ABSTRACT
New versions of fairy tales disrupt dominant patriarchal ideologies of girls’ positions in society. Drawing on (i) systemic functional grammar and the grammar of visual design, specifically Painter, Martin and Unsworth’s (2013, Reading Visual Narratives: Image Analysis of Children’s Picture Books. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing Ltd) framework, and (ii) feminist theories (Bittner and Arnold 2019, Fairy Tales, Feminism, and Fighting the Patriarchy: An Interview with Elana K. Arnold. Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature 57 (2): 59–65. Doi: 10.1353/bkb.2019.0018), we investigate how lexico-grammatical and visual resources are used in three picture books to characterise the protagonists and their actions and to (de)construct their representation as powerless and fragile. Results show that the verbal actions and images initially construe gender roles and attributes associated with beauty and fragility, but eventually contribute to the construal of clever characters who plan to defeat their enemies. Hopefully, our study may contribute to the discussion of gender issues and cultural norms in fairy tales and of women’s positions in contemporary society.
