Cinderella
Cinderella is humble and uninterested in fancy things. When her father remarries her stepmother, the stepmother treats her poorly, but doesn’t make her do chores: Cinderella takes this upon herself, to have something to do and to keep the house running. When her fairy godmother arrives, she asks to be taken to the ball because it’s what’s expected of her, and takes a while to realize that being with the prince, and being a member of high society, is not what she wants. She goes with the flow and does what is expected of her, but gains some agency at the end of her story when she realizes that what she really wants is to be with the faery godmother.
Thumbelina
Thumbelina is unhappy with her life and longs for a better one, because her parents do not love her and she feels stifled by her home. When she falls in love and gets married, she believes that her husband will bring her happiness and freedom, but she gradually realizes that being married to him is another form of being trapped, because he keeps her on the estate and prohibits her from exploring. While pregnant, she nurses a bird back to health, and the bird gives her the inspiration to leave her husband and seek freedom elsewhere: by becoming Cinderella’s fairy godmother. She longs for freedom and eventually finds it.
Belle
Belle longs for adventure and dismisses the expectations of others. She laments the fact that she was born a woman, when she arrives at the Beast’s castle, she resists the Beast’s efforts to make her fall in love with her, and when she goes back to the castle, she resists her family’s expectations for her. She doesn’t show emotions easily, but eventually she warms to people.
Snow White
Snow White is a deeply caring person. She yearns for a better relationship with her stepmother and tries to care for her, even after she sees her true nature. Even after meeting the dwarves and making a home with them, she continues to think of her stepmother, until she is poisoned by her and decides to walk away from the dwarves, return home, and make her peace with her stepmother.
The stepmother
The stepmother is extremely ambitious and longs to rise above her station as a maid. She impersonates a princess so that she can marry well, and threatens the true princess and kills her horse when she feels threatened by it. She continues to strive for a higher station after her first husband dies, when she marries Snow White’s father and becomes a queen yet again.
Rapunzel
Rapunzel longs for freedom, asking her mother to build her a tower and dreaming of running away with her prince. She is extremely naïve because of her time in the tower, however, and as she gets older, realizes the harm that the outside world can cause. She ends up staying with her mother because of that.
The girl from The Tale of the Brother
She resents being born a girl, and is angry that her brother gets opportunities that she doesn’t. She loves him in spite of this, and when he’s taken away by a strange woman, she tries to hunt him down. She becomes very brave when looking for him, and travels to dangerous parts of her city in the dead of winter, along with confronting a dangerous witch, to do so.
The girl from The Tale of the Spinster
She thinks very little of herself because her mother despises her, and constantly criticizes her weaving abilities. She’s left stranded when her mother dies and panics about how she can get her weaving done. However, she’s also very efficient and finds someone to help her with the weaving, and figures out how to market her skills to the rest of her community. She doesn’t understand the consequences of her actions, however, which is how Rumpelstiltskin comes to so easily take away her baby.
Gretel
Gretel is developmentally disabled and has trouble understanding her circumstances, but loves her family. She wants to get away from poverty, however, which is why she stays with the witch at the end of her story.
The girl from The Tale of the Skin
She is very naïve because she leads a sheltered life as a princess. When her father goes mad and initially mistakes her as her mother, she goes along with her advisors’ suggestions and humors her father. Eventually, she runs away, and leads a passive life on the run. She gradually becomes angrier, however, and when the king rejects her, returns home to the witch who saved her as a child.
Sleeping Beauty
She also leads a sheltered life, because her parents protect her from experiencing anything negative in life. She does no work and never leaves the castle, and gradually becomes frustrated with this and yearns for something more. Her curiosity and unhappiness leads her to discover the witch with the spinning wheels in the attic, and she eventually devotes her life to spinning.
Ariel
Ariel wishes blindly for a better life and does so without reason or foresight, which leads to her giving up her voice to a witch to be with a man who she’s never spoken to. Her naiveté gets the better of her when she realizes that the man likes to sleep around, and she returns home when the witch tells her that her family missed her. When she returns home she realizes what she missed by being away, and learns to be content with what she once had.
The witch from The Tale of the Kiss
She was driven into becoming a witch by need. She is barren and has no family, and so she hides in the caves. Eventually the townspeople come to her with their problems, but she leads a passive life, helping the townspeople but having little emotional investment in them. This changes when she is visited by a local girl and her parents, on separate occasions, as she feels drawn to the girl romantically.
