Lovely Disney Princess

"the Pocahontas perplex emerged as a controlling metaphor in the American experience"
"Both her nobility as a princes and her savagery as a Squaw are defined in terms of her relationship with male figures."
Rayna Green: The Pocahontas Perplex

Green opens her essay by telling an interesting, yet evidently true and representative story of the romance between an Indian princess and a white man. The Europeans viewed the native people unjustly, and falsely categorized into unrealistic stereotypes. The Native American women, as Green states in her essay, has been unfairly classified and stereotyped. They are either being portrayed as a loving, pure, and romantic princess, or as an evil, filthy, and lustful squaw.

The Europeans described the Natives as barbarous and uncivilized, somewhat relates to "squaw". Until Miss Liberty rose above the misconceptualised ideas, "Indian woman began her symbolic, many-faceted life as a Mother figure-exotic, powerful, dangerous, and beautiful- and as a representative of American liberty and European classical virtue translated into New World terms" (Green pp 19).This is when Pocahontas and princess figure starts to appear. The Indians are no longer just savages(even though they were still considered to be barbarous in some ways by the Europeans). A slightly positive female appearance came into site.

The princess, who saves the young handsome white man against her tribe's will and tradition, is depicted often by literature and music as the innocent virgins who sacrifice themselves for their lovers, who, unsurprisingly, is usually a White Christan man. However, the seemingly noble recognition is not actually a positive transformation. As I quoted above in the first paragraph, the female identity does not independently exist without a somewhat attractive, yet heroic man figure. "But acting as a real female, she must be a partner and lover of Indian men, a mother to Indian children, and an object of lust for white men" (Green pp19). It is demeaning to think that it is because of the sexual desire that men have towards them give them a better reputation.