When I think about everything about womanhood that hamstrung me with fear when I was thirteen it all came down, really, to princesses. I didn’t think I had to work hard to be a woman (which is scary but obviously eventually achievable). I thought I had to somehow magically – through superhuman psychic effort – transform into a princess instead. That’s how I’d get fallen in love with. That’s how I’d get along. That’s how the world would welcome me.

– Caitlin Moran, How to be a Woman

Welcome to part two of Kickass Princesses – a look at some subversive female protagonists in children’s literature. You can read Part 1 here.

The more children’s books I read and the more princesses I come to know, the more I realise that ‘kickass’ probably wasn’t the best term to use. Some of these characters do kick ass, but the main feature is turning out to be simply that they make unconventional princesses.

As the archetype of a fairytale princess is so ingrained, it takes looking at a wide variety of ‘unprincessy’ examples to unpick exactly what some of our starting assumptions are. A closer look at the ‘unconventional’ princesses here, and in my previous post, reveals that these women and girls have agency, interests, and are more than just a beautiful, delicate, unsullied physical appearance. Sometimes they aren’t even beautiful at all. What they are – what, we realise, makes them ‘unprincessy’ – is often simply the fact that they are two-dimensional characters.

Ouch. This stereotype needs subverting roughly forever ago. On with the show…

The Ordinary Princess

• Written and illustrated by MM Kaye, published in 1980 by Doubleday

At 107 pages, this one’s aimed at a slightly older age group than the rest of the books in this post, which are all picture books.

The plot begins when the seventh princess is born in the land of Phantasmorania, and even the fairies are invited to the Christening, despite the King’s reservations. The bad-tempered and seaweedy fairy Crustacea, pissed off by the bad journey in to the palace, gives the baby the gift of ordinariness. Instantly the baby cries for the first time, and becomes considerably less attractive. As she grows up, our girl Amethyst (known as Amy) doesn’t look great in fine gowns like her blonde, willowy, ethereal and frankly boring and unknowable sisters. Instead, she loves climbing down the wisteria which grows up the castle walls and sneaking out to the forest.

Thanks to her extremely ordinary looks, Amy turns out to be impossible to marry off. Oh, the shame of it all! Not that our girl is bothered, but the rest of the kingdom is. When she learns of a harebrained scheme to get her rescued from a dragon so a prince will be obliged to marry her, she runs away to the forest, where she lives happily until her clothes start falling apart. So, in need of money to buy a new dress, she goes and gets a job in another palace, living in disguise as an ordinary girl. Where she meets a prince – but I’ll leave some plot to those who want to read it.

The style of writing makes for a truly luscious fairytale, and the black and white line-drawn illustrations by the author are very pretty too (just the right side of twee). Plot-wise, this book is strongest in its treatment of Amy’s interaction with Crustacea, her Godmother, who is practical, warm-yet-tough, and advises her to get on with it.

It’s weakest – in my humble socialist opinion – when our girl loves every minute of working insane hours on the lowest rungs of the servant-ladder. C’mon, girlie, you’ve worked out it’ll take you roughly a year to earn enough to buy a new dress. Aren’t you a bit annoyed at the sucky pay? Also: the insinuation throughout the book that freckles and an upturned nose make someone undateable got on my nerves quite a bit. Freckles can be well hot, and don’t get me started on pixie faces…

(Interestingly, each book I’ve looked at for these posts has often pushed an idea of what a typical beautiful princess looks like, but none of them quite match.)

I was a little disappointed in how conventionally the ends got tied up, but I suppose how the plot came to be is more important than what came to be. Our girl has agency, there’s no doubt about it. And there’s nothing wrong with a happy ending.

Princess Pigsty

• By Cornelia Funke and Kerstin Meyer, Chickenhouse, 1997

In Princess Pigsty our girl is one of three sisters, who live the traditional fairytale princess life:

Their beautiful clothes filled thirty wardrobes. They had footmen to blow their noses for them and ladies-in-waiting to tidy up their rooms, hang up their clothes and polish their crowns until they shone.

