MovieChat Forums > Sleeping Beauty (1959) Discussion > Why does Aurora get so much hate?

Why does Aurora get so much hate?


I think she's easily the best of the three original princesses. People always complain about how she's asleep most of the movie (not her fault) and needs a man to save her (also not her fault). But on the other hand, she's easily more smart and intuitive than Snow (clearly realizing her aunts are up to something when they ask her to go pick berries - while taking food from a sinister-looking stranger after explicitly being told not to even open the door isn't kindhearted; it's just stupid. Snow could have said a polite, "No, thank you.")

Aurora also is shown to be obedient and helpful, sensitive (reflecting alone in the forest how she wants to fall in love), an animal-lover, good-natured, loving toward her aunts and very thankful of their birthday party for her, charmingly shy (she didn't put on some brazen flirtatious air with Phillip), but also down-to-earth enough not to play haughty and hard-to-get with him, inviting him over later. She also has more of a reason to fall in love with Phillip than I believe either of the other princesses had, thus making her seem at least a shred more levelheaded and realistic. They had a good time singing and dancing together and clearly had an immediate connection, having dreamed of each other before; he wasn't just some hot prince (AND she's the only one who didn't know the guy she'd just met was a prince, also absolving her of any kind of gold-digging or snobby, status-seeking allegations).

My main beef with Snow is her naivete masquerading as kindheartedness, and my main problem with Cinderella is her lack of self-respect masquerading as grace (and that her story sends the message that landing a rich husband will solve all your woes - Aurora and Snow didn't need a man's money like Cinderella did; they both would have been queen eventually anyway).

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Leonard Hofstetter seemed to like Aurora.

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I think it has to do with the fact that Aurora is one of the most feminine Disney Princesses, and is not a strong-willed character, and to be honest, Philip is the hero in the story, not her. That grinds the gears on a lot of feminists, particularly the ones too stupid to realize this movie was made in the 1950s, when people had different views and expectations of how women were to look and behave. On top of that, Aurora lives in Medieval Europe, which makes it doubly clear what kind of woman she would be.

Frankly, if people don't like a movie, they shouldn't watch it.

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Sleeping Beauty is my favorite Disney animated film. It’s glorious and the classical music is great!

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SwanPride nails it IMO in her blog Honoring the Heroine:

"Aurora is often considered the weakest of the Disney princesses. And I can see why. She doesn’t fight, she has barely any screen-time and not much of an agenda. Point is, though: Aurora is not the protagonist of the movie. She is the title character, and in most cases the title character is also the protagonist, but that is not a prerequisite. Aurora is not the heroine of the story, she is the McGuffin. Every single character in the movie wants either to destroy or to protect her.

And yet, I like her. While she doesn’t really have that much screen-time, the time she has is enough for me to get a sense for her character. She is a little bit of a loner (because she grew up in isolation), and a dreamer. She can get lost in a fantasy easily. But she is not stupid. She knows exactly that her “aunts” are up to something when they send her out to pick berries. She is also responsible enough to invite the “stranger in the woods” to her own cottage for the second meeting, and never makes a secret of her intending to pursue a relationship with him. I also think that it is quite cute how she changes her answer to Phillip from “never” to “maybe someday” to “no, not tomorrow, this evening”. All in all, it is easy to relate to Aurora."

https://swanpride.wordpress.com/2014/12/06/honoring-the-heroine-aurora/

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