1.

Research question
a. In what ways has the progress of womens roles in society reflect
queering of gender roles in modern fairy tales, or is there a
correlation at all?
2. A working title
The working title of my paper is A change in the gender role of
women in Fairy tales. I chose this title primarily because the
main objective of my paper is to identify the shift in gender roles
of women in fairytales when you compare them from way back
when to now.
3. A summary of your project. Identify your topic and describe
what you will be looking at in terms of the topic. Include some
key terms and additional questions that will guide your
research
a. My plan is to go ahead and research how womens gender roles
were in the original fairy tales we have from Perrault and
Asfanasev and those who recorded these fairy tales a long time
ago and compare them to the fairy tales of today to note the
differences in roles of women. I have noticed with all of the
recent remakes of fairy tales that women take on what is
considered a more masculine role within the fairy tale genre.
b. Many times when you look at a traditional fairy tale you see the
women in very submissive and helpless roles which reflected the
cultural values from back then. Now women are stepping out of
those predominantly submissive roles into more active roles
which were originally associated with male characters.
c. I think that some key terms I could use would be: fairy tales,
queering, feminism, gender role, active role, and submissive role.
d. Questions Guiding my research:
i. What were the original gender roles for women and Men in
fairy tales?
ii. What do these roles say about societal values of that time?
iii. In what ways has a shift in gender roles in society reflected
the change in womens gender roles in fairy tales?
iv. In what ways have modern fairy tales sought to reflect the
changes in societal norms?
4. A description of your purpose for working on this project. Why
did you choose this topic? What do you hope to learn from this
project?
a. I have always loved fairy tales ever since I was a small child. I
grew up in a household where my mother was a professional
writer and so many of my earliest memories are of her buying
me fairy tale books and helping me read through them. I grew up
with an appreciation for them and what they can tell a person
who knows what to look for. I especially love Russian fairy tales

because you can see the cultural values of that time and link it
back to history. Not to mention I also get to see the differences
between those tales and the fairytales I grew up with.
b. I think what I really hope to learn from this topic is to see if there
really is a correlation between the change in gender roles in
modern fairy tales versus the original fairy tales Ive read about
and if that reflects the changes in the values in society we have
today.
5. Discussion of the key challenges you will face or you imagine
you will face. What concerns do you have regarding the
research/ project?
a. I think the key challenges Im going to face are more on finding
scholarly articles. Even if there are papers on fairy tales its
difficult compiling enough factual information to get a solid basis
of my paper and give evidence for the research question Ive
posed. Also, I think its going to be difficult figuring out how to
break down the organization of the paper into a format that will
make it easy to follow.