Every morning, three teachers taught them royal behaviour – how to sit on a throne without fidgeting, how to curtsey without falling over, how to yawn with your mouth closed and how to smile for a whole hour without taking a break.

Isabella, the youngest, despite being perfectly capable of walking the princessy walk, is not happy, and makes her feelings known by waking up the whole castle shouting:

“I am tired of being a princess! It’s boring, boring, boring!”
Her older sisters looked up from their feather pillows in surprise.

“I want to get dirty!” cried Isabella, bouncing around on the bed. “I want to blow my own nose. I don’t want to smile all the time. I want to make my own sandwiches. I don’t want to have my hair curled ever again. I do not want to be a princess any more!”

And with that she took her crown and threw it out of the window. Splash! It landed in the goldfish pond.

In the pitched battle of wills with the King that follows, Isabella is sent to work in the kitchens until she changes her mind. When she enjoys her work in the kitchens, learning about how their food is made and essentially having too much fun to relent, she’s sent to the pigsty – where she gets along with the pigs and enjoys their company even more.

Eventually, seeing there is no way around it, her father relents and says she doesn’t have to be all princessy if she doesn’t want to – but by now our girl likes the pigs and stays in the pigsty just as often as in her feather bed.

Though no mention is made of any innate unprincessy looks (beyond curled hair), Isabella rejects her princessy role in life quite actively. While Amy of The Ordinary Princess is a failure at traditional princessy things (but isn’t that bothered about it, either) Isabella has lots of guts and lots of agency, not to mention an upbeat and cheerful nature. Eventually her father is won round. The patriarch isn’t a baddie, and – once it’s clear she’s happier that way – he accepts her as she is. Tangled, mucky and doing things that interest her. Hip-hip hooray for doing what you want! Hip-hip hooray for converting people! Hip-hip hooray for male allies!

Shrek!

• William Steig, Macmillan, 1990

Didn’t know Shrek started out as a book? It did, and it was… not a huge amount like the movie franchise. (Have the first part read to you by Stanley Tucci here, though sadly without pictures.) Shrek, in both media, is a famously revolting and ugly character, who delights in his own disgustingness (“wherever Shrek went, every living creature fled. How it tickled him to be so repulsive”) – but that’s where most of the similarities end.

The book is a very short picture book with a quest narrative. A witch tells Shrek’s fortune: “Then you wed a princess who/Is even uglier than you.” Shrek decides this sounds great, and goes off in search of this princess.

He strode in and his fat lips fell open. There before him was the most stunningly ugly princess on the surface of the planet.

When they meet they declare their love for each other’s revoltingness, and live “horribly ever after.” But if you’ve seen any of the movies, you’ll know this wasn’t quite how it went down when Dreamworks got their hands on it.

In the movie Princess Fiona (who has a name, unlike in the book) is only ugly after dark, – during the day she appears as a beautiful woman, and during the night she is an ogre, and she’s self-conscious about it. The only way to cure this is with “true love’s kiss” – and it’s initially an unpleasant surprise for her to learn that when the spell is broken she’s actually stuck with ogre mode constantly.

While the movie does feature a green monster called Shrek and an (eventually) ‘ugly’ princess – their unconventionality is treated as something they’re both self-conscious about. Fiona, especially, with all the princessy expectations heaped upon her, needs reassurance that she’s loveable.

Alhough the movie doesn’t mention weight specifically, one of the main factors of Fiona’s transformation (apart from the green skin) is that she becomes considerably heavier. Fiona is more of an everywoman – learning that she doesn’t need to be a size 8 to find love – and literally kicking ass. Caitlin Moran tracks the rewrite as part of a post-feminist trend:

In the last decade the post-feminist reaction to princesses has been the creation of alternative princesses: the spunky chicks in Shrek and the newer Disney films who wear trousers, do kung fu and save the prince.

While some cool people (I’m looking at you, Babette Cole) have been subverting these roles for a long time, it takes a while before the effect trickles down to a Hollywood blockbuster and the much wider audience that a movie like Shrek can reach.

