MASCULINITY AND FEMININITY IN THE FAIRY-TALE

Abstract

Fairy-tale can be defined as a fiction supported explicitly and clearly by the principle of opposition: the tale is dinamically based upon the antithetic couple. The fundamental antithesis masculine-feminine is always present by the various manifestations. At the opposite poles of the hermafrodite division well definite configurations of the role appear. In the majority of the fairy-tales the masculine role stands out for the belonging to a public, social space characterized by money as a peculiar significance. If the public word is a prerogative of the masculine figure, the privat word, on the contrary, appears in the fairy-tales as a precise connotation of the feminine role, which seems to be founded on the capacity of telling the feelings concealed in the deepest innerness