Fairytale Feminism

Although all fairytales can be read with feminist criticism in mind, I would like to address what Hart and Gilbert refer to as "mythic conventions." (3) This semester I am taking a Grimm fairytale course, and we have recently read the Grimm version of "Sleeping Beauty." The Disney version that most of us saw as children is what I believe Ruthven is referring to when saying the typical story line of a fairytale is one with a passive princess who awaits her prince to awaken her. Here she is represented as symbolically dead without a man in her life.
However, in the Grimm version that theclass just read, it is questionable that the young woman even needed the young man to awaken her. There is no mention that a kiss is needed to wake her, and the young man does not arrive to bring her back to life before the designated time before her awakening is scheduled. She is to sleep for 100 years and he arrives just at those 100 years are up. I am not sure what to make of this. Jack Zipes believes that Disney saw women as helpless without men (comatose) and wrote his versions with that in mind. My question is, did Disney's versions portray women as more reliant on men and was it because of the culture of America at the time, or have fairytales always portrayed women as creatures that are living in comatose state without a male figure? (think about evil characters that were women as well)