The real mother tile presents the children’s hierarchical perceptions towards parent figures. I will discuss how the blurring of the gender roles can reduce this gendered bias. As Butler (1988:520) explained, the result of regulatory social sanctions and taboos in our construction of ‘natural’ gendered behaviour is due to subtle and blatant coercions rather than consensus, and this needs to be elaborated for emancipatory purposes.
In a boys’ discussion, they built on one another’s collective thinking that fathers may be disguised as wicked, but they are still good underneath, unlike mothers. This biased stance illustrated the boys’ own vulnerability to patriarchal exploitation and manipulation in their acceptance of the heterosexual matrix, as considered by Butler (2010). The story discussion provided one boy with the opportunity to critically reflect on his own life experience and realistically rationalise less than perfect paternal roles: ‘No, the stepfathers can be as bad as the stepmothers because the…it’s sometimes like… My cat scratched the sofa and he just said, ”Oi,” so I think they can’. Skewed perceptions of gendered roles were challenged, providing the opportunity to develop a rounder and more equal consideration of gender acts.
The girls’ comments equally revealed the elitist male image that they were
developing in preparation for their socially desired Prince Charming quests. These power relations are played out in fairy tales through the prime relationships as Rosen (2018) defined, and as Rowe (2005) claimed, whom we love is rarely neutral. Patriarchy rewards the girls’ desire for a traditional matrimonial union with the promise of a virtuous handsome suitor, and interestingly, they awarded these qualities to the father figure:
R: Do you think stepfathers could be unkind? G1: No
G2: They are too special. Desire for the perfect suitor. G3: They are too kind.
G4: They are too nice. G3: …and too handsome.
G2: Actually, mummies are more pretty. Cultural oppressive desire for beauty.
170 G5: Dads can wear make-up too and that would be really funny.
Cross-gender appearance.
G4: I’ve got make-up at home. Parental restrictive pressure for heteronormative
conformity.
The girls’ aesthetic responses indicated they were possibly developing Jung’s (1915:69) Electra complex by romantically idolising their fathers. In contrast, Girl G2 considered her mother’s bio-political act, and girl G4 reflected upon mothers’
exaggerated endeavours of the perfectionist bodily norms; both philosophised in ideological feminine terms that can lead to dependency rather than empowerment. Their critical reflections exposed the hidden constraining nature of power
relationships, although to develop deeper understanding more time and discussion would be needed.
In a mixed group’s critical discussion about the father’s part in abandoning his children in Hansel and Gretel, one girl stereotypically reinforced the cultural expectation for mothers to be the main self-sacrificial care-givers and be nice. Another girl philosophically considered a more realistic interpretation when this might or might not be the case: ‘Some moms are nice…but my mum is like kind and not kind’. Following the children’s train of thought and critically challenging the cultural story message that fathers are morally superior, enabled less discriminatory perceptions to be acknowledged and accepted.
I have shown that both genders were critical of women stepping out of their
traditional caring roles, such as the stepmother and the witch in Hansel and Gretel, liberally applying patriarchal authoritarian discipline to the deviant desires of the two women. In a boys’ Hansel and Gretel storytelling group, they drew upon their ethics of justice as Gilligan (1982) proposed, and punitively judged the non-nurturing old woman:
B1: Naughty witch – you have to go to jail.
B2: I would have made the witch go into the factory and turn into baby bits.
Women to be silenced and diminished. B3: I would chop the wicked witch up with my massive
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Boy B1’s brutal judgement silenced the witch as the story had taught that non- nurturing women were to be admonished by shaming and humiliation for not supporting hegemonic heteronormativity (Butler, 1988:522). Boy B2’s and boy B3’s punishments were stereotypically extremely violent and gory. The discussion provided the opportunity to determine how to inspire critical gendered responses to these oppressive gendered values and suggest alternative desires to social ‘natural’ norms.
