Sam's Online Journal

At first glance, the story of Cinderella reads like a true “happily ever after” tale about a girl who rises from oppression and the underclass to become a princess and have everything she could have ever wanted. She gets the man of her dreams, who just happens to also be a prince, and rich, and apparently extremely good looking too. What are the odds? But let’s dig a little deeper and see what we find in this tale.

First off, the one we hear Disney tell is not the original from Grimm’s Faerie Tales. Instead it has been prettied up to avoid most of the gruesome nature of that tale, and to make it more suitable as reading material for the young and young at heart. The infamous glass slipper was not in fact glass (it was golden), there was no fairy godmother (it was a pair of magical birds instead), and we get some mutilation as part of the original tale that does not factor into the Disney version.

But I think children would learn a lot more from the original tale, even if it frightens them at first. And maybe adults would learn a lot more as well.

First off, Cinderella’s mother dies, but instead of mourning she spends all of her time being kind and overly optimistic in the face of hard times and a lack of appreciation from the people who were supposed to be closest to her. Her father completely ignores her, preferring to call her the serving wench instead of his daughter, and he marries a woman who is by all accounts horrid to the girl. He much prefers his two stepdaughters, who aren’t ugly at all on the outside, but who are completely black and evil on the inside.

Which is when the real story begins, or at least when the real begging begins. Continue reading “That Glass Slipper”