and personal suffering while weaving nettle shirts to save her brothers.
3. Kindness and Compassion
These heroines win through their innate goodness, often earning help from others.
--Beauty and the Beast: Beauty’s kindness toward the Beast transforms him, breaking the curse.
--Vasilisa the Beautiful: Vasilisa’s kindness and humility gain her the help of a magical doll, allowing her to complete Baba Yaga’s impossible tasks.
4. External Help or Magic
Heroines receive aid from magical beings or objects.
--Cinderella: Her fairy godmother provides magical assistance to attend the ball.
--Sleeping Beauty: The intervention of a good fairy softens the curse, allowing her to be awakened by true love.
5. Courage and Action
Heroines take decisive actions to confront or escape their adversaries.
--Rapunzel: Rapunzel ultimately defies Mother Gothel, choosing freedom and love over control.
--The Girl Without Hands: The girl bravely leaves home, enduring trials to find a safe and happy life.
6. Allies and Relationships
Heroines gain the support of others who help them succeed.
Snow White: The seven dwarfs protect her and provide shelter.
The Twelve Dancing Princesses: The youngest sister often builds trust with the soldier who uncovers their secret, helping to resolve their plight.
Its the first time I heard of the Princess' journey. It explains well the popularity of midday soap opera among women, they follow this trope almost to a T.
I just came across your Substack. Very interesting post.
A character that is common in Princess Journey stories that you did not mention is the Fairy Godmother. Consistent with your argument here, I think the Fairy Godmother makes an important pedagogical point to girls that there are older women who will help with guidance and glamour (here, meaning both beauty and magic) to evade the designs of the Evil Woman and win the heart of the Prince.
Thanks.
I considered the Fairy Godmother as a one way of implementing the Deus Ex Machina plot device. But you are right, the presence of this character might also be important. Yet, it seems to me that relatively few tales include the Fairy Godmother, but most if not all stories with a Princess-type of female protagonist include an Evil Woman.
So, the overall message is that for a young girl, an older, powerful woman could be an ally, but more often than not, she's actually an Evil Woman that she needs to be careful around. Pretending to be a Fairy Godmother is an old Evil Woman trick that the Princess must watch out for.
I've been thinking about this essay a lot (another sign of a cool essay, so thanks!) I thought you might think that the Fairy Godmother was a deus ex machina, like the Prince and his saving the princess. But on further reflection, I don't think that either the Fairy Godmother or the Prince are a deus ex machina, in part because I don't think that the Princess is passive. I think it's easy to mistake the Princess' behavior as passivity because it's not aggressive. As you note, this is not a story for boys. But what the Princess is in many of these tales is someone who is very actively being good, wherever the winds of fate take her. (I note that some scholars think the Fairy Godmother is derived from the earlier image of the Fates--who are also magical women.)
Snow White does not choose where she goes. But the huntsman can't bring himself to kill her, because she does choose to be very nice and good. When she finds the dwarves (or, in some versions, robbers or ugly hateful trolls) she wins them over with her kindness and goodness. The Prince's love for her is a result of her goodness, as well as her beauty: Why she is found by the Prince is because the dwarves loved her so much as to maintain her glass coffin. Similar ideas are seen in Cinderella, in its various iterations. In the Charles Perrault version, he's explicit about Cinderella's graciousness being one of her key virtues. I am not as familiar with non-Western fairy tales, but ones I do know still have this idea that the heroine wins through being good and kind. (In some stories, the heroine wins through her goodness even if she dies through the actions of the bad guys: she is restored to life or reborn.)
I note that throughout human history, girls and women have had little agency about how or even where they would live their lives. But what they did have agency over was how they would react. Winning over the warlord who's just conquered your village with your kindness and graciousness may not be a successful strategy, but trying to physically fight back is definitely not going to be a successful strategy. Being cheerful and gracious is the face of violence and tragedy is not passive, but a tremendous act of will. Not choosing your fate, but choosing to be good in spite of your fate is a great moral message, and one I think is central to Princess folktales.