While the original very short picture book is more about two people with unconventional values and no qualms or neuroses about them – a la The Twits or The Addams Family – the movie Shrek presents Fiona as someone extremely kickass, but with a fairly conventional narrative of body issues (though admittedly hers are mythical ones) and a postmodern self-consciousness about breaking the known conventions of the ‘fairytale’ wedding.

In this way Fiona is far more relatable (and has infintely more agency) than the nameless princess in the book, but part of me is sad that she doesn’t start with the self-assurance of our happily ugly picturebook princess. After all – if this is a world where gingerbread men can talk and cats can fence – surely we can have a princess who can just get on with her thang without worrying about being pretty enough?

Coming up next time:

• “Rapunzel’s Revenge – Fairytales for Feminists”
• Tatterhood
• The Tough Princess
• And more…

In the world of children’s books there’s a double-whammy of bad female role models and massive under-representation. There’s only one female character to every 1.6 male characters. One of the few regular traditional roles for girls in children’s literature is that of the princess, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that the traditional princess trope doesn’t give girls many positive or useful goals to aim for: look pretty, be born into or marry into hereditary privilege and… uh… that’s it. Happily ever after. Forever. Are you bored yet? I am.

Yet plenty of little girls are still obsessed with princesses and being a princess. It might not appeal much to the grown-ups, but the trope remains strong – as does the lure of pretty things. (Personally, I still have to suppress a twinge of jealousy when I see a kid going by in a really good princess dress – with the layers of skirt and the faux-stays bodice and WHERE WERE THEY WHEN I WAS SMALL, HUH? – but it’s fine. I’m not jealous. I’m writing this wearing a £3 Claire’s Accessories tiara so it’s all OK.)

So, as it doesn’t look like we’ll escape the princess trope any time soon, it’s time to play with it instead. There’s no need to throw out the castles, dragons and bling along with the bathwater – there are plenty of good children’s books out there featuring kickass princesses who do more than just wear dresses. In this post, the first of a three parter, I’m going to give you the lowdown on some good princess role models for your sprogs/selves (delete as age-appropriate).

Disclaimer before we begin:
These books are primarily working from the Western European fairy tale trope, so whilst they may kick ass, some elements remain disappointingly similar throughout – namely that the princesses are often ‘conventionally beautiful’, often blonde, always Caucasian, and in this selection the tales all revolve around the marriage trope. I hope to uncover a wider variety of ass-kicking later, but in the meantime here are some nonetheless very good children’s books.

The Paper Bag Princess

• Written by Robert Munsch and illustrated by Michael Martchenko, published in 1980 by Annick Press

The Paper Bag Princess is a short, snappy children’s book aimed at the 3-5 age group. (Click here to hear it read to you by a kindly librarian.)

The book begins with a typical princess called Elizabeth who “lived in a castle and wore expensive princess clothes”. She plans to marry Prince Ronald, but when a dragon steals away the prince and scorches all the kingdom (including all her pretty clothes) she doesn’t waste a moment: she dons the eponymous paper bag (the only unscorched thing she could wear) and goes off to rescue her man, defeating the dragon using her wits.

Munsch has explained that he wrote the book on his wife’s suggestion:

One day my wife, who also worked at the daycare centre, came to me and said “How come you always have the prince save the princess? Why can’t the princess save the prince?” I thought about that and changed around the ending of one of my dragon stories. That made the adults a lot happier, and the kids did not mind.

(Of course the kids didn’t mind – they don’t have such strong pre-conceived ideas of narrative yet!)

But as well as the princess doing the rescuing, there’s also a brilliant message about self-esteem and moving on. The Prince, once rescued, turns out to be an ungrateful asshat, telling Elizabeth off for looking a mess: “Come back when you look like a real princess.” Upon hearing this the princess doesn’t get upset or angry. She tells the prince, “Your clothes are really pretty and your hair is very neat. You look like a real prince but you are a bum.” (or a toad if you have the UK version). The final line – “they didn’t get married after all” – is illustrated with the Paper Bag Princess dancing off into the sunset.

