古典及現代灰姑娘故事中的女性角色 Looking Into the Female Characters in Cinderella Fairy Tales Then and Now by HU
古典及現代灰姑娘故事中的女性角色
Looking into the Female Characters in Cinderella Fairy Tales Then and Now
by
HUI-CHIH CHAN 詹惠芝
THESIS
Presented to the Faculty of the
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature of
Tunghai University
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS in
British and American Literature
TUNGHAI UNIVERSITY
June 2019
中 華 民 國 一０八年 六 月
古典及現代灰姑娘故事中的女性角色
Looking into the Female Characters in Cinderella Fairy Tales Then and Now
by
HUI-CHIH CHAN 詹惠芝
THESIS
Presented to the Faculty of the
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature of
Tunghai University
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS in
British and American Literature
TUNGHAI UNIVERSITY
June 2019
中 華 民 國 一０八年 六 月
Acknowledgements
Years ago, I was very lucky to have the opportunity to study English literature at the Foreign Languages and Literature (FLL) Department of Tunghai University as a middle-aged student, coming back to college after a long break from school. As I look back on this long journey, I am so grateful to each and every administrator, staff, and particularly faculty members at this department who have helped me with my undergraduate and graduate studies. I am especially thankful to Dr. Mieke Desmet, who has taught me to appreciate children’s literature and has always been willing to take time out of her busy schedule to supervise me on my thesis. I simply cannot thank her enough for her patience to guide me to the end of my graduate program.
I would also like to thank my English tutor, Mr. John Raileanu, who has been teaching me English speaking and writing for more than a decade; my friend, Miss Pi-
Chu Wu, who knows how to clear my thoughts and give me constructive suggestions all the time.
I would like to thank my brother Wen-Hsuan and sister Ching-Lih, who, whatever happens, are always there to support and encourage me to move on so that I could complete this thesis.
Finally, this thesis is dedicated to my mother and my late father. Their love has and will always provide me strength to follow my dreams.
Abstract
The earlier versions of the Cinderella fairy tale have been rewritten and retold through numerous modern narratives such as Just Ella (1999) by the American writer
Margaret Peterson Haddix, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (1999) by the American novelist Gregory Maguire, Bound (2004) by the American writer and linguist Donna Jo
Napoli, and All the Ever Afters (2018) by the Canadian writer Danielle Teller, among others. An adaptation of a fairy tale gives its earlier version a twist by making changes in the characters or by adding a current concept to make the story more appealing, relatable, or acceptable to modern readers.
When comparing earlier and modern versions of the Cinderella fairy tale, what the reader could easily observe is that there are aspects of patriarchal ideology in the earlier versions and more women-centered narratives in the modern ones. Looking into the modern versions of Cinderella fairy tales, the main female character in these rewritten versions has gotten rid of her frail image and has been interpreted from different angles to be aligned with the modern concept of a woman who has the power to master her own life. Furthermore, the other female characters such as the stepmother and stepsisters also have their voices heard. Many women-centered perspectives are rather obvious in these rewritten stories and will be explored in this thesis. In addition, considering the intertwined and complex relationships among the female characters that shape different angles of the story, this thesis will also explore the roles of, and relationships among these female characters in earlier versions and compare and contrast them to the modern versions of “Cinderella.”
Key words: Fairy tales, Women-centered narratives, Cinderella i
摘要
《灰姑娘》這個你我均耳熟能詳的童話故事，隨著時代的進步及異性結構之變
化從而已經發展出許多不同的故事情節。例如美國作家海迪克斯創作的《灰姑娘逃
婚記》(Just Ella)、美國小說家格萊葛利．馬奎爾所著的《醜陋繼姐的告白》
(Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister)、唐娜．喬．拿坡里創作的《驚世狂花》(Bound)
以及加拿大作家丹妮爾．泰勒的小說《從此以後：灰姑娘繼母的秘史》(All the Ever
Afters)等等，美少女“灰姑娘”已不再是早期中國的《葉限》、法國作家夏爾．佩羅的
《灰姑娘》和德國格林兄弟《仙杜麗拉》筆下等待著和英俊王子過著幸福快樂日子
的美麗公主，而是勇敢追求真愛及自己的人生目標，充滿自信、獨立自主的新女性。
此外，早期《灰姑娘》故事的焦點均落在女主角灰姑娘身上。她麻雀變鳳凰的
際遇，使讀者們莫不為其長期受到繼母及繼姊姊們痛苦虐待的種種而抱屈，也為她
最後蛻變為美麗公主的際遇喝采。然而，現代版本的灰姑娘故事開始出現了其他女
性角色的聲音。繼母不再是冷酷無情的後母，繼姊姊們也不再是醜陋善妒、恃寵而
驕的壞姊妹。因此，本文除了比較早期父權制社會之下與近代女性角色演變之後
《灰姑娘》故事之間的不同，也由不同的女性角色，例如繼母及繼姊的角度來探究
灰姑娘故事中女性之間相處的變化及發展。
關鍵詞：灰姑娘、古典童話、改編童話故事、父權制社會、女性角色
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Tables of Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction ········································································· 1
Chapter 2 A Brief Review of Fairy Tales Studies ·········································· 7
2.1 Fascination of Fairy Tales ································································· 8
2.2 Women-centered Narratives ···························································· 22
Chapter 3 Female Characters in Versions of Cinderella across Time: ······················ 28
Cinderella, Mothers (Birthmother and Stepmother), and Stepsisters
3.1 Cinderella Complex ······································································ 43
3.2 Outer and Inner Beauty ·································································· 60
3.3 Societal Expectations, Education, Financial Independence, Happiness ·········· 69
3.4 The Relationship among Female Characters ········································· 81
3.4.1 Mother-Daughter Relationships ··················································· 82
3.4.2 Sibling Relationships ······························································· 92
Chapter 4 Conclusion ········································································ 97
Works Cited ······················································································101
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CHAPTER 1 Introduction
This thesis will compare, contrast, and analyze the differences among the female characters in earlier and modern versions of the fairy tale “Cinderella” based on the perspective used in women-centered narratives.
