A few days ago I somehow brought up the subject of fairy-tales. I have been interested in the subject before and made a few dives into it several times. This time, however, my focus was a little different. Previously I mostly educated myself on the original versions of the classic fairy-tales which are often very gruesome. Tonight I tried to find out the origin of the damsel in distress trope and the more I dug, the more interesting it got.
I often noted how most Russian fiary-tales involving romance did not feature a noble knight rescuing a maiden. In fact, very often it was quite the opposite - a young woman with much wisdom and talent would solve the man's problems. Some popular stories feature a very dumb incompetent man who is very lucky and somehow ends up getting a princess and 'half a kingdom'. I am no expert in folklore and the fairy-tales I remember from my childhood had very mixed origin, many of them came from Western Europe and were adapted. But I couldn't help but notice how a lot of them featured a young heroine saving her brother/s from a curse or abduction. I especially like The Wild Swans, there's something really elegant about the story. The Snow Queen is quite similar in that a young girl goes out of her way to save a boy who she loves. At any rate, I realized I decidedly like the Fairy-tales written or rewritten in 19th century, by Andersen and Wilde. Those have elegance as well as a strong moral message, mostly Christian values in the best sense. While many of them are still problematic and sad, like the Little Mermaid, at least they let the heroine have a choice and some control over her life, even though her choice always seem to to be the one to sacrifice everything for the man.
I never really was into Fairy-Tales all that much, not sure why. Maybe they were too primitive and sent dubious message. I have read about some of the most popular ones and it turns out I can in fact like them much less. Most of them feature a heroine who is perfectly beautiful, obedient and kind but is also naive and pretty much stupid. Her beauty and passivity is celebrated. This is taken to the extreme in Sleeping Beauty and Snow White as the princes find the two asleep or presumably dead. In Cinderella too, it is clearly not the heroine's personality the Prince falls for.
But though the heroines in the fairy-tales do very little, it's not like the heroes are very active either. They also have no personality apart from being handsome and cool and basically perfect. They do not fight dragons or evil witches to save their beloved ones, they just meet them by accident and fall for them and marry them. Sleeping Beauty features a man rescuing a princess. However, there are several version of the tale and in one of them the Prince does wake the Princess with a kiss but he doesn't save her by doing so. In fact, the Princess wakes up because the 100-year curse runs out and he just happens to come by when it does. And I'm not even going to discuss the other version of the tale where the Prince impregnates the Princess who he thinks is dead and she wakes up because one of her babies sucks out the thorn in her finger. In Rapunzel while the girl is initially a victim, the prince fails to save her and in the end it is her that cures his blindness. My favourite fact is that In the Scottish version of Show White, it is the King's new wife who awakens the sleeping woman and it is also her who tricks and punishes the evil Queen. In other versions, it's either a servant or the King's mother who wake her up. Beauty and the Beast is the lesser evil among the popular tales. Belle makes the decision to save her father and there is some character development and complexity such as though the Beast is being manipulative at first, he shows kindness by allowing Belle to go see her father. But to quote Henal Patel's work, "Men in fairy tales do not need to do anything. They are ideal because of who they are. Royalty means that they are handsome, brave, and good. Their actions are not judged singularly, even if they are disgusting."
Perhaps the most popular image of a gentle lady and a noble knight comes from King Arthur tales but if you look at original epic stories and legends, such as Beowulf or the story of Saint George, they are always focused on the knights and their heroic deeds, the women had very little importance in them and romantic sub-plots were usually added later.
Of course the trope of damsel in distress existed since ancient times but it wasn't nearly as frequent as it may seem now. I assume some stories were fished out and replicated in 19th-20th century and thus it now seems like it was always like this. And then, of course, come video games to revive and power up that archaic male fantasy.
history.rutgers.edu/honors-papers-2009/154-gend...