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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume 4
Fall 2005
It is, however, through the performance of these gender-oriented tasks that Sally subsequently breaks from gender stereotypes. In scene seven, we see Sally make Dr. Finklestein’s soup, into which she slips deadly nightshade. This assertive, aggressive action is a behavior that belongs to the “intensified prescriptive stereotypes” category of male actions. This category contains the things that people should and must do to be acceptable to society. According to a study done at Princeton University, “The intensified prescriptions and proscriptions for women reflected traditional emphases on interpersonal sensitivity, niceness, modesty, and sociability, whereas the intensified prescriptions and proscriptions for men reflected traditional emphases on strength, drive, assertiveness, and self-reliance” (Prentice et al. 275). Looking at Sally’s character in this light, she is driven to escape Dr. Finklestein and gain freedom, and is definitely assertive. So does this make Sally masculine? Sally’s actions toward Dr. Finklestein are indeed very masculine, but her actions toward other characters, especially Jack, are warm, caring, and nurturing, which are highly associated with femininity. The overall portrayal of Sally is rather ambiguous in terms of teaching children that gender stereotypes are not relevant. In an article on children’s inter-textual knowledge and gendered storylines, Elizabeth Yeoman found that, “Hollywood films . . . while sometimes functioning to uphold dominant discourses of gender (e.g. romantic love and the importance of looking good), could also contribute in an important way to disrupting discourses of the passive female” (435). The children, especially the girls in her study, made repeated references to a heroine in a movie that broke out of assigned gender roles, which suggests that these are the characters children will remember. Sally, throughout the movie, functions to both uphold and disrupt dominant gender discourses. She sends the mixed message that it is acceptable for girls to be aggressive, so long as they are publicly docile and only aggressive through acts of subterfuge.
Sally and Shock, a young girl dressed as a witch, represent the two classic tendencies in fairy tales with regard to the representation of female collaboration. When Michael Mendelson analyzed collections of Grimms’ fairy tales looking at trends of collaboration, he found that the majority of female heroines “are on their own, sometimes admirably independent like Cinderella, or All fur, or Maid Maleen, but more often isolated and abandoned in a way similar to such tragic heroines as Medea, Dido, or Desdemona” (112). Further he found that, “There are, for example, a sizable number of what we can call evil women’s groups in which, typically, older sisters and/or stepmothers collaborate to victimize either a younger heroine or an unsuspecting male” (115). The implication is that women who work in collaboration are, by necessity, up to no good. If their intentions are pure, however, they are left to struggle alone. Shock belongs to the former group; she works in collaboration with Lock and Barrel to kidnap Sandy Claws. This group, collectively referred to as Boogie’s Boys, is indeed not the all-female group, but it does further this notion that women collaborate with others only in the evil pursuit of victimizing someone. In this case, the unsuspecting male is Sandy Claws. Sally, by contrast, works alone both in her efforts to free herself from Dr. Finklestein and to get Jack to understand before it is too late that he is making a mistake. She is the only person in all of Halloweentown to not get caught up in the excitement of Christmas, and as such she works alone to stop Jack and fix the situation. She is one of the fairy-tale women who is very independent. She works alone but never succumbs to the isolation and abandonment that accompanies this independence. Even in the present day, there still remains an odd attachment to the idea that women work together only to the detriment of others, and that righteous women must suffer alone. Young people who watch the movie may assimilate this idea that women in groups can only be conspiring to act maliciously.