jueves, 31 de marzo de 2022

THE AETERNAL SWIRLING FIGHT - CRITIQUE OF THE CLEVER PRINCESS

The Spanish English-language blog The Aeternal Swirling Fight just critiqued my favourite character in The Snow Queen (using Naomi Lewis' translation as the basis) and I feel a mix of helium and arsenic in my insides. The bold fonts are Marta Lúthien's in The Aeternal Swirling Fight, the underlinings are mine.


... a lot of women along the way, so that was nice. But many of these women aren't painted in a very good light either

-The princess is initially depicted as smart and knowing her own mind, and she has to get married, but is looking for an intelligent man who can be her intellectual equal. Still, she finishes in a pretty minimal role in the story alongside a handsome youth (who Gerda mistakes for Kai) - A creepy implication that either the princess married super young, or, worse still, that she's into minors, (given that Gerda and Kai are very young teenagers at the most ):S

 And finally, the IG storytime with more or less the same text content, but also including direct quotes and a bit more specifics:





Now Alexandre Dumas in his retelling La Reine des Neiges says the princess is 18 (dix-huit ans) and the prince is between 20 and 25.  Standard marriageable age for female and male, respectively, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. 

Most illustrators, character designers, and film cast directors choose to portray both of these characters as young adults in their twenties, or at the least in their late teens.

Also, Sansa Stark and Caterina de' Medici and so forth prove that princesses did marry (and princes did too) super young in a certain historical epoch.

That was all in my rebuttal. I still agree with and adore the positive things she says about the depiction of this fascinating female character (smart, knowing her own mind, looking for an intelligent man who can be her intellectual equal and finding him in this handsome youth), however.

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