There have been countless versions of Cinderella, thus meaning there are many different interpretations of Cinderella. One of which, by Elizabeth Panttaja, tells the story after Cinderella’s mother died. Panttaja explains how Cinderella is only successful because of the magic that her mom is giving her, but is this true? The answer is no, since there is no evidence in her mother doing all of the work in Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm’s “Ashputtle”, another version of “Cinderella”. If fact, because of her use of magic, Cinderella is a lot weaker than many people imagine. In Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm’s “Ashputtle”, the Grimm brothers tell the story of “Ashputtle”, beginning with Ashputtle’s sick mother, and Ashputtle at bedside. Before she dies, …show more content…
Ashputtle’s new step-sisters were warm and welcome on the outside, but cold and devilish on the inside always mocking Ashputtle. Ashputtle’s father goes to the fair and promises to bring each of his daughters back a gift. While the step-sisters choose dresses and jewelry, Ashputtle asks for something different. “Break off the first branch that brushes against your hat on your way home, and bring it to me” (Grimm 629) requested Ashputtle. Her rich father kept his promise, and Ashputtle placed the hazel branch over her mother’s grave, and cried to water it. The hazel branch would soon grow into a beautiful tree, and Ashputtle would weep and prey under it three times a day. Each time that Ashputtle made a wish, a little bird would throw down what she had wished for. Later on, the king had planned a celebration where his son, the prince, would choose his bride, and invited all of the beautiful girls in the kingdom to come. Ashputtle asked her step-mother if she could go to the wedding, but she said no. So Ashputtle went to her mother’s grave, and wished for a dress. Out of nowhere, the bird that hangs around the tree tossed down a magnificent gold and …show more content…
“Each time a little white bird came and perched on the tree, and when Ashputtle (Cinderella) made a wish the little white bird threw down what she had wished for.” (Grimm 629) The real Cinderella story seems to be about the death of Cinderella’s mother, but is actually about the magic tree that Cinderella gets by visiting her mother’s grave. In the Grimm’s version the two birds are the ones bringing Cinderella the dress, not a dress magically appearing out of thin air. Is Cinderella really motherless? The Grimm’s brothers clearly show that she is, since it is animals doing all of the work. “Whereupon the little bird tossed down a gold and silver dress and slippers embroidered with silk and silver.” (Grimm 630) Never once do the authors say that the mother is the reason for the birds, or the dress. Plus her mother died at the beginning of the story, and even though Cinderella visits her mother’s grave three times a day, she is still dead. Even if Cinderella’s mother is still part of her life morally, physically she is
In “Ashputtle”, the main ‘Cinderella’ character, Ashputtle, decides immediately she wants to go to a ball which the prince is throwing. She makes every effort to do so. She prepares her stepsisters while pleading with her stepmother for permission to attend. She secretly calls upon magical animals which she controls, namely birds, to perform her assigned work. When all of this fails to get her to the ball, she resorts to the use of magic again, this time to produce a stunning gown. Upon her arrival, the prince is immediately enamored with Ashputtle. Though the prince is perhaps not the brightest man, he a valuable and powerful asset for any poorer woman to be associated with. After placing the prince under the spell of her beauty and charming , Ashputtle fearlessly uses magic to inform the prince he has retrieved the wrong bride.
Cinderella is a folktale that countless people can relate to, whether they completely know it or not. As Jane Yolen argues, the tale has so many different variations, which is why it has spread across the world and become so popular. It’s popularity is with people of all ages, since the story is relatable to anything that is going on. Cinderella is the adventure of a young girl, who is treated as a servant, that has the desire to attend the ball. Her stepmother and stepsisters try to keep her as far away from that ball as possible, giving her extra work and chores to do around the house. Cinderella dreams of going to the ball, until a fairy godmother appears to help her. The fairy godmother provides everything Cinderella needs to attend the ball and feel beautiful. She warns that Cinderella must be back before midnight, or else the magic will expire and her dress, shoes, etc. will
In “Cinderella” by the Grimm Brothers, the moral is that one should never lie or be wicked to others. In the story, Cinderella’s mother passed away and a year later her father gets remarried to an evil woman who has two daughters. The wife and daughters torment Cinderella, making her complete tedious chores. Eventually, Cinderella attends a ball for the Prince and they fall in love. However, she runs away every night and he cannot find her. The Prince finally takes one of her slippers and sets out to find the love of his life. He then goes to her household and asks all the sisters to try the slipper on. The stepsisters try to deceive the Prince but “the blood was streaming from” their feet and they are eventually caught. When Cinderella tries on the shoe it fits perfectly and the two get married. At the reception, two birds peck out the stepsisters’ eyes, punishing them “with blindness as long as they lived.” The archetypes in the story are Cinderella who is the damsel in distress, the Prince who saves her and the evil stepsisters and mother who are the villains. A convention is that true love always...
