Warrior women of fairytales (part 1)

 This is a new project about heroic girls and women in fairy tales. I shall highlight a few of the stories and break this into a few separate posts with two stories each post. This is Part One.

The Snow Queen

This is a story by Hans Christian Andersen, with plenty of magic and mythical symbolism. It's all about a girl who rescues a boy. First of all it begins when a troll curses a mirror and broke it. Shards of the mirror fell as snow and a tiny piece lodged into the eye of a boy called Kai. His best friend, a girl named Gerda, became very worried about him after Kai disappeared. He was kidnapped by the mysterious Snow Queen and taken far away. Gerda is the story's adventuress and hero because she travels so far, in dangerous places, searching for her lost friend. She's the warrior of the story for rescuing her friend Kai from the icy spell of the immortal Snow Queen. There is a number of references to myths, such as the snow goddess, or Snow Queen, the mirror, and also the reindeer that becomes Gerda's friend, journeying to the North Pole. It all hints at the Winter solstice.      

Hansel and Gretel 

This is one of the story collections by the Brothers Grimm. It's a story about a girl saving the life of her brother. It starts when the children, brother and sister, Hansel and Gretel, are left in the woods by their father and step mother. The boy Hansel leaves pebbles on the journey so they can find their way home after getting lost. Both children are left in the woods again but there aren't any stones to leave a trail so Hansel finds crumbs in the kitchen. As he drops the crumbs in the woods, hoping to make a path, birds eat it all. Soon the children are left completely alone and are lost, They find a cottage made of gingerbread. A witch appears, imprisons Hansel in order to fatten him up so she could eat him. She also makes Gretel her servant. Gretel heroically pushes the evil witch into the oven and rescues her brother from his cage. It seems that this story touches on famine, starvation, poverty and also witchcraft, hinting that it comes from a harsher time long before the Brothers Grimm. 

I shall make more posts of this topic soon....

Posted by the She Wolf Night gang