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Is Sleeping Beauty’s Maleficent an evil villain or a maligned feminist?

The purpose of this essay is to explore the role of Maleficent in Disneys version of Sleeping Beauty and will argue that instead of being a force of evil Maleficent is in fact a feminist rebelling against the patriarchal society of the fairy tale land. The feminine elements of fairytales are hard to ignore considering central role women play. But in all versions of modern fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney femininity is bipolar, a question of good or evil but a character is never capable of both. Female antagonism is an often-repeated storyline: the virgin/whore, angel/monster. There is a tradition in fairy tales of the pure, silent, virginal young girl on one side, and the powerful, sexual, wicked woman on the other (Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Cinderella to name only three) Arguably the most powerful and sinister of all of the Disney villains is Sleeping Beauty’s Maleficent, the evil witch who casts the spell that sentences the infant Princess Aurora to an early and undeserved death at the age of sixteen. Her scenes in the climax of the film are among the darkest and most violent ever produced by Disney.

Disney released Sleeping Beauty in 1959 after nearly a decade in production to great fanfare. It was the last fairy tale produced by Walt Disney. The story goes that King Stefan and his Queen welcome the arrival of their daughter, Aurora. At the gathering of the christening by everyone in the kingdom, she is betrothed to Prince Phillip and three good fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, bless the child with gifts. The first fairy, Flora, gives the princess the gift of beauty.  The next fairy, Fauna, gives her the gift of song. But before Merryweather is able to give the child her blessing, the wicked fairy Maleficent appears and curses the princess, proclaiming that before the sun sets on her sixteenth birthday she will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die. Merryweather is able to use her blessing to weaken the curse, so that instead of death Aurora will fall asleep from which she can be awakened by love first kiss. To protect the princess the three fairies disguise themselves as peasant women and sneak Aurora away with them to a woodland cottage until the danger passes.

Years later, Aurora has grown into a beautiful but vapid young woman - whose only dream is of falling in love - is cavorting in a forest by herself on her sixteenth birthday at the behest of her none too intelligent minders when she draws the attention of the dashing Prince Phillip and they instantly fall in love. In her absence the fairies colourful magic fight has drawn the attention of Maleficent pet raven. Deciding that the last day of peril for the princess would be the best time to move her, the fairies tell Aurora the truth and escort the docile princess back to her parents. Despite her tears the Princess readily accepts that she must return to parents and a home she has never known to marry a stranger. In contrast Phillip defies his father and commitments to the land and insists he will marry his peasant love instead of the arranged marriage that would tie the two Kingdoms together. In her parents palace Maleficent lures Aurora away from the fairies and Aurora touches the spindle, pricking her finger and completing the curse. Maleficent and her minions kidnap Prince Phillip to prevent him from breaking her spell but he escapes with the help of the good fairies. To stop him saving Aurora Maleficent surrounds Stefan’s castle with a forest of thorns then transforms herself into a gigantic dragon to battle the prince. Ultimately, Phillip throws his sword directly into Maleficent’s heart, causing Maleficent to fall to her death from a cliff. Needless to say Aurora and Prince Phillip live happily ever after.

In fairytales there are only two destinies for women, to be married and live happily in domesticity (because domesticity is what ‘happily ever after’ refers to) or to physically be shown her place, frequently through a grisly end. As Andrea Dworkin

said in her essay “Woman Hating” (Dutton, 1974) on fairy tales: “The good woman must be possessed. The bad woman must be killed, or punished. Both must be nullified” (Pg 64-65). There are two distinct female characters in the movie: Aurora is the ideal of what a princess should be. She’s beautiful and thin, sings beautifully (a good singing voice is a universal aphrodisiac in Disney films), is obedient and (albeit through lack of other options) is completely pure. Her activities consist of only “proper” activities for a young princess. She is the ideal young lady: pure and compliant. And utterly helpless. In Onceuponatime: The Roles, Andrea Dworkin noted the role of the lead female character in fairy tales: “Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow-white, Rapunzel–all are characterized by passivity, beauty, innocence and victimization. They never think, act, initiate, confront, resist, challenge, feel, care, or question.” This is in sharp contrast to Maleficent who never stops actively hunting for the Princess. The only time the Princess Aurora acts of her own violation in the film is when she disobeys her caretakers and speaks with Philip, promptly losing herself to love. But that love is not strong enough to resist her programming to obey them later when they tell her that she will never see the young man again. She dumbly accepts her fate and that she is a princess who will now be moved from the only home she has ever known to meet parents she has never seen and to marry a man her father  - a man she will not even remember meeting  - will chose for her. She is unhappy, sad, miserable and cries, but she still obeys. Her mind is so programmed to obey that Maleficent easily manipulates her to her prick her finger on a spinning wheel and fulfill the prophecy.

