When assaulted by sexual knowledge for the first time, a girl plunges into a period of blackness, which is required in order to let her emotions catch up with her body.Sleeping Beauty sleeps. Cinderella waits, and while she waits she works her way through the darkness of depression. Snow White both works and sleeps before she is ready to open her eyes and find a Prince leaning over her.
Joan Gould, Spinning Straw into Gold: What Fairy Tales Reveal About the Transformations in a Woman's Life
analysis, fairy-tales, girls, puberty, sexuality, sleep, sleeping-beauty