Cooke's critique reveals the challenges of the marriage market for women, highlighting gender dynamics in fairy-tales.
Rose Terry Cooke’s fantastical short story “Maya, the Princess” (1858), I argue, allegorizes the nineteenth-century courtship while critiquing the popular fairy-tale form. Maya’s quest for domestic stability functions as a correction of Basile’s and the Grimms’ masculine presentations of the tale of Sleeping Beauty. Instead of passively awaiting a lustful prince, Cooke’s princess must find a domestic home that will negate the curse of her sensually charged magical “Spark.” This ideological reversal showcases Cooke’s investment in the Victorian angel in the house while also providing a warning about the many pitfalls prospective brides faced on the antebellum marriage market.
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Vera R. Foley (2025) studied this question.
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