The Evil Woman
Everyone knows that if you are reading a fairy tale and see an old creepy woman to stay away. We have seen time and time again that an old woman usually means bad for the main character. From witches to evil stepmothers, the theme of an evil woman figure in fairy tales is a very prominent one.
A story that I got to read in this class was The Juniper Tree by the Grimm Brothers. This story had a terrible female character, the evil stepmother. In this tale the stepmother is so jealous of the love and attention the son of the father gets, that she murders him and puts his body in a stew. The father then eats the stew and says he has never had any stew as good as that one. We see the stepmother be filled with guilt and finally at the end of the story she gets what she deserves and dies. It seems a lot of stories. have a woman antagonist that is. destined to cause pain but in turn have pain brought to her to satisfy the reader.
One story we all know and love and has one of the best evil woman figures is Cinderella. The evil stepsisters and her mean stepmother, are great representations of this recurring theme. The stepsister, being jealous of Cinderella, are always mean to her as well as her stepmother who makes her do all the chores that a servant would do. There is a early version of Cinderella called “Yeh-sien”. In this version, the Cinderella is treated terribly by her stepmother and her only form of comfort is a magical goldfish in a pond. The stepmother finds this goldfish and promptly kills it because what else would be a logical thing to do
Another place we see this trope of an evil woman is in the movie The Wizard of Oz. In the movie, Dorothy is thrown into a magical world with lots of joy and interesting characters. It all seems like fun and games until the wicked witch of the west arrives and ruins the party. The wicked witch of the West is jealous of her sister, the witch of the East and wants to take away Dorothy to spite her. We see in many movies and shows and books that there seems to be this need for an evil women as the antagonist.
