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Wives and Husbands, Equal People
Marriage in folkstory texts is not idyllic. Happiness is greatly sought, but highly elusive. Patriarchal gender relationships are the models held up to us in most current collections despite modern rhetoric about gender equality and changing marriage norms.
At the same time, pressures for change are rising. The large scale participation of women in the work force, the cultural expectation for both spouses to provide ever greater material benefits for the family, and the increasing burden on women to fulfill both home and job responsibilities demand new outlooks. Stories of the subservient or manipulative wife, of unchallenged violence against women, and of male domestic domination run counter to these trends.
New approaches are not reflected in most folkstory collections. Traditional stories supporting hierarchic male rule and a subservient role for the wife tend to be passively accepted by today's reading public.
No other group - ethnic, racial or religious - is presented in the same light. Currently published stories do not justify subjugation of and violence against any other group of people.
Instead, public recognition of fair, non-discriminatory treatment has influenced storytelling in some areas. As has been mentioned, Zipes1 chronicled the use of folktales in Nazi Germany to spread the poison of the 1930s by bolstering anti-Semitic attitudes and glorifying the German "hero". Following the end of World War II, such stories and interpretations were fiercely discredited and efforts made to reinstate democratic, non-discriminatory themes. In the United States, a furor broke out over
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