From an immediate standpoint, it may seem obvious that women in Fables are little more than overly stylized echoes of the more prominent examples in historical literary fairy tales. While hundreds of strains of oral fairy tales and rewrites exist in which to analyze female roles, the famous few (so easily recognized in recent generations due to Disney fairy tale imperialism) hearken back to Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. In both situations, the male figures asserted their authority through their writings with the intention of educating or re-educating the populace in the ways of proper social etiquette and propriety. In Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion, Jack Zipes describes this process as one in which “[i]nstincts were to be trained and controlled for their socio-political use." The Perrault and Grimm versions have had a multiple centuries to champion the ideal form and behavior of women because so many of these “classic” fairy tales center on female heroines (although truth be told ‘heroine’ is a less than appropriate term, since none of the girls really do much of anything).
The Snow Whites, Sleeping Beauties, and Cinderellas of the world, as told by Perrault and the Grimms, should be physically beautiful, sweet tempered, quiet, agreeable and selfless. The selflessness of the characters, such as Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty when she immediately puts her head on the chopping block for the butcher and Grimm’s Cinderella when she readily dresses her cruel stepsisters in their finest, does little more than to make the women pathetically subservient. Selfless becomes nothing more than self-less, where the women do their duties just as well dead as alive (case in point the Brothers Grimm version of Snow White, who is irresistible to the prince even while apparently devoid of life).
Perrault and the Grimms reward such overwhelming servility and passivity with what they believe to be the social pinnacle of the female world: marriage. The highlight of a girl’s life (in which everything before and after apparently pales in comparison) is supposed to be her wedding day. Marcia K. Lieberman comments on this phenomenon in Don’t Bet on the Prince, saying that these fairy tale women “exist passively until they are seen by the hero, or described to him” and that courtship is the most exciting and important part of a woman’s life “because it is the part of her life in which she most counts as a person." Just as fairy tale women are at the mercy of how Perrault and Grimm chose to write them, male subjectivity is the only lens through which women are supposed to view themselves. The laundry list of optimal womanly traits and expectations of marriage leave little room for personal female growth in view of identity, presumably the outcome Perrault and the Brothers Grimm had, at least in part, intended.
As a male writer, Bill Willingham naturally falls into some of the same pitfall patterns of Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, but the personality traits of the female characters in Fables are so undeniably opposite from those of the original “proper” woman that it is clear the series at least takes steps toward discarding this outmoded ideology. In Don’t Bet on the Prince, Jack Zipes argues that modern reconstructions of the fairy tale, a category to which Fables belongs, allow for and encourage the existence of female power:
"Whereas the heroes of traditional folk and fairy tales often pursue power to dominate and rule others [read: women], the heroines of the new feminist tales use power to rearrange society according to a more nurturing moral concept and to attain independence for women and mutual respect."Not much can necessarily be said for a “more nurturing moral concept” brought about by Snow White, the principle female character of the comic book, but she certainly wields both social and political power. Though King Cole is the official Mayor for Fabletown, Snow White is the Deputy Mayor and actually runs the city. The Snow White in Fables not only gains independence and respect, but demands it. Far from the Grimm tale of “Little Snow White,” the Fables revision of the heroine is anything but the “dead and self-less in her glass coffin … object, patriarchy’s marble ‘opus’” that Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar describe; Snow White is sassy and willful, refusing to take no for an answer in such instances as when Bigby Wolf tells her she cannot come to her sister’s crime scene.
As for the ultimate reward of marriage for the female protagonists, this particular volume of the series shows clear relationship and marital strife with a level of realism unmatched by most fairy tale adaptations. Fables takes an important departure from the older versions of the fairy tales through the illustrations of male-female relationships. With both Snow White and Cinderella as bitter divorcees of Prince Charming (one and the same for both women), marriage is clearly less of an absolute goal. Relationships can be just as trapping for a woman in this case as a man, even when happiness is still a possibility. As Beauty says in an outburst to Snow White about her husband the Beast, “You try being married for almost a thousand years without a few ups and downs along the way. No one can be perfectly, blissfully happy and in love for so long." “Happily ever after” seems to have its hazards after all, and it’s a good thing, because otherwise those thousands of years would be boringly blissful. The female characters even reject attempts to define them in relation to men, such as when Snow White flatly turns down Bigby’s advances. In terms of personal agency, the women of the series claim power for themselves alone and this step is huge for rewriting the fairy tale woman in a contemporary setting.
But it is the women’s looks, not their behaviors, that get the Fables series into trouble for their gender depiction. There is no doubt that the images of the female characters are crafted with the aim of titillating the reader’s “interest”. But rather than simply point the finger of blame at Willingham for the overtly sexual imagery, one could say that Fables creates a critical social commentary that depicts current American society as it is rather than an idealized rewrite of the traditional tales (as many feminist fairy tale rewrites are). This is the route that Willingham himself takes in justifying the conflicting depictions of femininity in Fables. In response to a feminist reader who took offense at some of the series’ less socially progressive elements, Willingham counters critiques of the comic books’ gender ideology in an online publication called The Comics Journal:
"Since this series isn’t a political tract, nor a handbook of proposed conduct of any sort, I thought the story was better served by having [the women] act more according to [their] established characters and backgrounds, rather than as approved examples of the current vogue in modern human enlightenment. Fables is (one hopes) a series of entertaining stories … not a set of lessons to be learned."Certainly the response answers some questions about the intended purpose of the series and serves to further set Willingham apart from Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, but Willingham may have underestimated the capacity for study in Fables, even if the reader only plans to focus on the entertainment value. All the same, regardless of the actual intent and the explicitly suggestive material, Fables still manages to show female characters in a positive, often defiant, light that at least partially removes women from the wholly objectifying grasp of Perrault and the Brothers Grimm.
Because the texts have the duality of appealing to multiple sides of gender ideology, it is at times unclear as to whether the series further reinforces or subverts traditional gender norms. But the fact that Fables is based in the usually female-centered genre of fairy tales within the male-capitalized realm comics is in itself a major victory in terms of female comic book readership and strong female heroines. Fables is a start in terms of fairy tale heroines actually performing heroics, but one must be careful because the comic book still relies so heavily on the heterosexual male gaze for its literary success. Contemporary gender structures and female empowerment in Fables still have a long way to go in the comic book and fairy tale world, but most of one should not simply discount this wonderfully insightful text for its over-the-top portrayal of physical appearance because the series deserves credit where it is due.
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Last summer I took at comics and graphics novels class at CU Boulder and this semester I'm in a fairy tales class. I thought it'd only be fair to combine the two, as Bill Willingham does in his comic series Fables, which takes on fairy tale life set in modern day New York City. Thus far, I've only read the first two books of the series, and this essay itself focuses on just Vol. 1: Legends in Exile. Enjoy! I think I'll be putting up more critical literary essays soon.
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