Women In Cinderella, Or The Little Glass Slipper By Jacob And Wilhelm Grimm

937 Words2 Pages

For centuries, women have struggled in the fight to gain equality with men. Despite the major advances in civil and political rights, society still has a long way to go in addressing the issue of gender inequality. One major factor that prevents society from achieving gender equality is the idea that marriage is a women’s ultimate life goal. This notion has been significantly presented in literature causing women to appear less powerful than men, more specifically, in the fairly tales “Cinderella, or the little Glass Slipper” by Charles Perrault and “Ash Girl” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The stereotypical depiction of women only being ambitious toward marriage has led to women being inferior to men.
Growing up, Cinderella was a classic. From …show more content…

In the story “Ash Girl” the protagonist wanted to live up to her mothers dying wish of remaining “devout and good” (Grimm 23). Being labelled a “good girl” around that time meant that you followed the basic roles of a daughter, sister and wife. “Ash Girl’s” motives to escape her family by getting married was greatly influenced by her mothers last words. In contrast to, the protagonist in the story “Cinderella, or the litter glass slipper”. In this story, Cinderella is not influenced by a specific person, instead she just wants to get away from her family. Naturally, the only way she knows how to so is to get married. Another example of how literature takes the stereotypical idea and portrays men as the superior race is with the stepsisters in both stories. The stepsisters were just as obsessed with marriage as the protagonists, as they even fought over the same man. However, there are some differences with the steps that the stepsisters took in order to get married. For instance, the stepsisters in the story “Ash Girl” went as far as cutting off a part of their foot in order to trick the prince into a marriage. In the story “Cinderella, or the little glass slipper”, all three sisters did indeed try to get the attention of the prince so that one can become his bride. However, the story was different in the way that the protagonist did have some compassion towards her stepsisters. So when the prince chose her to become his wife, on her wedding day, she found suitable matches for her sisters to marry and to also attain their goal of

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