Abstract:
This project of fairy tale reimaginings, retellings, and adaptations was completed in order
to explore the various ways that women were represented in traditional fairy tales. With source
material such as “The Gingerbread Man,” “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” as well as a third
story of my own design, these stories feature strong, ambitious, purposefully messy women who
make mistakes, unlike the practically perfect women featured in the original fairy tales. Magic
plays a strong role in the original fairy tales, and it is present in these adaptations as well, but it
looks slightly different. Rather than fairies and pumpkins transforming into carriages, there is
romance and technology that act in place of these more magical elements. Through the
modernization and exploration of fairy tales, the expectations of the genre and the notion of what
a fairy tale is could be challenged.
