Hi! It’s Annie!
My hyper-fixations change slightly as the years go on. There’s always some sort of through-line, but it seems like every year I come up with some new obsession. Or I get reacquainted with an old one. Ah, the wonders of ADHD! One of the hyper-fixations I’ve always had is my complete fascination with Welsh, German, Irish, and Celtic fairy-tales and folklore. I can’t tell you how many general fairy-tale books and folklore books specifically about fairies I’ve collected over the years. I feel like I have a really strong feel for a lot of different versions of some of the classic fairy-tales we all know and love…and let me just say that they are way different than I thought they’d be. I, like many people, grew up on Disney and definitely thought of those adaptations as the true reflection of what those fairy-tales were. I had heard that the originals were much darker, but I sort of put that behind me. How much different could they be really? The more I read, the more I know just how truly mistaken I was. So I figured I would go through the Disney Princess stories based on classic fairy-tales and rank them in how accurate they are to versions of the original that we know exist.
I say “versions” because these tales were passed down from generation to generation told by many different storytellers. Before we attributed a lot of these stories to Disney, we attributed them to people like Hans Christian Anderson, the Brothers Grimm, and several other male authors. However, these authors simply collected these stories and put them to paper. They were not the originators of these stories and it is safe to say that many of these original storytellers were actually women. This is why we have several different versions of the same stories, because we all know how the game ‘telephone’ works. With that in mind, I will only be going for the movies that are based in classic fairy tales. Princesses like Moana, Merida, Pocahontas, and Mulan will not be included as their tales come from other sources.
TRIGGER WARNING: Some of the original fairytales are really dark and feature things like extreme sexual assault and gore. Read with caution!!!
9. Anna and Elsa- ‘Frozen’
I think it’s safe to say that over the years Disney has taken many more creative liberties with their stories than they originally did. ‘Frozen’ is a huge example when compared to ‘The Snow Queen’. I feel like you can’t even quite call ‘Frozen’ an adaptation of the original work when almost nothing from the original story was kept. The original story follows a little girl named Gerda whose friend Kai gets taken by the evil Snow Queen. She goes on a noble quest to bring back her friend where she meets several strange characters along the way. Other than it featuring a quest, the movie features none of this or even anything resembling the trials from the original story. I think this one is easily placed on the bottom considering it features almost nothing from the original story. Even the characters are barely recognizable if not just nonexistent.
8. Tiana- ‘The Princess and the Frog’
Other than the name being the same, this also doesn’t do much to resemble the original tale. The original tale features a spoiled princess who learns to be kinder after she reaps the rewards of a kind act that she did not want to do- kissing the frog. The Disney version almost starts with the ending of the original tale and takes a whole life of its own. Not to mention that Tiana is probably the exact opposite of selfish and vain. The only thing this has kept from the original story is the kissing of the frog. However, while ‘Frozen’ took a fully fleshed out story and kind of just threw it all away, I really do feel like this movie adaptation added some life to it that the original did not have. The original is rather simple in comparison to this much more complex story. Although we could have certainly done this without Tiana being a frog for most of the movie.
7. Jasmine-‘Aladdin’
I think it deserves to be stated that Jasmine as a character simply just doesn’t exist in the original tale. While the original tale does share some similarities with the Disney adaptation; it’s really difficult to rank this highly on a Disney Princess list when Jasmine isn’t one of them. However, the original tale does tell the story of a boy who finds a magic lamp and a genie within and the adventures he has. The boy in the original story is not an orphan, but more of a lazy child who needs to be taught a lesson. However, the essence of the story remains the same including the characters of the Genie and even Jafar, though Jafar is Aladdin’s Uncle in the original tale. There are lots of similarities here, but still just enough differences to get this placed fairly far down on the list.
6. Aurora- ‘Sleeping Beauty’
We are now straying from differences due to Disney simply going a completely different direction with the entire story, to differences due to an insane amount of darkness in the original tale. I feel that none of these stories encapsulates this to the extent of ‘The Sleeping Beauty’. Now the adaptation and the original story are the same in that the King and Queen angered a dark fairy by not inviting her to the coronation of the Princess. The three good fairies in the movie are actually only one good fairy in the original and she does not take the Princess to come and live with her. All she does is turn the conditions from death to sleep. Instead, Aurora stays at the castle until she pricks her finger, despite the fact that all of the spindles in the kingdom are supposed to have been burned. The crazy thing here is that in only a few versions of the tale is the old woman with the spinning wheel the dark fairy in disguise. In most versions of the story- it’s just some poor old woman who I guess didn’t get the memo. Either way, she pricks her finger and falls asleep. However, in many versions of the story, a King finds her and decides to assault her sleeping body. Aurora wakes up in childbirth and then is eventually found by the King and marries him. This is easily one of the most horrific fairytales I’ve ever come across and it certainly shows its age. The Disney version thankfully includes none of that and focuses instead on the three good fairies. A much better choice in my opinion.
