With Liminality to Marriage : Rites of Passage among Women in the Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm

This paper is a study of female liminal developments in a selection of Grimm's fairy tales using van Gennep’s and Lincoln’s theoretical bases. An inductive technique has been used to analyze the results according to the theoretical agendas. To my help I have used Swedish translations of the Grimms’ fairy tales from 1883, 1946, 2003 and 2007. The study shows that the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales display the transition rituals identified by Van Gennep and Lincoln. Assumptions that the female characters in Grimm's fairy tales are representative of women in reality are treated in the paper as well as an analysis of the stories’ contents