Contrasting with the sweet and pliant Aurora the evil fairy Maleficent is cruel for her own pleasure, she does what she can to make people miserable. It doesn’t take a lot to rouse her anger. Miss inviting her to a party and she will take it out not just on you but also on your only child.  But Maleficent is also active, and assertive, demanding of results from her repulsive minions. It is her action that marks her as evil, and her active role in stopping Phillip from getting to Aurora that gets her killed. Although Maleficent’s actions are completely over the top in the scale of her revenge for a small slight she uses power as currency to get what she wants. Her minions act for her through fear of her reprisals. Like the evil Queen in Snow White who recogises that her beauty is a currency and removes all competition. Or like Cinderella’s stepmother who recognizes that her daughters beauty will soon fade and she needs to get them married off as soon as possible while there is still a Prince prowling around there is some logic in Maleficent seemingly mindless rage. If she lets the King and Queen away with small slights she will soon lose her standing as a person to fear, and without that she would have trespassers and tourists traipsing all over the Forbidden Forest picnicking at will while she impotently raged. Flippancy aside, her power is rooted in the fear her magical abilities have generated, this fear protects her and allows her to live unmolested, without that we have no way of knowing how she would be treated in the patriarchal society that was fairy tale lands. As feminist and political theorist Carole Pateman writes, “The patriarchal construction of the difference between masculinity and femininity is the political difference between freedom and subjection.” Aurora is subjugated, Maleficant is free and fight hard to keep her autonomy.

The differences between the characterizations of the Princess Aurora and the evil Maleficent are reflected in their appearances. Aurora is soft and sweet, she wears pastels and has “gold of sunshine in her hair, lips that shame the red, red rose”. Maleficent on the other hand is tall and imposing, sinuous with the green skin of the snake that tempted Eve, she will literally turn into a dragon when crossed. While Aurora has a host of woodland animals to innocently play with, a dark crow named Diablo serves Maleficents every whim. To demonstrate the amount of power Maleficent has and how brave Prince Phillip is to battle her Disney has given Maleficent a lot of magical ability. Maleficent literally bursts onto the screen as a bolt of thunder, then a small flame growing quickly to shape the evil fairy. Fire, especially unnatural fire, has always been associated with the devil and witchcraft and it is Maleficents signature. For an even more unnatural twist, her fire has a green base, and lets off a thick purple and black smoke. She can shape shift into a dragon and spew this hellfire at the goodly prince. She uses thunder and lightning as offensive weapons and when thwarted by the good fairies “the Forbidden Mountain, thundered with her wrath and frustration”. She can control the elements without breaking a sweat and merely to demonstrate a bad mood, while shouting at her imps she whirls her staff and thunder flies at them. When she conjures her forest of thorns, it is sent to the castle in clouds traveling on high winds. Maleficent control of elements is destructive but when she tries to slow Phillip down by hurling thunderbolts at him she does not attempt to kill him but merely to slow him down.

Unlike Maleficent whose very appearance causes a court to cower the Queen of Sleeping Beauty is a woman without a name. The Queen who should be of intense importance in the lives of the people of her country, in her family, is so unimportant as to not even rate her own name. She is always referred to in third person - “King Stefan and his Queen” by the narrator, “poor King Stefan and the Queen” to quote the fairies late in the film. She is only Stefan’s wife. Even her daughter is not hers; Aurora is “Stefan’s child”. Her sole line in the entire movie is to ask Maleficent if she is offended. Her whole existence is a reflection of what she has done, not what she will do, she is a woman without a future. We can assume she is living the famed “happily ever after” but her life serves as a cautionary tale. After the Prince has wooed and wed Aurora she will become even more of a non-person. Like her daughter the Queen is a ‘good’ woman, she is passive and fearful and how is she rewarded? A dark fairy sentences her only child to death then her child is taken from her and raised far away. In the best case scenario they will be briefly reunited before Aurora is presumably taken away by Prince Phillip to his castle, in the worst her child dies prematurely.

