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Deborah Federico's avatar

Thank you! It starts out with dolls, tea parties, easy bake ovens . . . looking after your little brother . . . . cleaning the house, ironing, setting the table, doing the dishes . . . . ie: how to care for your future family whether you ever wanted one or not!

Jennifer Heinen's avatar

Yes!! This! Deborah so true. And not only that but also, us being made small because the audacity of us women to want a full and big life (however we personally define that!)

Thank you so much for always bringing in your two cents ♥️ I truly appreciate them!

Alyce Elmore's avatar

Well done. I do believe it's time to rewrite the story.

Jennifer Heinen's avatar

Thank you Alyce! I am curious how you would rewrite the story ♥️

Alyce Elmore's avatar

An interesting challenge and as I sipped my morning coffee, I thought about ambition. I wrote a variation on Rumplestiltskin called What's In A Name. The spinner's daughter is not ambitious but shw's at the mercy of her father, the king and even the magical person who offers to save her (read religion, if you like). What she learns is to dump the lot of them and take control of her own life. In the case of the fisherman's wife, she has ambition but she seeks to achieve her goals through her husband. Now, the more I think about this, the more I think there's a real story here, about ambition vs greed. It's one thing to be ambitious, to want to achieve something but in a patriarchal society, ambition all too often means achieving at any cost. That's the patriarchal way. So maybe in the new tale of the fisherman's wife, she achieves success in a man's world, and her husband gets carried along--how many women keep businesses running while their male bosses take the credit--but as she moves up each rung on that ladder, she sees how hollow and insignificant it really is. Maybe, she cuts out tge middle man and goes direct to the flounder and says that her real ambition is to be respected for her ideas and rewarded appropriately for her work. But then, I think, that might sound too much like a fairy tale.