What opens the door for children to enter the world of reading is most likely fairy tales. Fairy tales such as “Snow White,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “Cinderella,” among others, have long been popular among children all over the world. The image of a beautiful princess in all of these stories is so imprinted on young girls’ minds that the majority of them probably would dream of being just like the princesses in the fairy tales when they grow up.
However, the stereotype of gender roles in these traditional fairy tales, in which patriarchal culture dominates the values of society and shows little respect for women, could also affect a child’s identity development because tales have an immense influence on children’s understanding of not only culture but also gender roles. Children imitate and learn how to behave through the characters in their readings. For instance, boys learn to be leaders, action-takers, protectors, and to take charge in every situation while girls get a very different message from fairy tales. They are expected to be beautiful, kind, generous, self-sacrificing, patient, and hardworking, just to name a few traits. Basically, they are told to be passive and gentle. Mary L. Trepanier-Street and
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Jane A. Romatowski adopted the idea of gender schema theory from Bem S.L.1 and
Martin, C.L. & Halverson, C.F.2 as follows:
[…] children, during the early childhood years, are developing their thinking
and attitudes about the differences between males and females. At this age,
children are constructing their gender schema […]. A potential resource for
influencing young children’s thinking regarding gender roles is the classroom
use of children’s literature. (155)
As gender stereotypes are portrayed in fairy tales regularly, it means that children who read these tales might begin to perceive the concept of male and female roles played in a traditional society which stresses more on the power of men.
Stereotypical images indeed influence how children perceive the way men and women should behave and how they identify themselves within their society. However, with the rapid advancement of technology and strong impact of media, the relationship between men and women has also changed accordingly. While some girls are still dreaming of finding their destiny with Mr. Charming and live happily ever after, more and more women wish to have their own individual self and have a voice as “I.” With
1 Bem, S. L. “Gender Schema Theory and Its Implications for Child Development: Raising Gender-Aschematic Children in a Gender-Schematic Society.” Signs 8 (1983): 598-616. 2 Martin, C. L. & Halverson, C. F. “A Schematic Processing Model of Sex Typing and Stereotyping in Children.” Child Development 52 (1981): 1119-34.
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the changes of female roles in society, women have gradually become more independent and demanded to be their own masters and live their lives according to their own minds and wishes: men should not be in control of what women should or should not do, and women should not be men’s submissive possessions any more.
The intention of retelling fairy tales is not to raise the tension between men and women, but rather to take a traditional fairy tale and change views on gender roles in it to make it more in line with the changes in modern society. Therefore, it is important to give young readers an accurate message of what a modern woman is like in the present society. Silima Nanda argues in “The Portrayal of Women in the Fairy Tales” that:
At a time when men and women are viewed as equals by much of the
population, it is crucial that the stories children are exposed to reflect the
variety of paths offered to them in real life. Thus, it is important for females to
be portrayed in different roles than what were viewed as ‘traditional.’ These
other roles may include business women, single, warrior, widows to reflect
the options that females have in front of them today. (249)
Similarly, a famous fairy tale like “Cinderella” is also retold in a way in which princesses are not presented as weak and frequently abused, but as smart and mentally strong.
In addition to recognizing the inequality between the sexes, these fairy tales also
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try to search for the minds and desires of the major characters as the stories unfold.
These female characters often suffer child abuse, humiliation, parental rejection, or abandonment. Some of them, like Cinderella and Snow White, have no choice but to live with their wicked stepmothers and/or evil stepsisters. This thesis chooses to study the fairy tale “Cinderella” because it is, according to Karol Kelley, “one of the best liked, measured both by the number of variations of the story and by the scholarly and popular interest in them. There are some 700 versions of ‘Cinderella’” (87). With ample resources of both earlier and modern versions of the fairy tale, the relationship among female characters such as stepmother-stepdaughter relation, or sibling rivalry in the earlier and modern versions of Cinderella fairy tales will also be discussed.
This thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter is the introduction which outlines the transformation of Cinderella from earlier to modern ones. The second chapter will first explore the definitions and various functions of fairy tales as well as explain tenets of women-centered narratives. For fairy tales, the work of Marina Warner,
Maria Tatar, and Vladimir Propp will be used in this thesis. Marina Warner situates the origin of fairy tales, Maria Tatar argues about the numerous variations of fairy tales, and
Vladimir Propp defines the fairy tale with his thirty-one functions. Modern versions of fairy tales, however, usually have the same themes as the version upon which they are built, but the stories are modified with reverse characters, different development of plot,
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or an alternative point of view. The other focus in Chapter Two is women-centered narratives. Traditional fairy tales represent patriarchal culture and show little respect for women. Women in traditional society are overpowered by men and therefore are stereotyped just as the women in the earlier fairy tales who strive to survive in a male- dominated society. However, in modern society, men are no longer in complete control and women are no longer submissive, either. Each woman has an individual self. Both stereotypical and modern roles of women will be analyzed in this chapter.
The third chapter will contrast the female roles in earlier and modern versions of
Cinderella fairy tales. There are the earlier Cinderella fairy tales like “Yeh-hsien” (9th century) by Tuan Ch’eng-shih, “Cinderella: or, The Little Glass Slipper” (1697) by
Charles Perrault, “Ashputtel”3 (19th century) by the Brothers Grimm. In addition to the earlier Cinderellas, there are also modern versions such as Just Ella (1999), a novel by
Margaret Peterson Haddix, Bound (2004) by the American writer and linguist Donna Jo
Napoli, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (1999) by the American novelist Gregory
Maguire, and All the Ever Afters (2018) by the Canadian writer Danielle Teller.
Although the above four modern versions were published at the end of the 20th century or at the beginning of the 21st century, the settings of the stories are in earlier historical periods.
3 “Ashputtel” is also known as “Aschenputtel.”
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Based on these earlier and modern versions of the Cinderella story, with the purpose of figuring out how the Cinderella girl has transformed over time, discussion will focus on several features starting from “Cinderella Complex,” followed by an analysis of how much outer and inner beauty influence these female characters’ lives, and what kind of societal pressure they are subjected to. The educational opportunities, financial autonomy, view of happiness, as well as the relationships among these female characters and how elements of women-centered narratives are embedded in these stories will also be examined in this chapter. The fourth and also the last chapter will provide concluding thoughts.
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CHAPTER 2 An Analysis of Fairy Tales Studies
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who’s the fairest one of all?”
While reading these catchy two lines, many people may soon be able to relate them to the fairy tale “Snow White” (Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm 82). Similarly, when there was a long-haired beauty residing at the top of a tower mentioned in a piece of writing, he or she might also immediately think of the fairy tale “Rapunzel.” Then, how about a beanstalk and a giant, or a candy house and a witch? “Jack and the Beanstalk” and
“Hansel and Gretel” would come to his or her mind. Many fairy tales like these have been around readers of both children and adults for a long time. However, why are they called “fairy tales,” and are they only for children to read? Apart from entertaining the reader, are there any special meanings implied in them? There have been many discussions about the origins of fairy tales and theories about how the plots and characters are developed in them. To look into fairy tales, one can explore their origins as Marina Warner, a writer of fiction, criticism, and history, does in her book Once
Upon a Time, which studies the history of fairy tales. Another expert in children’s literature and folklore, Maria Tatar, has observed various elements in fairy tales in her book The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales. The literary critic and scholar,
Vladimir Propp, on the other hand, investigates the functions of fairy tales, and Bruno
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Bettelheim, a psychoanalyst, discusses the meaning and importance of fairy tales in his work The Uses of Enchantment. Furthermore, there are also people who tackle gender issues in fairy tales from women-centered points of view. They argue that women determine their own value through self-awareness and self-exploration. In order to have a general understanding of fairy tales, this chapter is going to look at fairy tales from their origins and through the various forms of literary analyses applied to them.
2.1 Fascination of Fairy Tales
Narrative texts are usually classified into two main categories: nonfiction and fiction. The former is based on facts and typically includes biographies, essays, scientific papers, among others while the latter focuses on imaginary events and presents them in drama, poetry, short stories, folklore, etc. Fairy tales, like “Cinderella” studied in this thesis, were originally part of folklore told by adults to adult audiences in a group gathering and have been adapted and revised over the last two to three centuries
(Tatar, The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales xiv). Warner gives her opinion about the origin of fairy tales in an interview by Hepzibah Anderson as follows:
[…] most fairy tales were not originally intended for children […] fairy tales
were originally the literature of the poor and unlettered, they weren’t for
children at all. The Grimms, for instance, were folklorists and scholars; it was
we Brits who turned the stories they gathered into children’s literature when
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their English translation was published in the 19th Century. (qtd. in Anderson)
Similarly, before “Cinderella” became a famous story for children and adults alike, this fairy tale “was considered as an authorless genre assimilated to children’s literature and therefore invited free adaptation and retelling” (Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère,
Martine, et al. 5). Therefore, nowadays there are many versions of the tale around the world in three main forms:
[…] the main type featuring a persecuted stepdaughter rescued from her
condition by a magical animal helper, (Cinderella), a girl fleeing an incestuous
father who wants to marry her (Donkey-Skin), a kind and beautiful girl
persecuted by her mother is rewarded while her ugly and nasty sisters are
punished after a moral test (One-Eye, Two-Eyes, Three-Eyes), and male
Cinderella stories sometimes distinguished from the main type. (Hennard
Dutheil de la Rochère et al. 4)
Although fairy tales were not originally created for children, the fantasy events (a royal ball, enchanting adventures), symbolic elements (an apple, a mirror, birds, a ring, and a rose), and special characters (princes, princesses, fairies, witches, and personified animals) that are featured in fairy tales often catch children’s interests and stimulate their imagination. The enjoyment from reading fairy tales, thus, results in many a fancy story of all kinds and passes from generation to generation. The term “fairy tale” was
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coined in 1697, as Silima Nanda indicates in “The Portrayal of Women in the Fairy
Tales”:
Fairy tales are important pieces of children’s literature that have had a lasting
impact on our society. It was for the first time that the term fairy tale was
coined by Marie Catherine d’Aulnoy in 1697, when she published her first
collection of tales. d’Aulnoy’s fairy tales celebrate the beauty, generosity,
eternal youth and true love of the fairies [...] In 1750, the term ‘fairy tale’ was
brought into English usage and thereafter the fairy tales have grown
immensely in significance and have become more widespread and complex.
