Fairy Tales as Manuals of Becoming a Good Girl: A Study in the Politics of Gender

Abstract

Ideology is ―the set of attitudes, values and perceptions through which we come to understand and relate to the given world;‖ 2 it is the core to human consciousness and thus fundamental issue for human existence. The construction of ideology of a civilised wo/man works hand in hand with the influence of hegemony. Antonio Grumsci says that the function of hegemony (control of ideas which manipulates social consciousness as economic and physical force alone was not enough to ensure control 3 ) is to transform ideology into culture, into a ―world view‖ that is seen as ―normal‖ and ―natural‖ by everyone from the controlling class to the subordinate classes. 4 And, for this reason, childhood seems to be the phase of life, where hegemony can function in its best possible way in the process of framing the ideology, which will control the person with his/her perception of the world for the rest of the life. Most of the children grow up with the attractive and compelling fairy tales. This fact has an immense psychological value,since nothing is stronger than the teachings we had in our childhood, and the adult mind does not easily agree to accept the new ideas replacing the old ones.