I don't think that being nice and good is being active or displaying agency. This is like the most basic thing everyone is expected to do all the time - even more so, if you are a Princess type of character. They are just doing what they are supposed to do - they are nice, passive and submissive. They are also young and attractive. Both being young and attractive and following social norms (including submissiveness) is what gets them rewards from other characters, both in fairy tales and real life.
Nonconformism, going against the grain - that's agency.
Being nice is relatively easy, now--we live in a nice time, much nicer than most of human history. Being nice to your kidnapper (as Belle is in Beauty and the Beast), or to your stepmom and stepsisters who are horrible to you (Cinderella), or, in actual history, to the invaders who killed the people in your village and kidnapped you is another thing entirely. Princesses in fairy tales are radically nice. Radical niceness--the niceness that allows me to love my enemies so much that they become my friends--that's the kind of niceness that is very difficult to accomplish, and takes a tremendous act of will. It is not passive.
It cannot be the case that only nonconformism is agency, because if it were it I cannot choose to do something that most people do--if I do I'm just passively going along with the crowd. But that's of course absurd: We mainly choose to do what others do, because we have the same basic needs and solutions to those needs. I'm not being a bold rebel by going against the grain and not having breakfast like all those mindless sheep; I'm just going hungry.
No, agency isn't going against the grain of what others want; it's going against the grain of your own more base animal nature. It's deciding to do what you should, and doing that, even when you don't want to. You think Cinderella felt like smiling at her awful stepsisters and cheerfully scrubbing out the hearth, or did she feel like screaming in rage at her abuse? She chooses to take the harder, but kinder, path.
I'm influenced here by the fact that I'm a Christian, one of the billions of people who believe that God chose to become a human who willingly allows himself to be executed in a grisly way as an atonement for our sins and as a lesson about how we ought to behave. Obviously, I do not think that Jesus Christ is without agency in going to his crucifixion. He actively chooses that death because it is right, despite also dreading it and wanting for it to not be so.
Relatedly, all the princess stories discussed here have been Western stories, written in a Christian cultural context. You do not have to be a Christian as I am to recognize that that context includes God being triumphant through being a sacrificial victim, having been born to the ur-Princess of all Western princess stories, the Blessed Virgin Mary. She, also, is not without agency just because she says "behold I am the handmaid of the Lord" rather than "lol, nope" when asked to be the mother of Christ. She's knowingly choosing to take a very difficult path.
Doing whatever I want, regardless of what's best for others? That's not agency; that's just a lack of self-discipline.
Thank you again for this interesting post and discussion. It gives me a lot to think about, and I appreciate that.
Thanks, I enjoy the discussion too.
I agree that being radically nice to your oppressors requires some agency. But I don't think that is going against the human nature. When confronting a very strong, dangerous opponent, the natural instinct is to yield, to be submit. Fighting back with direct aggression only makes sense when there is a high probability of winning. Being a nonconformist - spitting in the face of your kidnapper or powerful opponent and insulting him or his mother looks pretty badass in movies, but doesn't end well, both in fiction and real life. It's just not the smart thing to do.
I see how the Princess Journey echoes the passion of Christ, arguably the main narrative in the Western christian civilization. Both are showing that radical niceness towards oppressors will be rewarded at the end, and eventually you will be saved somehow - with the Divine Salvation or Deus Ex Machina. Both also are the expressions of Nietschean slave morality.
But practically, this is also not the smart thing to do, at least when the real odds of someone actually coming to the rescue are low. If you are sure that the help is on the way, maybe it makes sense to be radically nice and submissive and just wait. But more often than not, there is no help, or it's too late. In that case, the smart thing to do is to also be radically nice, but also watch your opponents and note their weakness and create a covert plan that will eventually allow you to trick them, overpower them or escape. This is what the Hansel and Gretel story is about.
Being nice isn't that easy. If it was, no one would be homeless.
When Snow White was homeless she actively was pleasant to have. I've known homeless people closely and they all could have had a place, but they suck.
I let a homeless dude of sorts stay in his car on my property, he proceeded to throw beer bottles on my property because he was trying to throw them on my neighbors. Not good, and not because there wasn't a garbage can closer than where he threw them.
A hilarious ironic figure to sell the princess journey is actually of all people a segment I once saw from the character? Of Andrew Tate.
