On Beauty, Body and Becoming

This book offers a distinctive feminist perspective on the female body and beauty ideology in fairy tale rewritings through critical readings of Tanith Lee's fairy tales in her collection Red as Blood, or, Tales from the Sisters Grimmer (1983). It provides a brief historical framework from ancient times onwards, focusing on the female body and beauty, and proceeds with the feminist transformation of fairy tales over time. After noting British author Tanith Lee's feminist approach and narrative strategies, the book indicates, through the feminist analyses of the stories in the collection, that Lee reclaims the female body from the passive role it plays in classic fairy tales and replaces it as a site of resistance, transformation and agency. As such, the book appeals to undergraduates, researchers, professionals, and anyone who is interested in cultural studies, literary studies, the humanities, and sociology, particularly fairy tales and gender studies.