(246)
When people talk about fairy tales nowadays, the general consensus is that their target readers are mostly children. Some famous fairy tales like “Cinderella,” “Snow White,”
“Little Red Riding Hood,” and “Hansel and Gretel,” to name only a few, do keep young readers’ imagination active while growing up.
Furthermore, although different versions of a fairy tale are stories with similar themes, characters, and plots, listeners and readers from different times and areas have transferred one story to various versions based on their regional cultures, personal experience and/or understanding. Some fairy tales have many different versions that are ideologically different from one author to another or culturally different in many
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countries. Maria Tatar states in The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales that “one of the chief sources of irritation for the interpreter of fairy tales is the nature of folkloric sources. For nearly every tale, there are at least a dozen versions, in some cases hundreds of extant variants” (42). Take “Little Red Riding Hood” as an example.
Charles Perrault’s 17th century story “Little Red Riding Hood” (Perrault 11-13) ends with Red Riding Hood being eaten up by the wolf. On the other hand, the Brothers
Grimm’s 19th century tale “Little Red Cap” (Grimm 13-16) has a happy ending. Another example of different versions of fairy tales is “Cinderella.” In Charles Perrault’s version: “Cinderella, or The Little Glass Slipper,” there is a fairy godmother, a carriage to take Cinderella to the ball and a happy ending not only for Cinderella but also for her two stepsisters. On the other hand, in the Brothers Grimm’s “Ashputtel,” there is the horrible amputation of toes and heels and a sad ending in which Cinderella’s stepsisters’ eyes are poked out by doves. Besides these two western versions, there is also a Chinese version called “Yeh-hsien.” This Chinese protagonist has a fish friend instead of a fairy godmother, one stepsister instead of two, and a spring festival instead of a ball. At the end of the tale, both her stepmother and stepsister are stoned to death by villagers.
Apart from these western and Chinese versions, there are also different versions available from nearly every corner of the world such as “Cat Cinderella” by
Giambattista Basile from Italy (Dundes 3-11), in which Zezolla (Cat Cinderella) plants a
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date tree and a fairy appears out of it. In Vasilissa the Beautiful from Russia (Winthrop), beautiful Vasilissa has a magic doll to help her escape from the witch Baba Yaga. In
“Little Saddleslut” (Geldart) from Greece, Saddleslut buries her mother’s bones after her mother is eaten by her two elder sisters, and then the bones turn into coins and beautiful magic dresses. These are only a few examples of numerous Cinderella fairy tales in the world. Nowadays, there are many retellings of fairy tales which delight the readers with creative, exciting, and sometimes humorous plots. Take Prince Cinders, a picture book by Babette Cole, for example. The protagonist in this fractured Cinderella fairy tale is a small and skinny male Cinderella. This kind of rewritten fairy tales brings the readers not only amusing twisted fun but also plots that reflect morals and social messages that are prevalent in the current time. Consequently, there have been many retellings of fairy tales to enchant readers of all ages and it is highly likely that more will be written and read in the future.
However, most early fairy tales have, to some extent, the same functions. Vladimir
Propp, a literary critic and scholar, argued in his article “From Morphology of the
Folktale” that “All fairy tales are of one type in regard to their structure” (385). He found, after working on analyzing one hundred tales, that all fairy tales follow a specific narrative structure. Propp consequently defined the fairy tale as having thirty-one functions (386-87).
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The common elements included in fairy tales which often fascinate the readers to read on from the beginning “Once upon a time...” to the end “they live happily ever after” can be generalized as follows. First of all, there are usually a hero, a heroine, and villains. Fairy tales clearly divide characters into two obvious groups: good and evil.
The good characters are often compassionate and good-natured. However, they are also often put in more challenging situations and have to save themselves. For instance, in
“Hansel and Gretel,” the two innocent children are deserted by their stepmother in the forest. When they are trapped in the witch’s candy and gingerbread house, Gretel saves her brother with her bravery and cleverness. In “Beauty and the Beast,” the kind-hearted protagonist, Belle, offers herself as a hostage in exchange for her father’s life from the terrifying beast of the castle, yet she saves the beast from the curse on him, and therefore he is able to transform back into his human figure. In “Snow White,” the princess, who has an evil stepmother who envies her beauty and tries to kill her with a poisonous apple, is the angel to seven dwarfs.
