Things Walt Disney Never Told Us

The headline read, Police Use Cinderella Approach. This brief example is only one of many that illustrate the popularity of fairy-tale heroines in North America. That they are words as well as household is attributable to the unintentional efforts of the Grimms and the very intentional efforts of Walt Disney. Despite the wide appeal of heroines, they have received little scholarly discussion. Stith Thompson's definition of the term Miirchen begins by stating that the genre is characterized by such tales as 'Cinderella,' 'Snow White,' or 'Hansel and Gretel,' 2 but he then goes on to consider only the exploits of Miirchen heroes. Lord Raglan does not include a single heroine in his international survey of twenty-one heroic characters.3 Linda Digh explains that she has excluded most heroines from Folktales of Hungary because they are much the same throughout Europe; it is only the heroes who take on national coloring.4 In North America, where oral forms of the Miirchen are not abundant and where the Grimm tales are read mainly by or to children, heroines have been virtually ignored except by a handful of writers interested in children's literature.5