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The fairytale I like is Mulan. This tale is most popularly known as a Disney story. The shortened Disney version tells about a girl who goes to war for her father and disguises herself as a man, because if she goes as a female, she will be killed. She goes to war, saves China, and lives happily ever after with the Captain. This tale started as a poem “written during the Northern Dynasties (AD 420-589)” (Angela Kuo, Mulan FAQ website). About a thousand years later, “the story was expanded into a novel during the late Ming (AD 1368-1644) Dynasty” (Kuo). Another film version of Mulan “was the 1960 opera The Lady General Hua Mu Lan…” (Kuo). In this version, she wants to fight in the war for two reasons: to save her father, and she’s patriotic. Her father knows of her going off to war instead of him, and is superior to the other soldiers. She becomes wounded in battle and throws off the other soldiers and “insists she would rather die than remove her armor” (Kuo). No one finds out until after the war that she is a woman. The reason why I enjoy this fairytale is because it is a female going after what she believes in, and not a male. The fairytale I never particularly enjoyed was Sleeping Beauty, at least, until I read the more interesting, earlier version written by Andrew Lang.
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