As for the evil characters, fairy tales typically have a villain whose intention is to hurt or destroy the good characters. For example, in “Hansel and Gretel,” there is a witch who eats children. In “Cinderella,” the stepmother and stepsisters abuse
Cinderella as if she were their slave. In “The Sleeping Beauty,” the princess is cursed to sleep for a hundred years by a wicked fairy. Moreover, as discussed above, good
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characters in fairy tales are often young, poor, innocent, helpless at the beginning, but because of their cleverness, bravery, or compassion for others, they generally turn out to be loved and respected and happy at the end. In contrast, bad characters usually have evil powers over the good ones to harm them at the beginning, but at the end they are destroyed or degraded. About this, Propp mentioned in his Thirty-One functions of fairy tales:
[…] 6. The villain attempts to deceive his victim in order to take possession of
him or his belongings (trickery) […] 8. The villain causes harm or injure to a
member of the family (villainy) […] 18. The villain is defeated (victory) […]
30. The villain is punished (punishment); 31. The hero is married and ascends
the throne (wedding). (386-87)
Indeed, in most popular fairy tales not only good people are rewarded and villains are punished but also everything almost always comes out all right in the end. As a result, the readers often find satisfaction in reading them.
The second common element of fairy tales is that they often include good or evil magical or supernatural elements, including fairies, elves, magical animals, or objects.
For example, in “Cinderella,” there is a fairy godmother who helps Cinderella go to the ball in a fancy dress and carriage. In “Jack and the Beanstalk,” Jack exchanges his cow with an old man for magic beans which grow into a beanstalk. In “The Story of the
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Three Little Pigs,” the pigs can build houses. In “Snow White,” a magic mirror responds to questions. In “The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage,” the sausage can cook. All of these magical elements do not seem to make sense from a scientific point of view, but they appeal to young readers who expect magic power, regardless of whether it is impossible or implausible, to come to the rescue of their heroes or heroines. As in
Propp’s Thirty-One Functions, “The hero is tested, interrogated, attacked, etc., which prepares the way for his receiving either a magical agent or helper [...] The hero acquires the use of a magical agent” (386). Also, Bruno Bettelheim discussed in The
Uses of Enchantment:
The fairy tale proceeds in a manner which conforms to the way a child thinks
and experiences the world; this is why the fairy tale is so convincing to him.
He can gain much better solace from a fairy tale than he can from an effort to
comfort him based on adult reasoning and viewpoints. A child trusts what the
fairy story tells, because its world view accords with his own. (45)
For those who believe themselves good and deserving but living a miserable life, magic assistance in fairy tales shows them hope and that help will eventually come to lead them to a happier future whatever the present problem may be (Bottigheimer 27-28).
Through reading fairy tales, young readers can fly with their imagination and let the magical agents whisk them away to a whole other world where magic lives. Imagination
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is a key to develop a child’s creative thoughts. Albert Einstein, who developed the
Theory of General Relativity, considered fairy tales important because they stimulate imagination. He said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution” (Quoted in Komlik). He said, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales” (Quoted in Komlik). Actually, young children probably know that the magic fairy doesn’t really exist; however, they do not really care. Any logical explanations are unnecessary as young readers believe in fairy tales even though they know that they are not true.
The third common element of fairy tales is that they surprise the readers with hidden meanings behind a common symbol. Take “Cinderella” for example. The hearth, which signifies the degradation of Cinderella from a favorable position down to an unfortunate situation after her mother died, was actually a sacred place in ancient
Europe. Bruno Bettelheim suggests this idea in The Uses of Enchantment:
In ancient times, to be the guardian of the hearth – the duty of the Vestal
Virgins – was one of the most prestigious ranks, if not the most exalted,
available to a female [...] Cinderella might also be viewed as the degraded
mother goddess who at the end of the story is reborn out of the ashes, like the
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mythical bird phoenix. (Bettelheim 254)
This idea of the sacred hearth could make those who have to work by the hearth stop pitying themselves and instead look positively at their lives. Furthermore, the hearth in
“Cinderella” has another positive hidden meaning, which reminds people of their mothers with warmth and comfort. “Before central heating, a seat close to the hearth was the warmest and often the coziest place in the house. The hearth evokes in many children happy memories of the time they spent there with their mothers” (Bettelheim
255). Wrapped with warm feelings from maternal love, the reader can still feel being supported and protected even though he or she is in a rough situation.
Other than the hearth, the doves that help Cinderella pick peas out of the ashes, or the twig that she plants on her mother’s grave yard, or the fish that Yeh-hsien looks after in the pond also symbolize the mother image for the reader. “The helpful animal or the magic tree is an image, embodiment, external representation of this basic trust [on good mothering]. It is the heritage which a good mother confers on her child which will stay with him, and preserve and sustain him in direst distress” (Bettelheim 258). Maternal love gives the reader the inner strength to manage sufferings or hardships whenever he or she encounters.
