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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
Fairytales and folk tales have long been a way to engage children in the rules of society without lecturing them. Children will hear a story and on multiple levels, both consciously and unconsciously, apply it to real life and how they view and interpret the world. Aside from teaching right from wrong they often teach domesticity, compliance, submissiveness, and silence to girls, and ingenuity, valiance, bravery, honor, and chivalry to boys. This essay is intended to analyze the continued occurrence of fairy tales’ effect on gender concept formation through the analysis of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. Fairy tales tell of legendary deeds and creatures in a way that is intended to teach some lesson to children. The Nightmare Before Christmas is a modern a fairy tale, telling the legendary deeds of Jack Skellington, a skeleton who rules over Halloweentown, which is where the holiday is created. It has a moral: One should find happiness in whatever one is and not try to be someone or something else. But it is also littered with gender references and roles, present on many levels. They are overtly displayed in the direct actions of characters, or appeal to a more hidden aspect of the human psyche. Although the characters of The Nightmare Before Christmas display a number of traditional gender roles in some respects, they also do much to undermine those same roles in other respects, paving the way for a new, more egalitarian fairy tale and therefore a redefinition of gender roles for their audiences.
The Nightmare Before Christmas addresses many qualities that feminists argue are most problematic of fairy tales. Its main female character, Sally, is a living domestic rag doll, who is practically, and at some points literally, imprisoned in the home of Dr. Finklestein, the mad scientist who created her. In the third scene, Dr. Finklestein reprimands her for having run away by saying, “You’re mine, you know! I made you!”(Burton). Feminists have repeatedly attacked this submissive portrayal of women as the wrong message to send to young children and “have denounced the fairy tale as a particularly effective tool in perpetuating repressive stereotyping” (Segel 30). Throughout the film, Sally engages in behaviors that follow the stereotypes to which these feminists are referring. She can be seen cooking for others. Her ability as a seamstress is a common theme: she is not only enlisted to sew Jack’s “Sandy Claws” suit, but she actually sews herself back together after jumping from a window. The furnishings in her room reflect the way Dr. Finkelstein views Sally. Her room is small and contains a table, her bed, a sewing machine and a broom. The last two items are also commonly found in the fairy tales that feminists see as teaching the wrong lesson to young girls. In her discussion of women’s roles in the fairy tale compilations done by the Brothers Grimm, Maureen Thum sums up “Frau Holle” by saying that the young woman “is rewarded for proving her capabilities as a good housewife who knows how to cook, clean and carry out her daily chores with thoroughness and consistency” (13). In a way, the furnishings in her room set up the conditions under which Sally is to be rewarded. If she cleans and does the household chores, then she continues to receive shelter in the form of her room. The way Dr. Finklestein treats Sally can be viewed as placing her into the same repressive stereotyped role seen in the interaction of Cinderella and her Stepmother.