Marriage Is Not Fashionable Today Any More! Or the Message of a Modern Re-written Tale for the Girls of Today

Abstract

Marriage Is Not Fashionable Today Any More! Or the Message of a Modern Re-written Tale for the Girls of Today.

It is quite common to produce re-written tales for children nowadays. The aim of the present study is to examine one of the types of these modern stories, namely the so-called ’hypercorrected’ one through the stories entitled The Frog Prince and Iron Henry and its modern version, The Frog Prince. Both of them have some elements in common, but the latter one lacks several important moments, like the father figure represented by the king, the magic transformation of the frog into a charming prince and the fact of his being cursed. We highlight the possible consequences of a tale like the modern one and look for the reason for publishing and buying a re-written version similar to this one. To reveal them we turn to the method of V. J. Propp, the Russian tale researcher as well as to psychologists and sociologists who deal with the problem of growing up, mating and the different generations of today. We also would like to find the answer to the question if friendship could be an alternative of a mature love relationship between a man and a woman.