The fourth common element of fairy tales is that the plot of a fairy tale focuses on a problem that has to be solved. The problem could be a challenging journey, a puzzling
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riddle, a difficult mission, or a terrible trial, etc. The whole story circles around the problem that the protagonist has to face until the hero or heroine finally wins through to the end of the tale with a happy ending. Sometimes, magic powers are involved in the problem-solving. Take Cinderella for an example. Her problem is that she wants to go to the ball, but her stepmother and stepsisters would not let her attend it. Even if she could find some way to get there, she could not make herself presentable in a fancy outfit, either. Therefore, in Perrault’s version, her fairy godmother makes it happen for her with magic (Perrault 34-35). Another example is “Sleeping Beauty.” In both Charles
Perrault’s and the Brothers Grimm’s versions, the princess has fairy godmothers to protect her. When an evil spell is cast upon her that she would prick her hand with a spindle and die of it, one fairy godmother does her best to change it so that the sleeping beauty sleeps for 100 years instead until she is awakened from a deep sleep by the kiss of a handsome prince. Thus, the problem is solved. However, in the case when there are no magic powers, the hero or heroine has to rely on him/herself to outwit the villains in order to survive. For instance, the brother and sister in “Hansel and Gretel” have to manage to escape from the witch’s control on their own.
Thus, hero and heroines in fairy tales seem to set young readers good examples of how to overcome the difficulties they encounter and solve the problems they face.
However, to some extent, it is not quite true. In the article “Fairytales: Quests
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Afterword,” Adam Phillips argues:
If we read these fairytales as stories, as problem-solving exercises, for
guidelines on how to deal with difficult situations, we are none the wiser.
They give us examples of something, but there is very obviously no moral to
the stories. If you are a girl and you want to know what to do with your life,
you can’t rely on a little bird to tell you; the hare’s ingenious solution to the
tyranny of the lion is, as it were, site-specific. The stories, in fact, give us no
real clue where help comes from; and might make us wonder, by the same
token, what else we might want from stories other than help.
In real life, young readers of fairy tales cannot be always as lucky as the heroes and heroines who are able to find a kind helper whom they can depend on. However, the problem-solving of all kinds of events or dilemmas in fairy tales could inspire the young readers to build up their own critical thinking skills. From the way that the characters in fairy tales make decisions, child readers learn that they have to make right choices to solve any problems. If they make the right decisions when events come up, they will be able to overcome problems.
The fifth common element of fairy tales is that they not only entertain the reader with exciting adventures, magic powers, or funny talking animals but also have a way of teaching the reader some important life lessons. As stated in Cinderella across
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Cultures edited by Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère, Martine, et al., fairy tales have educational purposes:
[…] the fairy tale was considered as an authorless genre assimilated to
children’s literature and therefore invited free adaptation and retelling. Once
child readers became the target audience for collections of fairy tales, or of
illustrated editions of individual tales such as Cinderella, translators adapted
the texts to prevailing expectations of child behavior and experience,
perceived needs and competences, often with a didactic, moral, and religious
intent. (5)
Thus, observing how heroes and heroines get out of predicaments, young readers learn to be bold and strong. Bruno Bettelheim reasons in The Uses of Enchantment:
[...] that a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable, is an
intrinsic part of human existence – but that if one does not shy away, but
steadfastly meets unexpected and often unjust hardships, one masters all
obstacles and at the end emerges victorious. (8)
This message is true to real life. No one can avoid encountering troubles. Only by facing them courageously can a person in a miserable situation go through the quandary and move on.
Fairy tales also convey messages to the readers of how to live and love, how to
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interact with others, and how to develop correct work ethic and positive attitude toward life. For example, the kind appearance and good behavior of the wolf in “Little Red
Riding Hood” teaches the readers to be careful of the people around them who seem to be unusually nice at first because they could be “a wolf in a sheep’s clothing4.” From
“Cinderella,” the readers get the messages that apart from enduring mistreatment and turning it into a beneficial opportunity, they should also fight for themselves and ask for the respect they deserve (Haddix). From the way the three pigs build their houses in the
“Three Little Pigs” (Jacobs), the readers get the lesson that being lazy and taking a short cut will result in poor quality which can only lead to disaster. One more example is
“Rapunzel” (Grimm). From how the protagonist is able to save herself with the only thing she has, her long hair, the readers grab the idea that they should never give up hope. In any bad situation, readers could still find some way to solve their problem.
When those who are in trouble can think outside the box, some creative ideas would appear in their brains. As Marina Warner suggests in Once Upon a Time: A Short
History of Fairy Tale:
Fairy tales report from imaginary territory – a magical elsewhere of
possibility; a hero or a heroine or sometimes both together are faced with
4 Gospel of Matthew 7:15 in King James Version of the Bible, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”
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ordeals, terrors, and disaster in a world that, while it bears some resemblance
to the ordinary conditions of human existence, mostly diverges from it in the
way it works, taking the protagonists – and us, the story’s readers or listeners
– to another place where wonders are commonplace and desires are fulfilled
[…] The actions of such distant predecessors then add to the sum of
knowledge of our situation now; from a distance, the other zone throws light
on circumstances in the one we know. (xxii-iii)
After going through all the roughs and wonders, fairy tales, in the end, lead the reader to a happy ending, which encourages him or her that there is always hope. Readers would make the connection with the world in fairy tales and their own world, and pluck up their courage to face the ordeals.
