Stories 'with the Characters Reversed': Children's Opinions of Feminist Children's Stories in Early Education

Abstract

The study presented investigates the understanding of feminist literature by preschool children in a Spanish school. To carry out the research, semi-structured interviews with 65 students were performed, in order to discuss the story, The Paper Bag Princess. The data analysis was conducted under a poststructuralist lens, using the cultural matrix of gender as a tool for analysis. This document collects the results obtained from the following categories of analysis: emphasis on female beauty, discourse of romantic love, comparison with traditional stories (category maintenance work) and alternative discourses of femininity. The findings of the study indicate that boys and girls use two different strategies when coming in contact with feminist tales: comparing the feminist story to the, hitherto, considered ‘correct’ or natural order and correcting every element that challenged the structures of the cultural matrix.