![]() ![]() ![]() The Sleeper and the Spindle ’s middlespread - stunningly illustrated by Chris Riddell - was caught in a controversy. Grimm’s Fairy Tales, she points out that female narcissism spurts from being objectified by a male-dominated civilization, which is the quintessence of Gaiman’s retellings too. In ‘Transformations’, Anne Sexton compares the fragility of Cinderella’s cheeks to cigarette paper. ![]() Writers have toyed with the conventional fairytale earlier to re-examine Androcentric culture. Instead there are princesses who call off their weddings, wear a mail shirt, carry a sword and gallop away on a horse braving unforeseen danger. In this deconstructed version there are no damsels in distress no knights in shining armours. It would be the end of her life, if life was a time of choices. Here, Snow White fears marriage and wonders how it would feel to be a married woman. With the precision of a potion-maker, Gaiman weaves together They stumble, they stagger, they move like children wading through rivers of treacle, like old people whose feet are weighed down by thick, wet mud.” The little one read out to me while I did the dishes. The Sleeper and the Spindle the way it is meant to be read - along with a 10-year-old. In Gaiman’s fairy tale, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are neighbours. The neighbouring queen puts off her own wedding to rescue this town. Cobwebs curtain the town the townsfolk and their princess are plagued by sleep frozen like statues. ![]()
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