Taken literally, the story "Sleeping Persun of Better-Than-Average Attractiveness" from Once Upon a More Enlightened Time (James Finn Garner's second book of politically correct bedime stories) is an extremely pro-woman (or "wommon") story. It takes an absurdly radical feminist stance, to the point of describing the queen's pregnancy by saying that "her body was colonized by the seed of the exploitive monarchy" (66). In many ways, the outlandish language used in the story seems to minimalize the problems women face, but in the end the story does express a concern for women's problems in today's society and an attempt to subvert the traditional tale of Sleeping Beauty.
In his book, Once Upon a More Enlightened Time, James Finn Garner parodies the use of politically correct language. He also satirizes attempts to make children's stories no longer carry the now socially unacceptable messages the classic fairy tales apparently contain and to re-write them with modern morals. His humor eventually points to something deeper: semantics are not the problem; changing terminology is not going to make any progress in terms of really improving problems of women's percieved need for a man to be complete. This is evident in Garner's rendition of the curse and in the ending of the tale, in particular, which point to some interesting feminist issues.
The thirteenth fairy says: "May you grow up thinking you can't be complete without a man, put unrealistic hopes of perfect and total happiness on your marriage, and become a bored, dissatisfied, and unfulfilled housewife!" (68). This statement is a very good summary of the complaints feminists have made in the past about the tale of Sleeping Beauty. As a story of a woman who is forced to wait for a man to save her, she seems to represent to woman an ideal of passivity. The irony of Garner's story is that when a prince finally awakens the princess, it seems society has "advanced" to the point where people have taken on the form of political correctness. The prince, a product of his "enlightened time" realizes it would be wrong for him to see the princess as on object for him to come and claim as his; instead he respects her as a great teacher and wishes to learn from her. It seems as though the situation for women in general has improved (except for the princess who has the curse on her which keeps her from advancing beyond a dependancy upon men). Men, judging by this prince, have learned to treat women with a certain amount of respect. In fact, the prince reveres-- even worships-- the princess Rosamond, rather than merely respecting her. Society has taken the appearance of respect for women to an extreme, without actual evincing any real desire to understand women or to care for women as individuals.
The story, in the end, is a warning against taking the forms of political correctness too far without correcting the real problems of society. The prince apparently comes from a society in which women are respected and highly regarded, and yet the fundamental problems of communication and understanding between men and women have not been solved. "The prince...wanted to get in touch with his own emotions rather than hers," (75) writes the narrator. This version of Sleeping Beauty suggests that society will never improve if we continue to focus on superficial issues while ignoring the deeper, more substanitial problems of which the other issues are only a symptom.
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