In Part I, we saw that George Gilder was the main influence on Geoff Dench’s work, convincing him that ‘patriarchal exaggeration of men’s importance obscures the deeper power of women.’ For Dench, the fairy tale of The Frog Prince was an allegory of this. Reading the old fairy tales, he said, showed him
‘how much feminism has done to denigrate and drive further below the surface of consciousness…that whoever may look and think that he is playing the important part, it is women who exercise the underlying powers and who usually ensure that social purposes are achieved or moralities upheld.’