Saying "I can never be homeless, because if I was I'd stay at a friend's and make breakfast every morning and that house would be clean when they were at work."
He said in other words "the Dwarves would keep me because I'd be Snow White."
No one is Snow White anymore and that's why everyone is alone and un help able.the Dwarves get the Prince to her, because if you're Snow White to people, they will help you and connect you to people who can help you. Being nice isn't easy, in the sense that most people aren't actually nice.
Men, most typically are taught to be heros, and heros often aren't homeless because they have a job. But if a hero is homeless, then being a hero is being Snow White.
A man disabled maybe, as an example, perhaps can't chop down trees and build a cabin, but he can still cook. He can still do womanly cleaning. And he becomes the unsung hero, in as much as no army is of any use without the many men who serve in logistics.
The Roman tradesmen in the military were of higher rank/pay than the infantry for a reason.
That part of the Snow White story is basically like: "If you're a pretty young girl, you can survive by becoming a stay-at-home-wife for some ugly low status working class guy(s), and if you're pleasant enough, you don't even have to put out!"
There is a cliche in comedy movies: guy 1 is suddenly homeless (i.e. kicked out after cheating on his wife) and has to crash at guy 2's couch. Then, guy 1 either becomes Snow White, which is a comical surprise for everyone, or is totally unpleasant, which escalates the tension between both guys, which leads to more funny arguments and mishaps.
This is such a good comment. But I think there is another layer to this “being good” concept, and it’s related to why Piotr can’t see the significance. Being good is a form of submission. The whole point of the story is that girls become victorious through the appropriate kind of submission, not through direct action. Being clever and manipulative is great, but even better is to call in an air strike by submitting to the appropriate higher power. The message is one that is very hard for moderns to understand because we are so primed to reject the “fixed mindset”. We no longer have a conception of how to dominate by being submissive.
Thanks for your praise, Redbeard! Snooping through some of the stuff you've written, I see we've also both read some of Alice Evans' essays at the Great Gender Divergence which also informed some of my thinking on female "goodness," submission and power. As Alice Evans notes, in many cultures and throughout history, women have had to make nice with mothers-in-law--whether the mother-in-law in question would be an example of an evil woman or a fairy godmother if she were in a story. Living out a story about how you're gonna stand up for yourself by being cunning or something is just going to get you badly neglected, and maybe killed. Relatedly, the wily princess is going to escape to....where, exactly? She--like almost all human beings ever--is constrained to the geographic location she's in.
I agree that this is a difficult concept for moderns to accept, living under the illusion that we do that we can bend so much of our circumstances to our will.
Yes, good connection to AE! If anyone else reads these comments, here's a relevant link: https://www.ggd.world/p/what-motivates-wifely-obedience.
The MIL is one of, if not the most important archetypes for the evil witch.
Interesting thoughts! I agree that the Evil Woman has done a magnificent PR job on herself. If you’re interested in more analysis, Marie Louise Von Franz did a lot of work on fairytales focused on women’s journeys. Her work “the feminine in fairytales” is an excellent starting place.
Hers is a jungian interpretation so the role of the male at the end to save the princess may be less about finding an external savior but more of exactly what you describe - becoming less princess like and forming a union with her internal “male” energy which gives her the strength and the skill to overcome the evil witch.
I read that book years ago, right out of college and it was extremely helpful as I entered into the non-profit work scene. So was Women Who Run with the Wolves. Must-reads for women, especially if they come from a Cluster B family situation (or otherwise must deal with personality-disordered or jealous female relatives).
I am very excited because I hadn't thought about princess stories this way, and you are really onto something. But you're also missing a piece, and ironically it's the same piece feminists miss when they analyze these stories.
The Princess is NOT saved by pure Deus ex Machina, she is saved because she is a Good Woman -- being passive and obediant is an aspect of that traditionally, but more important than those is *charity.* Specifically, she uses her instincts as a Good Woman to offer assistance and comfort to outcasts (the animals in Cinderella, the dwarves in Snow White.) While the outcasts can't save her directly, they protect her and offer indirect testimony to people more powerful than the Evil Woman (the animals help get Cinderella to the ball and attract the attention of both the fairy godmother and the prince, the dwarves build the glass casket and mourn Snow White, attracting the attention of the prince). The moral of the Princess's Journey is to focus on building strong social relationships wherever you can, as it's the female agression equivalant of having a band of brothers.