Fairy tales are simple to read, but arouse enlightened ideas in readers’ minds at the same time. In addition, they offer readers faith, deep truths, and they bring in joy, delight, and wonder while searching their souls. Keeping those important parts of childhood: happiness, innocence, and wonder in mind, readers can find the strength to move on.
2.2 Women-centered Narratives
While reading literary works, readers often identify themselves with the characters in the stories. For example, while reading American comic books such as “Superman”
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(Manning and Vecchio), boys might want to be as strong and powerful as the protagonist so that they could also rescue people from danger or even save the world.
Similarly, while a girl is reading earlier versions of fairy tales such as “Cinderella” or
“Snow White,” she might also be influenced to be meek and compliant like the princesses in the fairy tales she admires, hoping she could also achieve the dream of living contentedly with her Prince Charming.
When comparing earlier and modern versions of Cinderella fairy tales, what the reader could easily observe is that there is a patriarchal ideology in the earlier versions and an injection of women-centered ideas in the modern ones. As earlier fairy tales were written or edited in the era when society was ruled or controlled by men, there is, to some extent, an ideology of patriarchy in them. In a patriarchal society, such as the setting in the traditional Cinderella story, women have no power to control their lives as their happiness depends on men. Some female characters are depicted with negative images. For example, the stepmother is evil and abusive, the stepsisters are vain, cruel, as well as silly. Cinderella, on the other hand, is like a helpless slave waiting for her handsome young man to come and rescue her. Finally her suffering ends in a traditional marriage with a man who marries her for her beauty. In contrast, the male characters are molded into rescuers or heroes, who are either bread winners of the family (Cinderella’s father) or nobles in society (the prince). In regards to patriarchal societies, Nelly
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Furman argues in her article “The Politics of Language: Beyond the Gender Principle?” that “In a world defined by man, the trouble with a woman is that she is at once an object of desire and an object of exchange, valued on the one hand as a person in her own right, and on the other considered simply as a relational sign between men” (61).
Women are so vulnerable and powerless that they need rescuers to help them reach contentment. Therefore, in the earlier versions of Cinderella fairy tales, Cinderella, with her fairy godmother’s help, becomes happy only after she marries the prince. If there was no such prince to rescue her and take her away, she might continue working as if she were a slave for her stepmother and stepsister(s).
On the contrary, modern versions of Cinderella depict how Cinderella tries and successfully survives in a male-dominant society in her unique way. Many of the modern Cinderella retellings are trying to strike a balance between men and women.
From the earlier versions to the modern ones, it seems that Cinderella has transformed from a person suppressed in her stepfamily to a girl with power and courage to survive and blossom all by herself. Such changes of storytelling that make Cinderella break free from facing abuse, suffering, and misery are rooted in the changing views of how women see themselves in society.
These new stories express ideas that are linked to feminism which is a claim for women’s rights to be equal to those of men’s in every social aspect. There have been
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three waves in the feminist movement since the 19th century. The first wave (from the mid nineteenth century through 1920) is about women’s fighting for legal rights, especially their suffrage to vote. The second wave (from the post WWII era through the beginning of the 1980s) focused on both social and inner-family equality between men and women. The third wave (from the early- to mid-1990s) is broadened to every aspect of women’s lives regarding their identity, including gender, class, race, religion, ethnicity, and nationality (Lotz 3).
The development of Cinderella fairy tales from the earlier to modern versions also has the tendency of showing more and more self-awareness and self-discovery in the female characters, reflecting some ideas of feminism in more women-centered narratives. In the late twentieth century, the arising of women-centered perspectives in narratives also triggered a series of changes between men and women. With the awakening of their long-term inequality with men, women started to fight for a voice and a place for themselves both in their family and in society.
Since the late 1960s, women have been more and more equal to their male counterparts. Women, in most parts of the world, have the right to vote, are entitled to a higher quality of life, have more equal rights in the work force as men, and can in some cases decide whether they want to use legal birth control, etc. As women have been striving to level up with men in society, so have female writers in storytelling. Tired of
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reading a story about a mistreated girl with an angel-face waiting for a rescuer all the time, the modern story telling of Cinderella fairy tales changes Cinderella into a girl with willpower and good judgement to choose her way of living while still keeping her good nature of kindness, consideration, and generosity. Although the modern Cinderella still has a wicked stepmother and spoiled stepsisters controlling her, she tries to turn disadvantages into advantages and makes the situation turn in her favor.
As time goes on, women become more powerful and independent than before.
They get rid of the patriarchal facts hidden in the romantic and simple plots of fairy tales and save women from a world of oppression and discrimination. Many “modern” fairy tales are therefore constructed from a brand new perspective in favor of women’s rights. Such changes of the balance between men and women can also influence how people identify themselves with the characters in literary works. Susan L. Brody indicates in her article “Law, Literature, and the Legacy of Virginia Woolf: Stories and
Lessons in Feminist Legal Theory”: “Fiction is an important and useful tool to teach feminist legal theory because it moves the student-reader closer to experiencing the array of injustices (social, political, economic, and legal) that women have historically suffered” (6). Indeed, by reading miserable sufferings depicted in more and more stories, women can get a better picture of what situation they are in. Furthermore, they will come up with what they can do for themselves in the future.