Over centuries of children have been enjoying the classic fairy tales of the Grimm Brothers and Charles Perrault. The fanciful plots and the vivid details allow children to be entranced by characters and adventures that can only be found in these stories. One of the most beloved fairy tales, which both the Perrault and the Grimms have their own separate versions of, is Cinderella. Cinderella is able to show how both versions are able to feed off the same plots while personifying the century and social economic situation in which they have lived.
A young girl is forced to live with her step-mother and step-sisters after her father and mother die. She becomes the maid of the family, tending to their every need. Eventually there is a ball; she acquires a fairy Godmother, goes to the ball, falls in love with the prince, blah blah blah. All you really need to know is that she has a happy ending. A happy ending. No matter how much suffering she went through in her early years, at the end, it all came together and she had no more worries. And this is the problem. Cinderella is not realistic. It never was and never will be. Watching this movie when I was young made me believe there was a prince waiting for me somewhere. I grew up thinking that life was simple and uncomplicated, that I did not need to worry about the future because there was a man that would provide everything I wanted and needed. But as I got older, I realized this was not the case. I saw many of my friend’s parents divorce, people die, and the world fight with each other. My fantasy died off, and I realized I had to work hard for myself, and not others. The poem Cinderella by Anne Sexton made fun of the ending of Cinderella. She states, “Cinderella and the prince / lived … happily ever after … / their darling smiles pasted on for eternity. / Regular Bobbsey Twins. / That story.” (Sexton 11). Notice who she referenced and how she has a sarcastic tone. Cinderella and the prince smiled for others, trying to convince
The version in the United States is known as Cinderella. Cinderella's mother dies when she is young and her father remarries. The woman he gets married to has two daughters. They become Cinderella´s new evil stepsisters. Her sisters are jealous because she is very pretty and petite. They treat her very poorly. She is to do chores around the house and attend to every need of her stepmother and stepsisters. The Prince is having a ball and requests that every available lady in the kingdom attends. Cinderella is told by her stepmother that she can not attend the ball unless she finishes her chores. She finishes her chores and
A lot of the fairy tale stories that we have seen as young adults and even as adults are original folk tale stories that have been modified and rewritten to accommodate our new cultures. Cinderella happens to be one of these stories that have been changed over the years. There are many different versions of Cinderella, an African Cinderella, a Hungarian Cinderella and even a Chinese version. All of the Cinderella’s are similar in plot, but the author dictates the story’s theme based on the people whom he is writing for which completely changes the story’s tone, mood and other elements. While Perrault's version stresses the values and materialistic worries of his middle-class audience, Grimm’s' focus is on the harsh realities of life associated with the peasant culture. Perrault’s and Grimm’s Cinderella’s have the same plot, but their writing style is different which completely modifies the tale.
Anne Sexton’s poem “Cinderella” is filled with literary elements that emphasize her overall purpose and meaning behind this satirical poem. Through the combination of enjambment stanzas, hyperboles, satire, and the overall mocking tone of the poem, Sexton brings to light the impractical nature of the story “Cinderella”. Not only does the author mock every aspect of this fairy tale, Sexton addresses the reader and adds dark, cynical elements throughout. Sexton’s manipulation of the well-known fairy tale “Cinderella” reminds readers that happily ever after’s are meant for storybooks and not real life.
Cinderella is a fairytale for children that displayed love, loss and miracles; however, when it is further analyzed, it has a deeper meaning. Cinderella is a story about a young girl who became a servant in her own home after her father remarried a malicious woman with two spoiled daughters. She was humiliated and abused yet she remained gentle and kind. She received help from her fairy godmother to go to the prince’s ball after her stepmother rejected her proposal. Cinderella and the Prince fell madly in love but she had to leave at twelve o’clock and forgot to tell him her name but she left her glass slipper behind. He sent his servants to find her and Cinderella was the only maiden in the kingdom to fit into the shoes. She was then free from her Stepmother and married the Prince. This report will examine the key events and the main character through an anthological, psychological and sociological perspective. The story of Cinderella demonstrated gender roles and family and marriage roles, Conformity and obedience and Erick Erickson’s theory and feminist theory.
