The Princess Story: Modeling the Feminine in Twentieth‐Century American Fiction and Film Sarah Rothschild. New York: Peter Lang, 2013.

The Princess Story: Modeling the Feminine in Twentieth-Century American Fiction and Film Sarah Rothschild. New York: Peter Lang, 2013.Princesses have won the attention of little girls, creating a phenomenon that many find troubling. In The Princess Story, Sarah Rothschild offers a historical account of princess stories in fiction and film, arguing that they form an important subgenre of fairy tales that influences and educates American females throughout their lives. Rothschild contends that "the figure of the princess has five primary incarnations from five different eras, three belonging to feminists of different waves and two belonging to Disney Studios, whose patriarchal princess stories serve as counterpoint and resistance to the feminist creations" (2). She uses the princess story to chart American culture's changing meanings of femininity and its struggle between feminism and patriarchy, progress and tradition.Rothschild begins her book with a chapter defining the princess story and the messages it sends. The princess character, she writes, embodies "extreme femininity" and "both reflects and inculcates socially desirable behavior and beliefs in and about girls and women in the culture that produces her" (1-2). Princess stories teach and reinforce gender roles at pivotal times in the lives of girls and women. According to Rothschild, at transitional times in developmentsuch as toddlerhood, early adolescence, marriage, and the birth of a child or grandchild-females may experience gender intensification that draws them to princess stories. Thus, princess tales affect women and their perceptions of themselves over the course of their lifetimes. They also reflect the shifting ideology of a culture. As historian Miriam Forman-Brunell notes, "Historically, princess worship has emerged during periods of uncertainty and profound social change" (13).Rothschild's first chapter, "A Little Princess-. A First-Wave Feminist Girl," focuses on Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1905 novel featuring the Cinderella story of Sara Crewe who moves from riches to rags and back again. Her story, like other princess tales, offers lessons on what makes an exemplary girl. However, Rothschild argues that Sara's story is no simple Cinderella tale because "her strong sense of identity and her intentionally cultivated qualities of character and imaginative power make her a princess worth emulating, both within and without the world of her book" (15). Although Frances Hodgson Burnett is not typically categorized as a feminist, her life, which coincides with the years of first-wave feminism, embodies qualities associated with it: determination, independence, and a strong self-perception. She infuses Sara with these same characteristics, making her story a prototype for princess stories to come.Disney's first princess stories, the topic of Rothschild's second chapter, reflect the mind of their creator, Walt Disney. In her analysis of Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Cinderella (1950), and Sleeping Beauty (1959), Rothschild argues that feminism takes a step backward. She contends that these films "were created by a man with a conservative world view; they combine elements of traditional fairy tales with mid-twentieth century traditional mores to valorize his conservative agenda" (54). …