So in a modern context, the Princess Journey's advice to the office princess would be to befriend the office IT department or janitorial staff. They will hopefully act to undo the damage the Evil Woman tries to do, or provide information or testimony that the Princess can take higher up the ladder above the Evil Woman's head.
I love this observation, Emily. Indeed, the princess’ superpower is that she is empathetic and caring to others, leading other characters who have very little power (because no one has literally no power) to team up with her.
Also—since so much of this discussion is embedded in ideas from evolutionary psychology—I note that this is in fact what non-human primates lower in the power hierarchy do, as well. Baboon females will build coalitions to fight off a new alpha male-wannabe (important, since the first thing a new alpha male tends to do is kill all their newborns); less-powerful macaques build coalitions to share resources rather than allowing them to be hoarded by a single powerful individual.
Okay, so I imagined the femme fatale, but it would not have occurred to me that it was because feminism had rehabbed or therapized the evil woman (and I was a big lover of fairy tales as a child and read the original versions many times over). I think the reason that I chose the femme fatale is because that's obviously the type dangerous to men, and for some reason I was thinking of who is dangerous to men rather than women.
But that's also because I don't think women really are THAT dangerous to other women...they certainly try to be, and far more often than men try actually, but most women *know that*. Whereas men seem to still remain either clueless about or at least vulnerable to femme fatales, out of hubris. It's interesting to me that you didn't think the "Mean Girls" thing was real. Every girl knows that it is. We don't need a movie or fairy tale to tell us this. It is super obvious if you are one, and we were all targeted by (passive) aggression from other women. It is one of the problems with why there is not and will never be a woman celebrity who can be truly popular in a cross-over manner with both men and women, the way male celebrities can be. As a woman, you can't reach the top echelons of popularity with men unless you're very sexy, and you can't reach the top echelons of popularity with women if you're very sexy, so it's an impossible bind. The status hierarchies for men as between men and women are roughly the same, but the status hierarchies for women, among men and women, are not just totally different but in many instances directly opposed. If you're too hot as a woman you don't downplay it by either purposely making yourself sexless like Taylor Swift, or otherwise making a very big deal of your non-availability, you will always have a ceiling on how likeable you are to other women, and there's no getting around it.
Anyway, what's interesting to me about this is that the PR whitewashing of the evil woman has apparently worked on men! I don't think any women buy it, we know that a jealous woman is dangerous. That is why I considered the femme fatale first, because she's the one who is more likely to be successful against her target. So in a sense it seems that some lower status women, by whitewashing the evil woman archetype, have actually pulled the ultimate power move of successfully rehabbing themselves with men, which helps them to undermine their real target (female competitors). Because if men believe them and not their targets (as you did in the story of your friend who left her job), the evil woman has won.
I think that there's a big difference between the mean girl type of female intrasexual aggression and the Princess Journey.
The mean girls type is female aggression 101, it's kind of obvious as they don't really conceal it, at least not how the Evil Women do. They also don't have much of an upper hand, except maybe forming or leading a group that they can exclude the target girl from.
The Princess Journey can only happen when a young woman meets an older incumbent woman other than her mother, when both are set to to compete against each other.
Nowadays, we spend childhood, adolescence and early adulthood in age-segregated groups with clear student-teacher status hierarchies. The earliest the Princess can meet the Evil Woman is when she joins the workforce (or when dad remarries after divorce and the stepmom moves in).
Evil Woman is the next (or maybe even top) level of female aggression. Not only she has the upper hand in terms of money, status, experience, connections and secret knowledge. She is able to conceal her actions and act covertly. If the Princess is passive and oblivious, she may not even know what hit her, or realize after it's already too late.
I'm sure that the Mean Girl aggression was always obvious to you, but I just don't think the Princess Journey/Evil Woman was as obvious as that. Moreover, times have changed and the politically correct fairy tale versions have only been made since like the 2000s. So the Gen Z girls might have learned something else from the same fairy tales you learned in the 80s.
