THE CHILDREN’S STORY AND THE VALUES: “PULGARCITA” FROM C. ANDERSEN

Abstract

This work aims to confront the image of women in the nineteenth century that showed in an Andersen´s tale, with the image showed by mass media in the XXI century: women as an object. Comparing both representations will allow us to identify two stereotypes of women with different values. From a theoretical-methodological perspective, we will use the notional field of social representations (Raiter 2010). We propose reading, reflection and analysis of a traditional tales to teenagers and children in order they can think several issues: the concept of women varies historically, values change according to space and time, traditional tales have much to tell us about who we are and what we think and, finally, from the point of view of existentialist philosophy, mass media have turned women into an object, a thing that is consumed, depersonalizing her. We think that from a literary piece, we could delight – teachers and students - with the beauty of a traditional tale, and also acquire cultural heritage knowledge which is transmitted and lasts through authors who use as a substance of their art, the most precious of the human society. We will explain briefly the theoretical assumptions concerning children´s stories and we will recover Buber´s and Jaspers’ existentialist proposal, relevant issues for the analysis of “Pulgarcita” (Thumbelina). Finally, we argue in favor of reading this text to reflect on the values associated with this fantastic story about women and their relationships with others, contrasting it with the image of modern woman.