The three fairies of Sleeping Beauty serve as equally poor role models for the Princess Aurora. They are seen as grandmotherly, but have not been bestowed with the wit and wisdom a long life provides, instead they are befuddled and absentminded. They make poor choices with regards to their precious charge on more than one occasion during the film notably allowing her to frolic in the woods on the day of her sixteenth birthday where she met Prince Phillip. Leaving aside for a second that the Princess is silly, easily led and dreams of romance and is hence easy pickings for any amateur Don Juan, an evil witch is searching high and low for her, if she was caught by Maleficent the fairies may not be able to save her but they could probably once again neutralize her. Did it really take three of them to put together a small birthday party? Flora acts as the leader of the little group, though she doesn’t always explain things or think them through. It is their absentminded nature and competition that eventually leads Maleficent right to their door. If they acted with more courage or thought they would never have been found. Despite having a measure of autonomy due to being unmarried they do not wish the same for the Princess. Aurora is as beautiful as other Disney heroines because it is a gift from Flora. Fauna gives her the gift of song, “melody her whole life long”, which translates into a highly feminine voice. But Aurora is the only heir to a kingdom, would wisdom or mercy or any number of attributes not more useful to a future heir to the throne? It is clear from this gift giving that Aurora is never expected to rule, and will never be thought how to.  She will marry and her husband will take over the running of the kingdom. And if he were to die early she would presumably find some other capable man to run her Kingdom for her. The only useful gift given to her is by Merriweather that will serve to save her life. The gifts Flora and Fauna have given her assist her only in getting a husband. The fairies also lack foresight; they never prepare Aurora for life outside their care, despite their fear of Maleficent they don’t teach her how to resist the evil fairies mind control, they teach her merely not to draw attention to herself or talk to strangers, to hope passively that Maleficent who is actively hunting her will not find her. They don’t teach her any skills she will need to be a Queen, reflecting that like her mother she will never rule in anything other than name and will instead be only the Kings arm candy.  The fairies are always too late, to save anyone, and their easy fear is contrasted with Maleficants mocking cackles as she baits and taunts the enraged captive Prince Phillip.

Unlike Maleficent, who chooses how and when to use her magic and is much more powerful than the fairies, their magic is qualified with the caveat that it can only “bring joy and happiness”. While the three good fairies dress in pastels and are sweetly matronly, Maleficent is tall, dark, statuesque and beautiful. She demands the respect that is due her for her status and power, again unlike the three who cow-tow to Stefan. They, however, think she “doesn’t know about love, kindness, the joy of helping others” and they “don’t think she’s very happy”. But if the three good fairies are the embodiment of this can one truly blame her?

The sexualisation of Sleeping Beauty has been discussed at length in other works  and is not within the scope of this essay but from the promise that she will die from the phallic spindles prick on her sixteenth birthday or her awake from slumber to a kiss the Princess Aurora is presented as completely helpless and has no hand in her own fate. In the Grimm’s version of Sleeping Beauty after the Princess pricked her finger on a spindle and fell asleep the kiss of the heroic prince woke her. They had never met or spoken and he fell in love with her while she was asleep, raising the question or was it because she was asleep? Disney neatly sidesteps this problem by making the two betrothed at Auroras Christening and having them fall in love during a brief meeting in the forest on Auroras’ birthday. As the only way to wake Aurora from the deep comatose sleep is through Prince Phillip those in the audience can all be glad when her prince comes for her knowing that and now she can be happy as a mans love literally saves her life and allows her a future. Like Snow White who flees her evil Stepmother and finds solace in caring for seven dwarves Aurora exists only to serve as a reward for a princes valor in finding her.  If it had been Maleficent who stumbled into the home of seven bachelors to be told that she could stay with them “if you will keep our house for us, and cook, and wash, and make the beds, and sew and knit, and keep everything tidy and clean.” Maleficent would have cocked a sharply arched eyebrow and cowed them with a look before swiftly subjugating and forcing them to work for her.