As for "female status according to men" etc, I tried to prod Rob Henderson to write something about that once in his AMA thread but I don't think I managed to. I think this would be a very interesting read, but it would require lots of research and I don't think I'm qualified enough to write about it myself... yet.
As far as I understand, by "I don't think women really are THAT dangerous to other women" you mean that the Princess Journey/Evil Woman isn't really a thing. Excuse me, but aren't you, by any chance, a middle-aged high status woman in a senior leadership position that may possibly need to compete with younger women for status and resources? I find that very suspicious...
There have never been enough women in my field for there to be any competition between them. But also I'm in one where age and seniority just always wins in every context hands down and without question, so it's also kind of not an issue on that measure either among men or women. If you are 30 and someone else at your firm is 60 and there's a conflict or competition, the 60 year old wins without question. I guess it's just old fashioned that way, but seniority is status. I'm not considered senior in my 40s, I work with people in their 60s and 70s. In that way it's very different from tech or other fields that aren't like that and where you might even be penalized for age/experience. I had older women do things to really help and mentor me when I was starting off, and now I have some younger women I try to do the same. But probably we are all safeguarded against this type of thing because there simply is no direct competition between different seniority levels...like it would be impossible for a 28 year old to be promoted above a 45 year old so it's not an issue. Interesting bc I never considered that perhaps that very hierarchical seniority based system helps disincentivize and neutralize intra-firm competition.
I guess I've probably dealt with this kind of thing with mothers and older sisters of boyfriends though, who usually hated me. I had one boyfriend whose older sister absolutely could not stand me and tried all kinds of weird things to try to undermine me and make people hate me. I thought it was completely bizarre, as if she was jealous of her own brother or something, it didn't make sense to me.
I think another way this can happen though is a low status women who becomes obsessed with and stalks/tries to ruin the life of another woman that she's trying to basically replace. I've read stories in the newspaper of that kind of thing happening. There was a recent famous one where an immigrant nanny murdered the mother she was nannying for, trying to basically become her and have her life.
I am curious what industry you work in where seniority still matters. I have no idea what that could be.
The law. I think there's lots where it matters. People would rather have a surgeon who has performed 5,000 surgeries than one who's only done 50. Same with a lawyer, it's hard to get anyone to hire you if you don't have many years of experience. I'd rather have a plumber with years of experience too, or someone cutting my hair, or a master gardener versus a newbie. Plenty of things where more experience and time developing expertise is considered better. Many of these we actually call "practices" because the understanding is that it takes years of practice before you really know what you're doing.
I would imagine the only areas where this ISN'T the case is where things are changing constantly, so there's not much benefit to historical hands on experience, like tech and media.
Excellent writing and a well-thought-out piece. It's full of twists and turns and surprises, taking the reader in various different directions. It's really top-tier work that many other writers out there could learn from, especially how to construct a cohesive story that keeps the reader guessing.
I do have my qualms with a lot of evolutionary psychology, however, and suggest taking those findings—and especially the pop-culture representations of those findings—with a hefty dose of skepticism.
But, all in all, great piece.
Ah. The comment I need, but didn't think I deserved yet. Thank you so much sir.
Yeah, this is excellent and it definitely kept me guessing. More than this, though, I really loved your post-mortem on the PUA movement. That was stellar. So far, that's the best I've read from what you've written, but I'm sure there will be more to come.
Unpopular, yes, but I think there was a nugget of gold at the core of the PUA movement, even if it was overwhelmingly drenched in misogyny and just regrettable pseudoscience or atrocious interpretations of EvoPysch so much that the crust and mantle were rotten.
Still, I think men trying to get themselves to be more appealing to women isn't just not a bad thing, it's a very good thing. Long ago, I criticized the movement and the core of the criticism was that it was overwhelmingly male, with no input from women. I'd actually like to see men today try again to get that part of their lives together, but with input from women this time. I really sense doing so might help heal the gender divide, but I won't hold my breath.
"This leaves most women defenseless - indirect aggression is now morally unacceptable, while open, direct aggression is something most women are naturally not comfortable with."