5. Ariel- ‘The Little Mermaid’
I feel like this is the most widely known difference. Much of the movie follows at least the general essence of the original tale with the falling in love with the Prince, the making the deal with the Sea Witch, and definitely with the loss of the mermaid’s voice. However, Ariel fails in making the Prince fall in love with her and turns into sea foam at the end of the original fairytale. Keep in mind that many fairytales were meant to teach children a lesson and this one was meant to keep children from wandering too far from home and wanting too much. Both very depressing lessons that I don’t necessarily agree with. However, I would say that this is one of the most changed endings when comparing an original fairytale to a Disney adaption. Reasonably so.
4. Rapunzel- ‘Tangled’
I feel like people may wonder why I placed Rapunzel so high on this list despite my original stance that Disney has taken more liberties with the original source material over the years. I do think this kept the heart of the original tale despite the many changes that it also made. The original tale does follow Rapunzel, a woman who was stolen from her family as a baby and never knew her real parents. However in the tale she is not a Princess, but instead her parents were peasants who stole from the Witch’s garden due to her Mother’s pregnancy cravings. She is stumbled onto by a Prince and she yearns for adventure despite the Witch telling her that men and the world outside are evil. She and the Prince fall in love and this is where it starts getting really different. Eventually the Witch finds out, blinds the Prince, and sends Rapunzel (who is pregnant now) out into the world to fend for herself. Eventually they do find each other again and live happily and Rapunzel does become a Princess. I ranked this one higher because I do think it keeps a lot of the original imagery and even some of the more surprising parts of the original tale. Rapunzel actually does heal the Prince’s eyes with magical powers in the original version and I think Flynn getting injured kind of calls back to the Prince’s injury. Pregnancy aside-this feels like it kept the essence of the original tale.
3. Belle- ‘Beauty and the Beast’
We’re now getting to the stories where it feels like only some details were changed when compared to the original tale. Belle does give herself in the place of her Father after her Father steals a rose on her behalf. In the original tale there is no Gaston and Belle has two sisters who are evil instead, but they don’t have much bearing on the actual story. Belle also isn’t as much of a badass as she is in the original story and there is no move from the villagers to kill the beast. Instead, the Beast is simply dying because of the curse. Also, there aren’t so much talking objects as there are invisible servants and some random monkeys. However, those are pretty much the only major differences between the two stories. The essence of Belle giving herself over instead of her Father and the two falling in love is the same, down to Belle leaving for a time to take care of her father. These are two pretty similar stories.
2. Cinderella- ‘Cinderella’
This is another one that’s fairly similar. The major differences here come from the more violent ending where her stepsisters attempt to cut off parts of their own feet to fit into the glass slipper. Also, the ball is actually several nights long instead of just one night. It definitely gives Cinderella and the Prince more time to get to know each other. Most original versions also feature her dress coming from her dead mother, appearing on top of her grave, rather than a Fairy Godmother. I feel like that might be the biggest change here, although we do see some versions of this story that feature the Fairy Godmother rather than her deceased mother before Disney ever released this movie. I feel like these are mostly semantics though; the movie remains pretty true to what we know from original source material.
- Snow White- ‘Snow White’
This also remains very true to the original source material and part of that might be because this was the first one Disney did. There are a few major differences. For example, in most versions of the original story Snow White isn’t woken by true love’s kiss. You may have noticed that this is a major creative liberty Disney takes in multiple stories that never happens in the originals. Instead, the Prince decides that Snow White is so beautiful that he wants to take her coffin to the palace so he can basically use her as…decoration I guess. In the process he drops her coffin and the piece of poisoned apple flies out of her throat and she wakes up. Other than that, there’s not a whole lot of difference here other than some embellishments on Disney’s part. It is worth saying that ‘Snow White’ may not have been the name of the original Princess and actually seems to come from a completely different fairytale. There’s some debate of whether or not it’s the same character, but I don’t think it affects this adaptation much.
I think it’s important that we examine the original source material because this is so much a part of fiction’s history. So much of what we know to be fantasy now came from these stories that were orally passed down from generation to generation. It’s also important to look at them in order to give credit where it’s deserved. Attributing all of these stories to white men who simply compiled them does a disservice to these stories and also women in general. Many of these stories were passed down by mothers and grandmothers in order to keep their children safe or entertained. I’ve seen a lot of push to dismiss many of these stories as being sexist and while I admit that there are elements that are definitely sexist, I also think that we really haven’t been looking at them further than that. These Princesses in their history were unfortunately used to subjugate women at times. (I feel like tales like ‘Sleeping Beauty’ may have been one of these.) But equally they were also used by women storytellers to empower women and encourage women to have adventures of their own. (Such as ‘The Snow Queen’ and ‘Cinderella’.) It’s important that we look into the history of these stories and see them with full context instead of leaving them behind. Many of these stories were the birth of fantasy, created by women. That fact in itself is amazing and so often overlooked.
See you across the pond!
Sincerely, Annie
Oreos & Peanut Butter 