‘Gretel’ by Garrison Keillor is a feminist reading or interpretation of the original text ‘Hansel and Gretel’. Keillor looking at the text from the perspective of feminism reveals the male ideology of the Grimm brothers. As a feminist, he questions the representation of female characters in the original text. In his reading of the original text, he finds the negative portrayal of female characters and the positive portrayal of male characters. Such representation for Keillor is the false representation. Ho not only rejects this false representation but also reverses the binary opposition between made character and female character by giving positive attributes to female characters and negative attributes to male characters.
Presenting Gretel as the narrator of writing, Keillor redraws the boundary of the original text from the perspective of feminism. Keillor begins his writing right from where the story ends. Both Hansel and Gretel agree to sell their book right to the Grimm brothers on the condition that they both would receive the profit fifty-fifty. However, Gretel under the charm of the lawyer happens to fall asleep. On her awakening, she finds the contract to have been re-written. As per the new contract, she is supposed to get a very less amount of profit. In this way, Gretel is cheated by the collaborative effort of Hansel, the Grimm brothers, and the lawyers. Beginning the writing with the episode of deception, Keillor implies how males have been cheating females in the issue of equality throughout human history.
Keillor is also critical of the binary opposition between male characters and female characters in the original text. His complaint against the Grimm brothers is that they have given positive qualities to male characters – Hansel and father- and negative qualities to female characters-Gretel, stepmother, and the witch. In the Grimm brothers’ story, Hansel is intelligent, strong, and commanding whereas Gretel is emotional, weak, and obedient. Similarly, the Grimm brothers present the father as a loving and caring person but the stepmother as a cruel woman and the witch as the wicked witch.
Keillor regards the representation of female characters in Grimm brothers writing as a false representation. He not only rejects this false representation but also turns the binary opposition between male characters and female characters upside down. With reference to Gretel’s act of slapping Hansel and carrying him on her back, Keillor suggests the image of Gretel as a strong, commanding, and intelligent person and the image of Hansel with reverse attributes. When the Grimm brothers present the father as a loving and caring person, Keillor rejects this image stating that the father was a drunkard and a gambler who loved cockfighting and bull baiting.
The step Mother is no longer cruel in the writing of Keillor. The stepmother, Keillor argues took the decision to leave the children in the forest in the time of famine because she was sure that somebody would help the children there. In that sense, the stepmother appears in the image of a loving and caring person. Even the witch appears in the image of a radical feminist in the writing of Keillor. By keeping Hansel under her control, the writer claims, the witch was trying to make a radical statement-even female can control, dominate and exploit the male.