A lot of what has happened since the 2010s has been flipping the script--making indirect aggression (female-style conflict) acceptable, while making direct aggression (male-style conflict) unacceptable.
This has culminated in the use of female weapons outside of the intrafemale sphere, culminating in Cancel Culture.
The ace-in-the-hole that attempts to thwart Mutually Assured Destruction resulting from fighting back is the "don't punch down" rule, where old norms of chivalry are invoked to prevent male retaliation.
What people learned is as long as you don't resort to male forms of aggression traditionally covered by chivalry, retaliation is "acceptable enough" as long as you play by the female rules. This has taken time for society to learn, but was eventually done.
This part about the Hero's story is excellent and makes me instantly think of how much of a modern invention this is. The Iliad doesn't have this format, neither do any of Shakespeare's tragedies. Tragedy is a lost art in the modern world, and we'd do well to rekindle it. The Iliad especially eschews the modern tension-resolution format. There is no victory, just a moment when the main characters break down and cry at the end. What's ironic is, those were the original heroic tales.
The biblical stories of Noah, Moses, David, and, of course Jesus, the Greek myths of Hercules, Odysseus, Theseus, Orpheus and Jason - all of these are ancient examples of the Hero's Journey. Pretty much every ancient culture had one or two of these. I agree that the ancient tragedy is something we lost, but the Hero's Journey has been on the map from the dawn of time.
Yes, you're correct on that count. The Odyssey absolutely is the shining example of this. The Iliad reminds me of Saving Private Ryan more than anything else—countless people die for not really any discernible reason, even to warriors themselves, then they have to reckon with the emotional turmoil at the end. And for Shakespeare, you're correct, while his plays don't follow the format, Edmund Spenser's poem of the time certainly does.
This makes me think: there are two traditions in literature, the narrative, heroic structure of Odyssey and the existential one of Shakespeare, Iliad, that's less about plot and overcoming and more about inner psychological turmoil. Jean-Paul Sartre's book Nausea is a chief example of this, there's really no plot to it, just a bunch of inner strife.
Those works can resonate really well in times of uncertainty and when people realize that life doesn't come with happy endings.
But yeah, definitely an old format that sprung from pre-literary myths, spot-on.
Consider that the Iliad is one part of a much larger cycle. It starts in media res, the main characters are already heroes, and IIRC the only character arcs which reach culmination are by the end are Patroclus and Hector. All the others heroes - including Achilles, Odysseus, Agamemnon, even Troy itself - continue their stories elsewhere.
I still cannot understand why Sartre was ever published. I always felt like his writing was from a hysterical 19th century noble woman.
Seriously, imagining an "evil woman" I immediately thought of someone like Samantha Power, Susan Rice, or Madeline Albright: the sort of hard-edged female executive able to rationalize actions in support of a supposed higher cause.
I imagined a mashup of the BPD women I’ve known.
I imagined an unpleasant woman (<https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/confessions-from-an-unpleasant-woman>) determined to drive home the “you will stay well away from me if you know what’s good for you” message, perhaps accompanied by a big, mean dog not afraid to bite your leg off if you fail to scramble quickly enough to make room for its master. I chose _femme fatale_ as the closest approximation.
It's interesting as I read your essay that my own experience living in a female-centered enviornment for 50 years so counters your analysis. An important distinction that is never considered when discussing the impact of feminism is the crucial difference between Radical Feminism and what I name, "Commercial Feminism". Radical feminists rejected the mean girl/jealous/passive aggressive/"cat fight" trope and saw all women, regardless of background as impacted by 5000 years of male patriarchy. All women were sisters, and our commitment to each other was/is to connect and support. Our commonality was superior to our inculcated, male-identified identity created to keep us alienated from each other and subvert women's unity in rejecting oppression. The superficial interpretation of feminist liberation by corporate profiteers/major media completely erased the Radical Feminist vision of liberating both women AND MEN from stiltifying, limited, biased, cultural expectations that disallowed expressions of any human's full humanity. The most common story now is as you describe, but more a caricature of the hero replaced with a woman as a swaggering macho, "women-can-be-violent-too" female drug lord, serial killer, bank robber or con artist - the worst of human behaviors. I appreciate your thoughts on fairy tales and the continued impact on children. I'm not a scholar like Max Dashu, but I hope more people create new stories offering inspiring examples of the best of human expression, regardless of perceived gender.
