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Fairy Tale Elements in Margaret Atwood's Novels: Breaking the Magic Spell

This thesis traces Margaret Atwood's uses of three major elements of fairy tales in her novels. Atwood creates a passive, fairy-tale-like heroine, but not for the purpose of showing how passivity wins the prince as in the traditional tale. Atwood also uses the binary system, which provides a moralistic structure in the fairy tale, to show the necessity of moving beyond its rigidity. In addition, Atwood's novels focus on transformation as the breaking of a spell. However, the spell to be broken arises out of the fairy tales themselves, which create unrealistic expectations. Thus, Atwood not only presents these fairy tale elements in a new setting, but she also changes their significance.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc500262
Date08 1900
CreatorsPeterson, Nancy J. (Nancy Jean)
ContributorsKobler, J. F. (Jasper Fred), 1928-, Schlessinger, June H., Palmer, Leslie
PublisherNorth Texas State University
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
Format101 leaves, Text
RightsPublic, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved., Peterson, Nancy J. (Nancy Jean)

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