The Princesses' Emancipation - Jeanette Winterson's Rewriting of The Twelve Dancing Princesses in Sexing the Cherry

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Erfurt, 9 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: '[A]s it says [we] lived happily ever after. We did, but not with our husbands' (SC 48). By this surprising statement, the twelve dancing princesses introduce themselves in Jeanette Winterson's novel Sexing the Cherry. The main character Jordon, willing to discover the mysterious world of women, gets to know the individual story of every princess and is confronted with their different destinies. Unlike traditional fairy tales, these princesses have decided against life with their royal husbands, but freed themselves from patriarchal restrictions. In this term paper I want to discuss the rewriting of The Twelve Dancing Princesses in Sexing the Cherry. Special attention will be paid on the princesses' individual development after marriage. I am going to support my thesis that the rewriting of the fairy tale describes a process of emancipation from stereotypical passive female roles towards female self-determination. This process includes the use of violence and a questioning of heterosexuality as well as an explicit turn towards different types of sexuality, e.g. homosexuality/lesbianism. I will not only focus on Winterson's novel, but also on the original Grimm's tale, that will be looked at from a feminist point of view. A comparison of the fairy tale and Winterson's version prefaces the analysis of the rewriting from the two important aspects of violence and homosexuality.

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