Espelho meu, espelho meu, há alguém mais livre do que eu?”: retratos de princesas nos contos dos irmãos Grimm e na literatura contemporânea para crianças

摘要

The Brothers Grimms’ Kinder-und Hausmärchen seems to have promoted patriarchal bourgeois values as part of the socialization process in the nineteenth century, modelling children’s gender identity and behaviour over time. Taking into account, under the hegemonic representations of gender, that female identity becomes associated with a set of values and behaviours, this article presentsan analysis of some portrayals of princesses in contemporary children’s literature published in Portugal, by relating those portrayals with two well-known Grimms’ fairy tales: “Little Snow-White” and “Little Briar-Rose”. Our aim is to find out in what ways those images of princesses of the twenty-first century are substantially different from those conveyed by Grimms’ fairy tales, analysing their emancipatorypotential. Finally, we wish to apprehendwhich ideologies underpin those portrayalsand to verify if they effectively lead to a new world vision by depicting women as real free human beings.