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Peter Nguyen

Professor Haas
Writing 39B
16 February 2016
The Sleeper and the Spindle
The Sleeper and the Spindle, a novella written by Neil Gaiman, is a mashup of two very
well known classic fairy tales, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, but with a significant plot
twist at the end. It takes traditional fairy tale conventions and reimagines them in order to appeal
to a 21st century audience. This audience mainly consists of younger and older adults who love
fairy tales or know the stories of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. These two previously
mentioned tales serve as a record that reflects the attitudes during their time periods and places of
origin, which are 17th century France and 19th century Germany, respectively. During these
times, women were considered to be weak and had to depend on men for financial stability. They
were trained and expected to cook, clean, and raise the children while the men were busy
working to provide for the family. Due to these perceptions and expectations of women and the
fact that the wife doesnt contribute economically to the family finances, there was a definite
lessening of her status within society (SOURCE 1 HERE). Fast forward to the 21st century and
these societal norms toward women have significantly changed, so much that they would be
considered extremely liberal in terms of 17th and 19th century standards. Women in these time
time periods were regularly barred from attending schools, obtaining jobs, and doing anything
besides being faithful housewives to their husbands. All of this changed with historical events
such as the Suffragette movement and the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women
the right to vote. Since then, the societal norm has shifted from women being subservient to men

to women being their equal, well for the most part at least. With such changes to the standards of
society, Gaiman according makes changes to several fairy tale conventions in order for this story
to likewise reflect the contemporary values of its people just like the other two tales do. The two
conventions that have been most noticeably changed are the struggle to achieve autonomy and
the drive to be the most beautiful. Throughout the centuries, women have been considered to be
subservient to men, but Neil Gaimans The Sleeper and the Spindle dares to defy these antiquated
expectations in order to appeal to the next generation of fairy tale readers and does so by
changing how the audience should perceive a womans struggle to achieve autonomy and drive
to be the most beautiful.
Gender roles for women have traditionally been accepted to include cooking, cleaning,
and rearing children. In the Brothers Grimms tale, Snow White, the titular character is seen
serving the seven dwarfs by accepting to cook, sew, make beds, wash, and knit, and keep
everything clean and orderly, and in return, she will have everything that [she] want[s]
(Grimm). This sounds uncannily similar to a marriage, and it is a message that is implied to its
audience, some of which are young girls who will grow up listening to such subliminal
messages. In contrast to this, The Sleeper and the Spindle provides the message that women can
be strong figures who can go on adventures to faraway lands in order to deal with problems
themselves. The story challenges the notion that women should grow up dreaming of the perfect
man that they will one day marry, aspiring only to be his loyal housewife. Instead, the story
shows a strong, independent woman in charge of her own kingdom, and when the kingdom
nearby is struck with a plague that causes sleep in its subjects, she doesnt simply call for a man
to solve the problem. Rather, she elected herself to embark on the dangerous adventure, opposing
the belief that women are always dependent on men for everything. Also, ever since education

was made free and public to everyone, women have had the chance to excel in a field that have
been prohibited to them up until then. This change in society is reflected in how the dwarfs say to
the queen, You are very wise...You always were wise (Gaiman). Another perception, or
misconception, of women is that they are prone to temptation, which goes all the way back to
Eve taking the apple from the devil serpent. This was paralleled in Snow White when she
continually opens the door for stepmother, leading up to the third time when she gave her a
poisoned apple. These two changes point to a counterpart that is obviously smarter and strongerwilled than before, dispelling a lot of the negative characteristics that were attributed to women.
Near the end of the story, the queen thinks to herself that, There are choices, and then They
walked east, all four of them, away from the sunset and the lands they knew, and into the night
(Gaiman). This largely differs from the traditional ending to Snow White that everyone is
accustomed to, where she is found and awakened by her prince and then marries him. Back then,
marriage is usually followed by economic stability, especially marriage to royalty. In the case of
the usual fairy tale, the princess would get married and live in a huge castle happily ever after
without a worry for anything. In The Sleeper and the Spindle, she forwent her wedding in favor
of going on an adventure to the land in the east and being able to make her own decision about
her future. In the beginning of the story, the queen is greatly concerned that the wedding would
be the end of her life...if life was a time of choices (Gaiman). Girls back in the 17th and 19th
centuries would never think of forgoing marriage because it meant that they would have no other
way to support themselves financially, an economic suicide. The inclusion of the quote from The
Sleeper and the Spindle shows how the modern woman has more options than just getting
married and being a housewife for the rest of her life.

The Sleeper and the Spindle explores another fairy tail convention, and that is the vice of
striving to be the most beautiful. In the story, the evil witch, who became the young girl, tricks
the young princess and steals her youth and dreams at the cost of everyone in the kingdom and
beyond falling asleep. This shows that the old witch wanted to be beautiful and did everything in
her power to achieve that goal. This act of heinous proportions is an epitome of her
overwhelming evil, and the worst part is that this premeditated act of villainy is not followed by
as much as a hint of remorse or regret. All of this is done just so that she can once again regain
her youth and thus her beauty. This is actually quite understandable to some extent because
beauty is all a woman had back then, and they were judged based on it. This meant that beauty
was power since the value of a woman was determined by how beautiful they were. With this
said, though, the evil witch did go through some extreme measures in a blind attempt to be more
beautiful. In contrast to this, the Snow White doppelganger is never mentioned as beautiful or
associated with the word beauty, which represents a modern woman who doesnt need to
conform to the outdated expectations of women. What the evil witch did reflects the old societal
norms, and in the end, she symbolically dies, ending with her the gross expectation that women
should strive to and do everything in their power to be beautiful.
All of these changes for women can be attributed to the Suffragette Movement in
England and the 19th Amendment in the United States, which gave women the right to vote and
thus the power to decide their own fate. This led to women having the choice to leave the
household in search for jobs and opportunities. At the rate of change that women have
experienced, The Sleeper and the Spindle only further expresses the idea that women can be
strong and independent and dont have to rely on or be a housewife to a man, especially when

there are an abundant amount of options to choose from that the previous generations of women
could only dream about.

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