This book is a brilliant, simple primer for just about everyone. It teaches people that being brave, smart and kind are more important than how you look – and that when someone is mean to you, you can be the bigger person walk away. That’s a double-helix of kickass for all genders, packed into a very short picture book.

Princess Smartypants

• Written and illustrated by Babette Cole, pub. Hamish Hamilton 1986

Babette Cole has done a lot of awesome for children’s literature. Her drawings are warm, funny and just more than a bit gorgeous, and she’s also subverted Cinderella in Prince Cinders (and done plenty more amazing children’s books, but I’ll focus on this one.)

(Once again, you can have this book read to you on YouTube.)

Princess Smartypants (Best. Name. Ever.) is content with her own life: “She enjoyed being a Ms. Because she was pretty and rich, all the princes wanted her to be their Mrs.” Ten points to Cole for slipping in the Miss/Ms/Mrs thing in a fairly small, light way. Minus ten for having a princess who is both pretty and blonde.

However, wanting to put an end to the constant stream of suitors once and for all, Princess Smartypants says she will marry whoever can accomplish all the tasks she sets. This is where it gets badass – her tasks show her interests: gardening (an extreme sport when you see the slugs); feeding her monster pets; roller disco; motorbike riding – you get the idea. Princess Smartypants is accomplished, independent, and happy getting up to the stuff she enjoys.

Eventually Prince Swashbuckle does manage all the tasks, so this is where Princess Smartypants uses her plothammer card and turns him into a toad. Grumpy toad prince drives away in his red sports car, and no princes bother her again. (My plot spill is nothing without the illustrations – for the love of God, READ THIS BOOK.)

As with The Paper Bag Princess, the final frame page of this book combines the news that the protagonist doesn’t get married with an illustration of her looking very happy – in this instance, on a sun lounger, toasting the audience with a glass of something, and surrounded by her monster pets.

The message from both of these books is that you can create your own happily ever after.

The Practical Princess

• From The Practical Princess And Other Liberating Fairy Tales by Jay Williams, Scholastic 1978

Princess Bedelia is given common sense as a baby by a visiting fairy (the other two fairies bestow the more expected gifts of beauty and grace), despite her father’s complaint of “What good is common sense to a princess? All she needs is charm.”

However, when a hungry dragon demands Bedelia to eat and a dragon slayer can’t be found soon enough, the King and his advisors decide they’ll have to give her over to be eaten. Our girl takes control of her own fate with a kind of weary resignation when she realises no one else is up to the task. She makes a dummy from straw and one of her finest gowns, and stuffs it with gunpowder. Bye bye dragon.

When a powerful but age-inappropriate and unwanted suitor turns up, Bedelia sets him near-impossible tasks using her extensive knowledge of the surrounding kingdoms – and uses her sense to catch him out when he cheats. When our girl winds up in a tower with a male Rapunzel/Sleeping Beauty-type prince, she uses her common sense to undo the spell he is under, and rescue them both.

This story isn’t my favourite of the lot – I found the heroine very slightly prissy, and the details and language didn’t really warm my cockles. However, the moral of the story is pretty much ‘don’t panic, keep thinking, you’ll find a solution’, and ain’t no arguing with that. Hip-hip hooray for brains!

The Wrestling Princesss

• From The Wrestling Princess and Other Stories, written by Judy Corbalis, illustrated by Helen Craig, 1986, pub. Andre Deutsch

The Wrestling Princess takes place in a world where some gender roles are set in stone, but some are very altered. Princess Ermyntrude is either wrestling the guards or covered in axle grease, working on her tractors and helicopters – but the King tells her she has to find a husband for the succession. The princess’s resistance and her father’s weary insistence make for a good introduction to the debate on succession. Also, Ermyntrude’s father naming the ‘feminine’ traits she needs sets them up to be deconstructed/dismissed:

“To get a husband you must be enchantingly beautiful, dainty and weak,” said the king.
“Well, I’m not,” said Ermyntrude cheerfully. “I’m nothing to look at, I’m six feet tall and I’m certainly not weak. Why, Father, did you hear, this morning I wrestled with sixteen guards at once and I defeated them all?”
“Ermyntrude!” said the king sternly, as he rethreaded his needle with No. 9 blue tapestry cotton. “Ermyntrude, we are not having any more wrestling and no more forklift trucks either. If you want a husband you will have to become delicate and frail.”
“I don’t want a husband,” said the princess and she stamped her foot hard.

