Rewriting Sleeping Beauty: A Feminist and Narrative Analysis of Disney’s Maleficent (2014) and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019) as Contemporary Adaptations.

Abstract

Using a feminist rereading of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, this study investigates how Disney’s Maleficent and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil question conventional gender roles, power relations, and narrative structures. Tracing the patriarchal roots of traditional fairy tales and analyzing how modern versions challenge these conventions by reframing justice, motherhood, and female agency are the main focuses of this work. The main goal of this study is to examine the ideological shifts enabled by Maleficent, especially in regard to how the title character is portrayed as a multifaceted hero rather than a flat antagonist. The approach combines feminist theory, adaptation studies, and visual analysis to explore narrative and cinematic devices that reinterpret power, kinship, and morality. Intersectional feminist critiques, Barbara Creed’s notion of the “monstrous-feminine,” and Linda Hutcheon’s adaptation theory are important frameworks informing this research. The results imply that Maleficent emphasises female sovereignty, chosen kinship, and restorative justice, thereby subverting conventional fairy tale clichés. The films promote non-biological motherhood as feminist resistance, prioritise reconciliation over violence, and replace moral absolutes with complex ambiguity. These narrative and visual strategies reflect broader cultural dialogues on trauma, gender politics, and collective empowerment. In essence, this dissertation contributes to current debates on female narratives in modern media. Maleficent demonstrates how fairy tale adaptations can serve as powerful vehicles for cultural critique and ideological transformation, offering new classic story. paradigms of power, identity, and representation through the critical rereading of a