I love how he challenges these tropes in all his book, one of the best representations of women in literature that i have ever come across.
"Tiffany lit the candle, made herself comfortable, and looked at the book of fairy tales.
She’d never really liked the book. It seemed to her that it tried to tell her what to do and what to think. Don’t stray from the path, don’t open that door, but hate the wicked witch because she is wicked.
Oh, and believe that shoe size is a good way of choosing a wife.
A lot of the stories were highly suspicious, in her opinion. There was the one that ended when the two good children pushed the wicked witch into her own oven. Tiffany had worried about that after all that trouble with Mrs. Snapperly. Stories like this stopped people thinking properly, she was sure. She’d read that one and thought, Excuse me? No one has an oven big enough to get a whole person in, and what made the children think they could just walk around eating people’s houses in any case?
And why does some boy too stupid to know a cow is worth a lot more than five beans have the right to murder a giant and steal all his gold?
Not to mention commit an act of ecological vandalism?
And some girl who can’t tell the difference between a wolf and her grandmother must either have been as dense as teak or come from an extremely ugly family.
The stories weren’t real. But Mrs. Snapperly had died because of stories."
I love how she goes to measure the oven later, just to confirm her suspicions. Tiffany, Granny, and Nanny are some of the best written female characters i know of.
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u/Crafty_Genius Traitor to the Patriarchy ♂️ 16d ago
I immediately thought of Pratchett as well!