The text discusses the folk-tale princess as a good role model for both children and adults, from a feminist debate concerning this issue. Also an iconographic study, it compares women in folk-tale illustrations with women represented in fin-de-Siècle art concentrating on the Great mother goddess and the femme fatale, finding similarities between folk-tale illustrations and other art. Besides that, the text look at the interest for Swedish folk-tales in the 1890´s, the connection between women as illustrators of children’s books and ideas about nature and womanhood that might have had influence on the Swedish artist Elsa Beskow at the time.