more immediate concerns. Each storyteller makes the story his or her own, and this marriage of speaker and story is an important communicative component in the fairy tale. The fairy tale is a living entity in the sense that it grows and changes, but when it is written down, it lives in a different sort of way. It stops changing, for one thing, and it stays in a specific form that becomes the accepted version of the story. The story starts out with a life of its own, and it ends by being written down and maintained in one specific form thereafter. It joins a canon of fairy tales, and just as the story is then set, so are the values that are associated with a given story.
The fairy tale "Molly Whuppie" is not very well-known, but it lends itself well to a feminist analysis. Molly is the heroine of the tale and shows considerable abilities and cleverness, but at the same time her activities demonstrate an understanding of the way females are acculturated in her society. Molly is given a prominent role by the king, and the king represents the male p
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