Perrault's Cinderella Summary

Bonnie Cullen’s, an art historian, article about how Perrault’s version of the story of Cinderella came to be the most widely distributed version. This article goes into detail of several other versions of this classic fairy tale, and it explains why Perrault’s wins out over all of the countless versions and renditions of this storyline. Perrault’s Cinderella is the kind of girl who is never suspected of cheating, maybe is even unaware that she did so, but when the godmother offers an easy way to raise out of poverty Cinderella does so without a second thought. Magic is how Cinderella cheated, the magic enchanted the prince so heavily that it is never asked for this strange woman’s name or a memory of a face. This magically enchanted dress

This article talks about how step- parents are being cheated out of the benefit of the doubt due to the widespread reading of Cinderella by young children. This article goes on through the statistical probability of whether or not mixed families; step and biological members, are more unsafe than traditional families. The authors put forward the effort anyways. The main finding is that a step-parent is more likely to be reported as a suspect than a biological parent when abuse is thought to be occurring. Martin and Wilson are experiencing the side effects of Perrault’s Cinderella. “The odds ratio of abuse risk in Hamilton stepfamilies versus genetic-parent families was substantial” (Margo and Wilson 315). Cullen describes Perrault’s as the most distributed, which does explain the mistrust of nonbiologic parents. Perhaps the mistrust is not as misplaced as once believed. The Cinderella stories do reflect on culture that is present, which could be why there is the commonplace of absentee biological parents and the opportunity for abuse by a nonbiological caretaker. “she made her home with her mean old stepmother and her two stepsisters” (Grant 271). The portrayal of the step-parent as always evil or mean does still put a mixed family to more of a risk of failure and may lead to step-parents mistreating stepchildren simply to fit the ideas of a society that is cheating them out of a chance before the opportunity to be good is even