In a girls’ group, they were naturally curious about the fate of the villainous stepmother. It was evident from the girls’ inferences that they had already internalised forms of social control produced by cultural biopower, as Foucault (1980) discussed, and were contemptuous of her greedy behaviour. They too reprimanded her deviant acts in this case by transforming her into a small squeaky mouse:
G1: Why did she die? She was too old? Philosophical reasoning. G2: She didn’t have any food. I don’t know. Empathy with plight. G3: She was so fat like the world and she popped. Moral bodily discourse. R: They were starving. Although sometimes
your stomach can swell if you are very hungry.
MKO about poverty.
G3: I thought it was because they were so fat… Cultural self-discipline. G4: Did she turn into a mouse? Reduction of status.
By removing the mother’s voice, the girls were indirectly removing their own autonomy and choice between nurturing and non-nurturing roles. The act
demonstrated how power can mask itself as empowerment; the girls’ condemnation of the mother leading to the subjugation of their own future choices. In another girls’ group, they imposed even greater cultural sanctions and symbolically burned her as in the fairy story, thereby reinforcing the hidden power of social control on female subversiveness.
Paley (1990) and Lee (2016) suggested traditional gender stereotypes can be transformed by blurring the distinction between masculine and feminine rather than reversing the gender roles completely. In the Hansel and Gretel story, the two female characters, the stepmother and the wicked witch, enhanced the idea in this study. In a boys’ storytelling group, they ‘read’ the emotional distance and
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desperation of the two female characters as one and the same. This study built upon Rosen’s (2018) reveal-conceal theory to extend children’s imaginings and interpretations by building upon another’s suggestions:
B1: She’s the witch. She’s actually the woman they showed before she was the mummy and she’s actually the witch.
Blurring the acts.
B2: And she got in, and she followed them, creeping, and she went in to that house, and she can still see them and she dressed up in other stuff.
Imaginative identification.
Furthermore, a girl’s identification of both desired and undesirable virtues within her drawing of the witch (Fig. 5.37), is evidence of an emerging understanding of the nature of the complexity of protagonists who can be made up of conflicting moral traits.As a character progresses through a story they can typically undergo a personality change due to an event, and not always for the better. The storytelling and critical discourses enabled the children to evaluate which side of the nature of the character will prevail and hence determine whether they are trustworthy or not, as in real life.
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In the older mixed group’s critical discussion, the children philosophically reflected upon the similarity between the stepmother and the wicked witch:
G1: The mummy might have been the wicked witch. Narrative interpretation.
B1: She’s probably dead. Acceptance of cultural
punishment.
G1: She’s the wicked witch. Identification of
deviant.
G2: Maybe she was dressed up. Higher cognitive
thought. B2: She could have just given them away to the old
people but then she wouldn’t so she decided to make herself like a witch.
Empathy with children’s plight.
G3: She put a mask on. Blurring of virtues.
G1: She put a mask on that looked like her skin was old. Deviant classified as ugly.
G2: I would want to keep my children all to myself. Conformity to docile body.
The initial responses by girls G1 and G3 to the unexplained disappearance of the stepmother from the story demonstrated the social power of moral discourse in the creation of gendered docile bodies, as Foucault (1995) recognised. Their passive acceptance reflected their conformity to patriarchal seclusion and subjugation, which unless firmly confronted, can limit ambitions and needs whilst reinforcing unequal power relations. In contrast, an advanced empathetic response was made by boy B2, un-stereotypically giving evidence for Gilligan’s (1982) ethics of care. By adopting Harding’s (1962) spectator-participatory stance to the story, he critically considered how the stepmother could have considered adoption rather than abandonment, which young children predominantly fear. When considering Question 3, I determined how the children, especially the older groups,
demonstrated an appreciation of the blurring of the stepmother’s and witch’s roles. I thus argue that there is an opportunity to build on the fluid understanding of gender as Butler (1988) advocated, necessary for forming equitable power relationships. This study developed Rogoff’s (2003) findings that the hidden information in
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children’s daily lives is most often accepted without conscious awareness unless pointed out, and is therefore most likely to be regarded as the correct choice.