Meet three forgotten women who wrote fairytales which subverted the Grimms’ gender norms

Rapunzel, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty – these well-known stories and others, first published by the Brothers Grimm in Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales, 1812), have become shorthand for what we collectively think of as fairytales. They are stories with a strong moralistic undertone in which humble and obedient women are rewarded while transgressive women suffer – all before an interchangeable background of castles, kings and sorcery.

But these stories are only one iteration of fairytales. Stories that were collected and continuously edited by men to reinforce bourgeois values, which often marginalised women.

In the ongoing success story of the Grimms’ fairytales, repopularised by big film corporations such as Disney, women who collected and wrote fairytales have long been overlooked.

Three such authors were Karoline von Woltmann, Carmen Sylva, and Laura Gonzenbach. Their stories are a far cry from the Grimms’, asserting women’s agency and addressing their needs.

Karoline von Woltmann (1782-1847)

Born the daughter of a Prussian privy councillor in Berlin and highly educated, Woltmann spent most of her life writing historical fiction as well as works on social propriety. In these works, Woltmann presented herself in a light that would not be seen as particularly enlightened in our time. She endorses a gendered division of societal roles, and advocates for the importance of marriage as...

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