Feminist Fairy Tales

These twenty-eight imaginatively playful and provoking stories are rich with real-life morals about selfishness, strength, fairness, and survival, told with a large helping of whimsy. Cinder-Helle (Cinderella), Snow Night (Snow White), The Littlest Mermaid (The Little Mermaid), and Ala Dean (Aladdin), among others, reinvent their fairy-tale lives into admirable archetypal role models for emerging and seasoned feminists alike. Some of these delightful stories surprisingly twist well-known fairy tales, biblical stories, Greek and Teutonic myths, while others emerge straight from Barbara Walker's own rich imagination.
"The Littlest Mermaid" illustrates the triumphant quest of the "littlest mermaid" to follow her own dreams and to find relief from suffering. In this story the prince is sympathetic and kind, the princesses fiercely independent, and the women of the kingdom harvest inspiring faith in themselves. "Cinder-Helle," born to a priestess of the Goddess of the Underworld, witnesses the death of Goddess worship and (with the help of the mother-spirit) revives temples of the Goddess when she becomes the prince's beloved. "Barbidol" is the perfect woman-doll who scorns imperfect humans and tragically falls in love with the militia king, Gijo, only then to discover the truth about herself and the life she chooses.