In Defense of Disney Princesses: Aurora

I love Sleeping Beauty so much!  But I will be the first to admit that I did not love it a whole lot until I was a little older.  I got the DVD for Christmas when I was sixteen or seventeen and it had an entire disc of special features and it was when I watched those special features that I began to appreciate the beauty of Sleeping Beauty (wordplay intended).  I did not realize that the music drew so heavily from Tchaikovsky's ballet from 1890.  I also was too young to appreciate the beautiful animation in Sleeping Beauty.  After watching the special features I re-watched the movie in complete awe of the animation.  Every frame in this movie is a work of art.  If you haven't seen it for a while (or ever), I would encourage you to watch it keeping in mind that so much money was spent on this movie's animation that Disney's animation studio has never been able to replicate the budget (taking into account inflation and the growth of the Walt Disney Company) or the artistry that is evident in this movie.  

That being said, this is a blog about Aurora and what makes her special, a role model, someone you should be okay with children (especially daughters) looking up to.  I will start with the obvious, if Walt Disney himself decided that Aurora and her story are so special that there needs to be a bank-breaking budget for her movie, he and the studio must have seen something very very special in her.  

 I will start with what makes Aurora different from her predecessors Snow White and Cinderella.  Snow White and Cinderella both are isolated and from broken, abusive families, whereas Aurora is from a loving family, but is forced into isolation from them because of outside evil forces (enter Maleficent, no worries we will get to her later).  So while we do still see this theme of the main character being separated from her biological family, Aurora's childhood is different in that she is raised in a very loving home by the three good fairies Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather.  This may seem to make her a less "interesting" character, but we should not discount her just yet...

Her isolation is extremely important to remember for this next portion.  When she first encounters Prince Phillip, he has already fallen in love with her.  He does not fall in love with her beauty (though I'm sure he really appreciated it), he falls in love with her heart, signified by him falling in love with her singing, her voice.  We have to remember that this is a fairytale, it is not supposed to be realistic, we have to suspend disbelief and remind ourselves what it means that her beauty is not what the prince first falls in love with.  Aurora's kindness, like Cinderella and Snow White before her, is shown through her kindness to animals.  Because of her isolation, she has no peers, she only has the three fairies that have raised her, so her kindness must be shown to the audience through some other means, especially if we are to believe that Prince Phillip falls in love with her heart before he even sets eyes on her.  

Now we definitely see something special in Aurora, she is definitely a good person, worthy of being called a compassionate future ruler of her parents' kingdom, but is there anything that she teaches us that should be passed down to our children (read, daughters)?  I think so.  Even though she does not seem active, Aurora still decides to send caution to the wind and meet this man who has fallen in love with her because it feels right to her.  She has been taught her entire life to never speak to strangers, yet she speaks to him, she even allows herself to fall in love with him.  Aurora first appears to be a passive young lady that lets things happen to her, but we have to read her within her context.  This movie was made in the 1950s, a time when all women were to be content being housewives and mothers.  Aurora, though, is rebellious in the sense that she does decide not to follow the rules set out for her.  She speaks to a stranger and she is devastated when she discovers that she is actually a princess, destined to marry for family and kingdom politics instead of for love.  She also should not be declared a poor role-model for being a good person.  She is beautiful on the inside and the outside, and the fairies only took care of the outside and the singing voice.  Her inner-beauty, kindness, and compassion are all from her.  There is nothing wrong with being kind, and there is nothing wrong with trying to listen to what people have to say when they care about you.  She listens and obeys the fairies and goes to the castle because they raised her and they are the only people she has ever known.  It's nearly impossible for us to imagine her context because almost nobody is isolated from the world in the way that Aurora is; she has no knowledge outside of her life with the good fairies because of the huge need to protect her from the evil Maleficent.

Speaking of the fairies and Maleficent, this movie is also unique in that it displays many different facets of femininity, cool, right?  We have Aurora, the beautiful, shy, and compassionate teenager, the three good fairies, each complete with their own unique personalities, and Maleficent, the CRAZY-EVIL fairy.  (Full disclosure: Maleficent is my favorite disney villain EVER!!  She is SO EVIL!! I love her like I love Jezebel--> see 1 Kings 16-2 Kings 9!!)  Anyways, the cool thing about showing so many examples of what femininity looks like is that people (read girls) can see themselves somewhere in the story, in at least one, if not more characters and it doesn't have to be the princess.   In Cinderella and Snow White there are lots of male characters, which is awesome, boys need to see different forms of masculinity, but in Sleeping Beauty there are lots of lady characters.  I can remember when I was little, I may not have been obsessed with Aurora, but I ADORED Merryweather.  In fact, upon watching the movie again, my favorite part of the movie is still the same as when I was little, when Merryweather turns that awful raven to stone, super-cool.  

So, in conclusion, this movie and Aurora are totally awesome, if difficult, and it is perfectly fine to wrestle with them like we do with everything else in life.  Now for the most important question/struggle/point of controversy: What color should Aurora's dress have been?!  Pink or Blue?!?!

**The Pocket Princesses are drawn by Amy Mebberson.  You can visit her tumblr here.  Or you can copy and paste this link into your browser: www.amymebberson.tumblr.com.