Sandy and her beautiful sisters * A modern fairy tale analysis Sandy and her beautiful sisters, is the title of an English short story by Antonia Fraser, which centres on the life of the protagonist sandy. Throughout the story we experience Sandy’s journey from a static character with a monotonous and unhappy life to a more dynamic and happy character.
The story is a modern fairy tale with a lot of similarities with the classic fairytale Cinderella, but with a more different vision on gender roles. Some of the aspects of sandy and her beautiful sisters that characterizes it; Are for example the catch phrase - once upon a time... which often are to be find within fairy tales. Furthermore we can find several other indicators such as: the number three (a three point plan, three sisters, three kinds of cherry and three different kinds of flowers in a vast basket) and symbolic names (Mrs. Fairey and Sam Prince). The author deliberately uses those characteristics to make us think of fairy tales and thus Cinderella, because sandy and her beautiful sisters have a more modern theme and moral than the original.
Cinderella’s (the Charles Perrault (and Disney) version) preaches the moral that beauty in a woman is a rare treasure that will always be admired. Graciousness, however, is priceless and of even greater value. Young women, in the winning of a heart, graciousness is more important than a beautiful hairdo. Without it nothing is possible; with it, one can do anything. The moral in sandy and her beautiful sisters however focuses a lot more of how happiness is defined and what you are going to do with your life. For example does the story end with the sentence “...And the third had everything she wanted out of her life” it stands in contrast with Cinderella where the protagonist finds the prince and they live happily ever after. In Sandy and her beautiful sisters are sandy not looking for her “prince”, but towards being independent; that particularly vision of happiness would not have been looked nicely upon some years ago – especially as a woman.
A woman’s, at the time Cinderella was written, most important role was to make a good wife in ways such as cleaning, cooking and generally taking care of the practically stuff at home. And of course having kids and watching over them. The man however, was the one who earned for the families living. In sandy and her Beautiful sisters do the male characters play a very small role, and all attention is almost centred at Sandy. Sandy cleans and cooks for her sisters, just as a woman would have done for her husband some decades of years ago, so the sisters do in some kind represent men. Sandy takes her life in her own hands and put herself over her sisters – the men – and becomes happy.

By comparing the two fairytales we clearly see that another ongoing theme is the gender roles – differences between men and woman. Sam Prince does for example describe Sandy as a Botticelli; Botticelli is one of the most popular painters from the French renaissance. He was very well known for his portrayal of the female figure. Most of Botticelli’s women had the typical hourglass figure to them. During the time most of his paintings were created women with that kind of physical characteristics were considered to be the ideal feminine figure. These women were considered to be ideal because during this era, flesh was a symbol of health, wealth, and stability. So when Sandy is described as being plumb earlier in the story, is the author taking a really common topic up – beauty ideals.
I will interpret all this as the author being quite sceptical about how some of the older fairy tales present woman and/or men role in society, as it is changed reasonably enough to make huge differences between our realities now and then. The author seems positive with women’s individuation and more equality in gender roles.
The whole idea of the story is however to make sure you are happy, even though you are not following the norms of society.