When initially given the critical research paper assignment in class, it was genuinely hard to pick a topic because none of the prompts genuinely spoke to me at first glance. Upon discussing it with a few classmates, it seemed that many people in the class were choosing their own topics. Hesitant on pulling something that could be risky, I sat down with my laptop at 2 am and did a bit of research on each prompt, and learned that there was a lot I could play with in terms of Freud in fairy tales. However, I specifically chose the Freud in fairy tales because I could do something new with it- analyze a specific portion in an array of stories as opposed to being confined to one work of literature as many of the people who chose their own topics were.

However, doing this topic on evil mothers in fairy tales was slightly tough due to the lack of it being done before, at least not to my knowledge or anywhere on the internet. I struggled a lot trying to form a topic proposal on what I wanted to write specifically, and began to question whether I should pick another portion to psychoanalyze in fairy tales or to just do another topic all together. I waited until four hours before the deadline, and used the pressure to my advantage. I jotted down all of my ideas on the Freud in fairy tales, and the Freud in analyzing the evil mother in Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, and even some ideas on Rumplestiltskin, Sleeping Beauty and a few others. I found that the theme of evil mothers were prevalent in Snow White and Hansel and Gretel, and both stories had the theme of the protagonist(s) being forced to leave their home. I settled on these two stories and wrote out a topic proposal, and was eventually very happy with how it came out.

The next battle was finding sources, which I dare to say was not nearly as hard for me as it was for my peers. Analyzing mothers in specific opened up the door to feminist theory, which I’ve previously researched, and I was familiar with the work of Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert, as well as other authors that investigated feminism in literature. I settled with their work because I was acquainted with it in the past, and had the online version of a sample of the book already installed. Aside from the convenience, I was able to fit Gubar and Gilbert’s ideas very nicely with the individual and society requirement of the essay in Snow White. I was also given the introduction to Bettelheim’s work on The Uses of Enchantment, and decided to purchase the full book and use certain parts of that applied to the fairy tales I was discussing.

I then formed a very detailed outline of every single thing I wanted to discuss. I discussing the parent child relationship in Snow White, the effect of the individual and society in Snow White,  the parent child relationship in Hansel and Gretel, and the effect of the individual in society in Hansel and Gretel, with Freudian topics meshed in each paragraph. Afterwards, I was able to fluently write an essay since a lot of the work was in the outline itself, and revised many portions of what I thought I really needed to develop my thesis to cut down on my essay since it was over the word count.

The overall process of writing the essay was only difficult in the stages that required the thinking and analysis. I really wanted to show my analytical skills as much as possible with this paper, and that is one characteristic I want my paper to exemplify.