I will refer this again when I need to explain how world really is to some soul corrupted by Disney's distortion.
Hiyao Miyazaki's many female protagonists, especially Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Sheeta of Laputa, manage to be agentic and straightforward, yet still feminine and collaborative individuals, while being neither girlbosses nor mannish. They prevail via compassion and bravery rather than wiles or strength.
One thing that I think we're coming out of that was a toxic byproduct of the Successor Ideology is forfeiting one's agency in order to become a bigger victim.
I don't know if people decided forfeiting agency wasn't worth the cost, or if the "victimhood as the coin of the realm" resulted in so much counterfeiting as to completely debase the currency of victimhood, but assertion of agency has fortunately come back in vogue.
People of "victimized groups" who are realizing this are finding themselves a leg up on those who have not.
The Princess Journey ending isn't really as far fetched as you suggest or think.
Most women victimized (most victimized people in general) become something like the victimizer. Aka "hurt people hurt people."
Or they become messed up in the other side of the spectrum, being too ptsd of sorts to be of any use.
The good woman maintaining the good woman status, the unchanged Princess is highly likely to get saved in the end. To get the good man eventually.
Every woman who succumbs to evil queen behavior is the majority of modern women....aka, ex wives. Or in a world dropping marriage "ex".
The happily married women who have men who strive everyday to give them and their families everything they could need and want, is the Prince Kiss.
Its also the Fairy Godmother, it's the behavior that will lend to someone stepping in who is good. Be it Prince of elder mentor.
Great post! A couple of thoughts:
A) As evolutionary psychology states (and you call out), the older woman vs. younger woman battle is an archetype from which younger women can learn. Kudos for identifying it and bringing it to light.
B) Per your thoughts on strategies for the Princess to win, I asked ChatGPT to look at other Princess-type fairy tales and identify strategies for the Princess. Here is what is offered, along with examples (it includes the Deux ex Machina one as well). I think there are some sound ones here.
1. Cleverness and Wit
These heroines outsmart their adversaries or use intelligence to escape dangerous situations.
--Snow White: Snow White escapes the queen’s repeated attempts to kill her by relying on the help of the seven dwarfs and eventually being revived by the prince.
--Thumbelina: Thumbelina cleverly escapes the toad and other unwanted suitors by befriending animals who help her.
2. Resilience and Endurance
Heroines survive hardships through patience, inner strength, and perseverance.
--Cinderella: Cinderella endures mistreatment and continues to work hard, ultimately rewarded for her patience and kindness.
--The Wild Swans: The heroine endures silence and personal suffering while weaving nettle shirts to save her brothers.
3. Kindness and Compassion
These heroines win through their innate goodness, often earning help from others.
--Beauty and the Beast: Beauty’s kindness toward the Beast transforms him, breaking the curse.
--Vasilisa the Beautiful: Vasilisa’s kindness and humility gain her the help of a magical doll, allowing her to complete Baba Yaga’s impossible tasks.
4. External Help or Magic
Heroines receive aid from magical beings or objects.
--Cinderella: Her fairy godmother provides magical assistance to attend the ball.
--Sleeping Beauty: The intervention of a good fairy softens the curse, allowing her to be awakened by true love.
5. Courage and Action
Heroines take decisive actions to confront or escape their adversaries.
--Rapunzel: Rapunzel ultimately defies Mother Gothel, choosing freedom and love over control.
--The Girl Without Hands: The girl bravely leaves home, enduring trials to find a safe and happy life.
6. Allies and Relationships
Heroines gain the support of others who help them succeed.
Snow White: The seven dwarfs protect her and provide shelter.
The Twelve Dancing Princesses: The youngest sister often builds trust with the soldier who uncovers their secret, helping to resolve their plight.
Its the first time I heard of the Princess' journey. It explains well the popularity of midday soap opera among women, they follow this trope almost to a T.
Where does the 1988 film Working Girl fit into this? Is Melanie Griffith a modern-day Gretel in her conflict with Sigourney Weaver?