ABSTRACT
Until the third session, most of the classical fairy tales that I tell focus on young women as passive objects of male desire. The male heroes all arrive toward the end of the story to save the girl, and their function is clearly that of savior or rescuer. In most traditional fairy tales, the males are the adventurers, the wanderers, and the fighters. They represent either the active movers of the plot, or the “executioners” of the plot who arrive at the end to make everything right. That is, they finish everything cleanly, often with the cut of a blade. They will stop at nothing to become powerful, rich, and famous, and they like to win a young woman as reward for their diligence, perseverance, and ability to kill dragons, witches, dangerous opponents, and competitors. This is not to say that all classical fairy and folk tales depict the valiant male hero in this way, as Angela Carter has shown in her important collection The Old Wives' Fairy Tale Book and Ethel Johnston Phelps in her two significant anthologies, Tatterhood and Other Tales and The Maid of the North, but an overwhelming number of fairy tales celebrate the raw power of men, the notion that might makes right in the interests of patriarchy.
