Reimagining Gender in a Tale as Old as Time: Gender and Narrative Play in Young Adult Retellings of Beauty and the Beast

Abstract

This thesis explores how socializing metanarratives of gender are re-conceptualized through narrative play in young adult retellings of "Beauty and the Beast" influenced by late-twentieth and early twenty-first century women’s movements. Metanarratives presented in traditional fairy tales are often antithetical to modern world views, and consequently sets of metanarratives are fighting for the implicit, invisible, socially dominant position in society. This thesis discusses retellings by Robin McKinley, Alex Flinn, and the Walt Disney Company. They create a dialogue between traditional metanarratives, their retellings, and their intended adolescent audience. Their use of narrative techniques and strategies to alter traditional narrative patterns, motifs, characters, and plot lines determines whether these retellings disrupt or maintain traditional metanarratives of gender, including those of feminine beauty, conduct, agency, and male-female relationships. I focus on the complexity with which retellings re-envision the traditional tales to alter existing metanarratives and how they use narrative strategies to do this. I argue that the more disruptive narrative strategies are to fairy tale structure and frames as opposed to motifs and characters, the more enabled the retelling is to battle traditional metanarratives of gender.