Once Upon a Time: Rewriting Transformation, Identity, and Resistance in Selected Fairy Tales and Realist Literature Works

Fairy tales have always promised transformation—rags to riches, beast to prince, struggle to reward. But beneath their well-worn endings lie contradictions, moments of quiet defiance where characters push against the boundaries of their worlds. Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast seem to celebrate patience and virtue, yet their symbols—the guiding birds, the enchanted rose—hint at something more complex: the possibility of choice, of agency even in the face of restriction. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) takes this tension further, stepping beyond the familiar comfort of fairy-tale resolutions. Edna Pontellier’s story does not offer the promise of “happily ever after” but instead lingers in uncertainty, resisting the closure that so often defines traditional narratives. Similarly, Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady (1923) presents Marian Forrester as a woman who does not conform to romanticized ideals, challenging the expectations placed upon her. This study explores how these texts reflect both conformity and the desire for reinvention, drawing on postmodern critiques such as Jean-François Lyotard’s challenge to grand narratives. Through the lens of transformation and identity, these stories remind us that endings are rarely neat, that narratives—like the people who tell and live them—are always shifting, always searching for something more.