She Were Treading on Sharp Knives and Pricking Gimlets

I am currently using color photography to explore the ideas behind the original oral fairy tales, how they changed as they became written tales, and how those tales have affected our culture, society, gender roles and expectations today. I’m using as inspiration the text from volumes of fairy tales that I had at my grandparents’ house when I was growing up and creating modern images based on the ideas behind those tales. She Were Treading on Sharp Knives and Pricking Gimlets is inspired by Hans Christen Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid”, which tells the story of a woman who leaves behind home and family to pursue the love of a stranger. She will trade her tail for legs and be able to live on land, but she will lose her voice and each step she takes on her new human feet will be excruciatingly painful. Andersen tells how each night she slips away to go to the dock and soak her burning feet in the ocean, but she carries on, silently suffering for the love of a man who merely allows her adoration because she is beautiful, but does not return her love. It is a tale of sacrifice and loss, and explores the very personal decisions we all make for our loves, lives, and futures. By combining the ideas behind the canonized tales with these images, I’m trying to explore how they relate to our societal ideas of gender and relationships. I see a connection between this tale and the modern wife, the woman who sacrificed her own identity to become a possession as opposed to a partner.