From the first scene Maleficent shows contempt for the established social order. She cows a king, threatens a princess and laughs mockingly and turns to fire when threatened by armed guards. She seems secure in the knowledge that there will be no armed force marching on her Forbidden Forest in retaliation and when the royal family try to prevent her prophecy from coming through she continues to hunt for the princess through the agency of her goblin servants. The dim-witted minions serve her every whim and cringe before her acerbic tongue, she towers above them, threating and ordering them about. In sharp contrast to Aurora’s woodland friends the minions are physically repulsive as befits the less than male status of all masculine creatures who serve a woman in fairy tales.  When Maleficent manically cackles as she baits Prince Phillip they laugh along with her, superficially agreeing with her but also implicitly afraid not to laugh. The only masculine figure to stand up to Maleficent is Prince Phillip that underscores his valor. Even Auroras father, the King of the realm, is frightened of Maleficient. When she threatens his daughter his response is not to march on her lair but instead to order every spinning wheel in the kingdom burnt. This begs the obvious questions; weren’t spinning needles needed to make clothes? Do all clothes now have to be imported? Who is paying for this? How idiotic is this king exactly? Although her imps assist Maleficent and his horse and the good fairies help the Prince but ultimately their battle is between them. In their final battle Maleficent is laughing manically and about to land the final blow when Phillip, with the blessing of the good fairies, throws his sword that lands straight into her heart. Maleficent falls into the fire. The last thing we see of her is her cloak with the sword of truth in it, losing its shine and turning black. Like the witches of Salem she must burn so the good can be freed of her baleful influence. While the Prince Phillip battles the Princess sleeps, reflecting the rewarded patterns of behavior in fairy tales. After the Prince wins he demonstrates his powerful masculine subjugation of Maleficent dark autonomy and as a victor claims his spoils, i.e. Aurora. It is also worth noting that he couldn’t have beaten Maleficent without the help of the three fairies but he doesn’t even thank them. He expects women to serve him. In the Princes mind by trying to take the woman belonging to the Prince Maleficent was stealing from him, if he had been unable to protect his wife-to-be and by extension property he was less of a man, like the king who allows Maleficent to ride roughshod over him.  Maleficent is a force of evil and a threat to the very fabric of society that must be defeated so the Prince can live happily ever after.

Feminists have always had issue with fairy tales, the problem being that they are more than just old stories. They are mythic cultural knowledge: they have been removed from their sociological roots to float in a timeless limbo, seeping into all of us since childhood. As Karen Rowe argues in ‘Feminism and fairy tales’ to examine selected popular folktales from the perspective of modern feminism is to re-visualize those paradigms which shape our romantic expectations and to illuminate psychic ambiguities which often confound contemporary women. Alluring fantasies gloss the heroine’s inability to act self‐assertively, total reliance on external rescues, willing bondage to father and prince, and her restriction to hearth and nursery. Fairy tales perpetuate the patriarchal status quo by making female subordination seem a romantically desirable, indeed an inescapable fate. Fairy tales serve to teach boys to be terrified of the wicked witch and girls that not to be passive, innocent and helpless is to be actively evil. In Sleeping Beauty Maleficent fought a Prince of the traditional patriarchal school and was slain rather brutally. We are supposed to believe that she got what was coming for her. But perhaps Maleficent was the first of a series of rebels who believed that her only options were to live free or die.

Bibliography:

Janurary 22, 2012. Feminist Readings on 1950s Cinema: Sleeping Beauty, or, How the Fluff-Heads Save the  Kingdom.

Available at http://sexistplotholes.wordpress.com/2010/01/22/feminist-readings-on-1950s-cinema-sleeping-beauty-or-how-the-fluff-heads-save-the-kingdom. Accessed March 17, 2012.

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Kollenschlag, Madonna. Kiss Sleeping Beauty Goodbye: Breaking the Spell

of Feminine Myths and Models. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988.

Stone, Kay F., “Things Walt Disney Never Told Us,” in Farrer, Claire,

Women and Folklore. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975.

Pateman, Carole.  The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism, and Political Theory. Stanford University Press; 1 edition (February 1, 1990).

Rowe, K.E. 1979. Feminism and fairy tales. Women’s Studies: An inter-disciplinary journal. Volume 6, Issue 3, 1979. Pages 237-257

Joosen. V. 2004. The emancipation of ‘Snow White’ in fairy-tale criticism and fairy-tale retellings. New Review of Children’s Literature and LibrarianshipVolume 10, Issue 1, 2004. Pages 5-14

Auerbach, Nina. Forbidden Journeys: Fairy Tales and Fantasies byVictorian Women Writers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.