Shame: Reinterpreting the Beauty and the Beast Fairytale from a Feminist Perspective

Abstract

Feminism is a broad subject, which has many divisions and debates within itself. The genre Feminist fairy tale will be focused in this paper. After the theoretical discussion, the novel Shame will be analyzed in the light of feminist fairy tale. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which the novel Shame has reinterpreted the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale. Salman Rushdie has attempted to reconfigure this fairy tale in the novel, which rewrite respectively the tale of Beauty and the Beast. In the theoretical part of my research, I begin by reviewing the history of feminism and feminist criticism. This part will cover fairy tales from a feminist perspective. There is a small discussion of a few primary fairy tale texts written by women and feminist theorizing about fairy tales. Then there is an interpretation of Rushdie's novel in the light of feminist fairytale genre and discuss his effort to reconfigure the feminist fairy tale genre in Shame. Last but not the least, the conclusion of the paper will give an overview of the whole research.