![]() He’s theoretically attractive but only seems to have one interest: loving Bella and controlling every decision she makes. Is there anything particularly compelling about Edward Cullen? He sparkles. Really, though, the Twilight series is a new kind of fairy tale. The four books of the series are about vampires and werewolves and the sweeping love story between Bella, a young girl and Edward, an old vampire. This seems to be the nature of sacrifice in most matters. The woman in the fairy tale is generally the one who pays the price, which is such a rotten deal. A compromise of some kind is required for happily ever after. The thing about fairy tales is that the princess finds her prince, but there’s generally a price to pay. Only through sacrificing herself, and loving a beast of a man can she finally learn that he is, in fact, a handsome prince. Belle is given away by her father in Beauty and the Beast, to the Beast himself, and then must endure the attentions of a man who essentially views her as chattel. In Rapunzel, the prince lacks the ambition to find a better way for Rapunzel to escape her tower like, I don’t know, building a ladder. In Snow White, the prince doesn’t even find Snow White until she is already dead he is so lacking in imagination he simply falls in love with a corpse. In his ignorance, he nearly lets the right one go. In The Little Mermaid, Prince Eric has a great woman right in front of him but is so obsessed with this pretty voice he once heard he can’t appreciate what he has. The Disney versions of fairy tales, the ones with which we are probably most familiar, don’t offer much in the way of Prince Charming. We’re supposed to believe this is totally fine because he is Prince Charming. In most fairy tales, he is blandly attractive and rarely seems to demonstrate much personality, taste, or intelligence. The man in most fairy tales, Prince Charming in all his iterations, really isn’t that interesting. The older I get, though, the more I realize how fairy tales demand a great deal from the woman. I enjoy fairy tales because I need to believe, despite my cynicism, that there is a happy ending for everyone, for me. ![]() There’s a man and a woman-rarely, if ever, do we see stories about a woman and a woman or a man and a man-who must overcome some obstacle to reach happily ever after. ![]()
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