The ensuing prince/groom casting-call both plays to some gender norms (it’s a rule that the prince must be taller than her) and some non-norms (the prince must be able to match her in a face-pulling contest).

This princess does eventually get married, but to a short prince who has a shared love of mechanics and loves her for who she is, and vice versa.

“You’re too short,” said the king.
“He’s not,” said the princess.
“No, I’m not, I’m exactly right and so is she,” said Prince Florizel. “Then when I saw her pulling faces and shouting insults and throwing princes to the ground I knew she was the one person I could fall in love with.”
“Really?” asked the princess.
“Truly,” said Prince Florizel. “Now, come and see my mechanical digger.”

In this book, unlike the previous two, marriage doesn’t turn out to be a thing to be avoided – provided it’s with the right person. This story is about deconstructing the existing framework of helpless princesses and dashing princes – and it also becomes about two quirky, likeable people meeting and falling in love. And falling in love is totally punk rock.

Honourable mention: The Practical Princess

• Written by Rebecca Lisle, illustrated by Joëlle Dreidemy, pub. Andersen 2008

I actually picked this one up by accident when friends were singing the praises of the other Practical Princess book (see above) – but I thought it would be worth comparing and contrasting these different practical princesses.

This book is far more recent than most on this list (the others all being from the 1980s), and it is not particularly feminist, but it does play with the trope a little.

Having read it, I’m not quite sure why this one has the name: Molly, our protagonist, is only a bit practical and she’s not actually a princess. Molly is an ordinary (read: extraordinarily beautiful, but non-royal) girl who wants to be a princess, so she enters a casting-call to find Prince Percival a bride. Her farmer parents help her by making and buying pretty clothes and shoes at great expense, and her lovely boyfriend Stan makes her a crown.

That’s right, she has a boy back home who loves her already, and – though he doesn’t want her to go – he helps her because she has her heart set on becoming a princess. He even drives her to the competition. POOR LOVELY STAN.

I don’t want to go overboard in my criticisms/analysis of children’s books here (not like the Freudian interpretation of The Cat in the Hat – no, that would be silly) but ignoring her current relationship is massively problematic for me. As is the remarkably unsisterly attitude Molly displays towards the other (real) princesses in the competition. They’re all painted as vacuous fashion victims, but I find this attitude in the writing to be uncharitable and a little lazy – as if the other competitors’ one-dimensionality will add more depth to the protagonist by default.

That said, to give her her due, our girl does realize over the course of the book that there isn’t much to recommend becoming royalty and that Stan back home is kinder and cuter than Prince Percival. When the glass slippers moment happens, Molly sticks her toes out so the shoe doesn’t fit, and defenestrates herself to escape back to her old life and lovely, long-suffering Stan.

The plus points for this book are it has a trajectory which begins in the same place as a lot of the readers (‘I’m not a princess but I want to be one’), and the conclusion – that riches and status are hollow compared to people who really care about you – is pretty universal and good. I just wish there’d been less mention of tiny waists throughout the book (no girl ever needs more indoctrination on that shit) – and our protagonist doesn’t really ‘kick ass’ so much as ‘avoids falling into the same traps as the other women.’

Also: poor Stan! You’re not good enough for him, Molly. I’ll take him off your hands.

• There will be more kickass and subversive princesses from children’s books in future articles. Hannah has a few on the list, but if there are any you think she should know about/make sure she doesn’t miss then let us know in the comments section!