Project Proposal

The chosen theme of my Context of Practice essay and supporting practical work is that of fairy tales. A fairy tale is defined by being a short story of nursery standard that is filled with enchantments and the supernatural, with a hero or heroine overcoming supreme obstacles to reach a happy ending, and filled with a recognisable shared language of symbols, images and motifs, passed down from generation to generation.  Not just existing in books or illustrations, fairy tales are widely popular through movie adaptations bringing them to a wider contemporary audience. I am interested in the women of these stories – the mothers, nurses, cooks and caregivers who shared them at the fireside, how female characters are portrayed within the tales with still-harmful stereotypes and archetypes in both books and movie adaptions, and how they have culturally impacted and restricted women’s expectations and ideals of romance and life goals, and how women are subjected to lesser roles of passivity, dependency and self-sacrifice. Through my initial research I have found a number of books and academic discussion in videos that provides a fantastic source of secondary research, covering the topic of fairy tales from a feminist standpoint along with a number of feminist fairy tales written by women and older tales rewritten by a female point of view and with the woman having agency and power. For primary research I have discovered two exhibitions that would benefit my project and I would like to visit, one based around fairy tales and fairy tale illustration and the other on feminist art.