Sleeping Beauty likes submission

In the article "Intellectual Smut: The role of Tradition in Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty" Sarah Lash discusses a few things. To summarize, Anne Rice wrote a trilogy of erotic novels based upon the events that followed after Sleeping Beauty was rescued. In the novel Beauty turns into a sex slave for the prince along with other characters, and she likes it. Lash tries to explain why Anne Rice uses sleeping Beauty and not a character of her own.

Lash starts off with an analysis of the Fairy Tale Sleeping Beauty, basically describing the original story and what others think of it. She also states what other folklorist believe the underlining meaning of sleeping Beauty to be. For example, Bruno Bettoheim believes Sleeping Beauty is a coming of age story, basically telling kids that all things pass with time. Max Luthi thinks the story is more based on the time and timelessness, basically that time is not to be feared (because sleeping Beauty slept for 100 years before her prince saved her). Others focus on the sexual and passive aspect of the story, obviously Beauty is passive while asleep and needs to be saved by a man, that kind of thing. She then goes on to tell what Anne Rice wrote about, which I have already summarized.

She also states that Beauty is not the only sex slave, there are many others. These could be a representation of fairy tale characters in general. How they are all slaves to us in a way. She states that in the book Beauty was sent to a village where the sex slaves were sent for the amusement of the villagers when they acted badly. The slaves here consistently expressed a feeling of belonging, they pretty much enjoyed being someone else's property and being passed around. Lash states this could is in a way similar to how we use fairy tale characters, how we shape them and mold them in a sense for our own amusement, passing them around the campfire so to speak. Lash says that Anne Rice could have been making this general statement about fairytales. She ends the article saying that by thinking about the sexual aspect of the stories we all may find that we like the stories more than we thought. I think it can be an interesting idea, what happens after "ever after"? Anne Rice takes it to a bit of an extreme with her sex slaves and bondage and such but nonetheless she did explore it.

I agree with Lash totally in her analysis of Anne Rice's books. Fairy Tales are definetly passed around by the common folk the same way Beauty was passed around in the village. We take these characters and use them for our own motives, whether it be trying to teach someone morals or keep children away from certain places that are dangerous. Sleeping Beauty was originally raped by her rescuer but obviously Disney wouldnt show that, so they changed the story along with her character to suit our modern needs.

Another thing is the sexual implications of Sleeping Beauty, and most fairytales for that matter. Lash makes a good point in saying that fairytale females are projecting this idea of domestication and submissiveness in a way. Sleeping Beauty for example, she needs to be saved by the prince in order to live. Basically she is entirely dependent upon him. She is sleeping which means she is in her most passive state, as Lash said and she is entirely submissive to him in every version of the story that i've seen. This is pretty much saying that for a society to function properly women have to be domestic housewives? In most fairytales the woman is completely dependent upon the prince or the king (usually her father). Now if fairytale characters change according to our needs and society, will these fairytale woman change? In 50 years will they be more independent then they were in the 1950's? It is an interesting idea to think about.