My daughter, like most little 5 year old girls, loves to pretend to be a princess. I am, of course, the rest of the cast of characters since my youngest is too little to repeat the lines correctly and the boys couldn't care less. I noticed the other day that Butterfly almost always prefaces the story with, "My mother is dead." You might understand why this disturbs me when she says it in such an offhand tone of voice.
I finally said, "Why does your mother always have to be dead?"
"Because princesses always have dead mothers." HUH?
I started searching my memory of princess stories. Cinderella? No. Only a nasty stepmother. Belle from Beauty and the Beast? No sign of a mom there. Jasmine? No. Only one offhand line from her father even indicating that she ever had a mother. Sleeping Beauty has a mom but she doesn't live with her or know she exists until the end of the movie. Snow White? Evil witch stepmother.
I start to think of other Disney movies: Pocohantas and Ariel don't ever seem to have had a mother. Even the animal mothers have been eliminated! Some of the mothers get shot (Bambi, Fox and the Hound). Nemo's mother even gets EATEN!
What happened to all of the mothers?! Obviously it must be a conspiracy.
Either that or I need to get out more.
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Comments: 33
I never thought of it that way either. But ya know, I never let my daughter be raised on fairy tails that she would beleive in them anyway. For several reasons.
Janna O. commented Feb 15, 2007
These ones are not princess stories either. Donald Duck's nephews Hewey, Dewey, and Louie also do not have a mother, niether does Goofy's son Max who was created much later than most of the Disney characters.
I agree with DNA's statement about bad things not happening to you if you have a mother around.
I heard that Walt Disney, once he made it big, bought his parents a new house close to the Disney studio. About a year later, his mother died from some weird furnace thing and he never got over it, and he always blamed himself for her death.
Maybe that has something to do with it, I don't know.
I guess you can't conquer evil and save the world with a normal two parent household.
I agree, being motherless (or fatherless), gives the characters more freedom to get into trouble. Otherwise there would be no story.