This legend is based on the Brothers Grimm parable which is one of their earliest works. In the Grimm story, the Queen is the princess’s real mother. When the queen finds out from the mirror that her daughter is more beautiful than herself, she becomes jealous and grows to hate her own daughter - who is “fairest of them all” (The Origins of Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty" 2) at only seven years old. The queen sends the huntsman to kill Snow White like in the original story, however she requests the lungs and liver of her daughter, not the heart. The huntsman lets her go mostly because he thinks the wild animals will kill her anyways. During her sojourn with the dwarfs, the queen knows she is there and makes three more attempts on her life. The dwarves manage to save her the first two times, but they conclude that she is deceased the third time, when she gets a piece poison apple caught in her throat. A prince comes along one day and falls in love with the unconscious beauty. He then proceeds to take the corpse everywhere he goes, referring to her body as “his dearest possession,” (The Origins of Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty" 3). The piece of apple is dislodged waking the princess, and she falls in love with the prince. At their wedding, the queen is forced to put on red-hot iron shoes and dance until she dies. Although this tale had a happy ending, it contains a few gory details that the Disney animation did not
The original version, published in 1812 portrays Cinderella as a poor child who lost her beloved mother; she lived a life of misery as a result of this death. Her father remarried and took on...
In Snow White, she does not serve as a servant to her stepmother, but has to escape from her envious stepmother to survive. Then she lives in the forest with seven dwarfs who take care of her after she is deserted in the forest. However, Snow White is still seduced by her stepmother three times. This shows that Snow White is vulnerable because she trusts a stranger easily. Moreover, the way Snow White gets saved by the prince is different from Cinderella because she gets saved after she was buried in a glass coffin. Her envious stepmother gets punished by fire when she attends Snow White and the Prince’s wedding. On the other hand, Cinderella lives with her stepmother and two stepsisters who mistreat her. She can’t escape from their curse and is treated as a maid. She meets the prince before she goes to the ball when he tries to steal her father’s horse. She isn’t permitted to go to the ball, but her childhood friend helps her out. She gets saved by the prince when she fits in her slipper, and her wick stepmother and older stepsister get punished by the king to work as laundry maids for the rest of their
This over exaggeration of the human imagination is what makes fairytales stand alone in their own category of fictional stories. Valerie Gokturk describes a fairytale as, “having magical things happen…talking animals… inanimate objects talking.” This can be seen through the Cinderella story as Cinderella is treated poorly by her new step-family, so in response she turns to frequently visiting her passed mother. Upon request, the father of Cinderella brings her a hazel twig to place on the mother’s grave. With the twig placed on the ground, a magical element comes into play as a hazel tree grows and produces birds that grant Cinderella wishes. This sense of magic is further seen as the tree produces a series of exquisite dresses that Cinderella wears to the prince’s ball. No tree of non-magic origin would be able to fully grow in such a short period of time, not to mention being able to spawn flawless dresses. The birds are seen as having a magical essence as Cinderella talks to them, instructing them to pick out the lentils out of the ash in the fireplace. This event can be seen as slightly more plausible; however, the fact that the birds can communicate with Cinderella places the series of events that unfold in a magical category. With the utilization of talking birds as well as a magical tree, it is clearly shown that the story of Cinderella has the essential element of magic that allows it to
Each person in the world has heard of Cinderella, no matter what kind of version it may be. Cinderella is the one fairy tale story that has been popular and will always be the one tale that has to be told to children. Words and story lines might be twist and turn, but in the end the knowledge of the story will be learned in similar ways. As we all know when one story is told another is created, when one is at its best then another is at its worse. One version will always be better than another, but no matter what version it might be the story will be told.
The narrator says this to further the idea that the character of Cinderella evolves during the entire tale. She begins being this beautiful girl to this bottom-feeder only bossed around by her own family. This is significant when the stepmother takes “her beautiful clothes away” and dresses Cinderella “in an old gray smock” with “wooden shoes” (Grimm 1). This change makes the character more vulnerable in which it can make the other characters push her around more. The taking away of beauty can also show the true colors of the other characters because it shows that they are insecure. They are scared of Cinderella and by changing a simple look, it can give them the confidence to rule over her. Another personality trait that Cinderella has is the “damsel in distress” princess. This was very common in older princesses like The Little Mermaid, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Rapunzel. All of these characters engulf this idea that princesses are passive, naive, innocent, easy targets, and always wanting to be rescued. For example, Cinderella never speaks up to her stepmother. Many older princesses were commonly known for doing nothing and letting stuff happen around them. As a result, the quote illustrates certain personality traits that are common in