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Apart from the focus on women’s self-consciousness and self-identity in a family or a society, the relationships between women have also been studied in many literary works. This is mentioned in Making a Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism edited by
Greene and Kahn: “Currently, feminist critics are interested in studying relationships between women, including mothers and daughters, sisters, friends, lesbians and female communities” (52). The relationships between Cinderella and her mothers (birthmother and stepmother) and stepsisters will also be deliberated in this thesis.
With their attention on the social and cultural struggle for women in fairy tales, writers and readers for women-centered narratives have tried to change the way people think about what a female character in a fairy tale should be, and that there is more than one way to read a story.
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CHAPTER 3 Female Characters in Versions of Cinderella across Time:
Cinderella, Mothers (Birthmother and Stepmother), and Stepsisters
“Cinderella” is no doubt one of the most popular fairy tales. It is accessible in almost every corner of the world in a variety of formats such as print books, eBooks, films, dramas, or animations, with differences in content varying according to the local culture and society of the place where the story is being told. The reason that the
Cinderella tale interests readers generation after generation throughout the world is that the tale contains not only the rags-to-riches path of the ash girl, which encourages those who have nothing but want to get rid of poverty but also family conflicts from sibling rivalry to stepfamily relationships, which commonly happen in people’s ordinary lives.
Therefore, the tale has been read and retold again and again and has never dulled potential writers and readers. The tale is still popular in the twenty-first century and will very likely continue to exist in the lives of people for hundreds of thousands of years to come.
The heroine of the Cinderella tale has noticeably changed over time. As the roles of women in society have changed, the women in this tale have also been transformed.
They are not exactly the same as those women whom readers encountered in earlier versions. In The Classic Fairy Tales Maria Tatar argues that “Cinderella has been reinvented by so many different cultures that it is hardly surprising to find that she is sometimes cruel and vindictive, at other times compassionate and kind” (Tatar, The
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Classic Fairy Tales 102). In addition, the depictions of love and hatred, beauty and ugliness, kindness and cruelty, determination and submission through the relationships among the female characters –Cinderella and her stepmother and stepsisters – can be found in, for example, “Yeh-hsien” (China) (“Yeh-hsien”, The Classic Fairy Tales:
Texts, Criticism 107-108) “Donkeyskin” (France) (Perrault 109-16), “Ashputtel”
(Germany) (Grimm, Jacob, et al. 209-218), “Catskin” (England) (Jacobs 122), and “The
Story of the Black Cow” (Himalaya) (Tatar, The Classic Fairy Tales 125) in the earlier versions and Cinder Edna (America) (Jackson and O’Malley), Prince Cinders (Britain),
All the Ever Afters (Canada) (Teller) in modern versions. Even Cinderella’s biological mother, who passes away when the young protagonist is still a young child, enters the storyline as a spirit to the rescue of Cinderella in some versions, providing the help that the fragile heroine needs.
Considering the intertwined and complex relationships among these female characters that shape different angles of the story, this thesis explores, compares, and contrasts the roles of and relationships among these female characters in earlier and modern versions of “Cinderella” from women-centered perspectives. As the modern versions used in this thesis are published in the late 20th century or at the beginning of the 21st century, there are more narratives from women’s points of view. In these women-centered narratives, the world’s view on women’s rights regarding educational,
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political, and social equality are added to reflect how Cinderella would probably like her story to be told differently from the earlier versions.
The focus of this thesis for the earlier versions is on how different Cinderellas, under societal pressure to limit women’s rights, find their ways to success, how they view happiness, and in what kind of situations Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters think they can manipulate and control Cinderella as if she were inferior to them. As a contrast, for the modern versions, the focus will center on how these female characters are being adapted to changes in society’s view on women. How has the modern
Cinderella developed to her current form due to influences of women-centered perspectives? What possible changes could there be moving forward? How can readers in modern society learn from the changes in these female characters?
Seven versions of the Cinderella fairy tales are analyzed in this thesis. Three are early versions: “Yeh-hsien,” “Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper,” “Ashputtel,” and four are modern ones: Bound, Just Ella, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and All the
Ever Afters. These tales are shortly introduced before further analysis is carried out for earlier versions and modern versions respectively.
When referring to the Cinderella fairy tale, most people instantaneously relate it to
European Cinderella tales, especially “Cendrillon5” published by Charles Perrault in the
5 “Cendrillon” is the French title of “Cinderella.”
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17th century and “Ashputtel” by the Brothers Grimm in their folk tale collection,
Grimms’ Fairy Tales, in 1812. However, the earliest version of this story was actually written in China in the Tang Dynasty. In The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, Tatar indicates that “Yeh-hsien, recorded around A.D. 850 by Tuan Ch’eng-shih, is said to be the first written Cinderella fairy tale” (Tatar, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales 28).
Nevertheless, since all three of them were written before the waves of feminist movement, they are considered as the earlier versions for this thesis. In addition, these three tales are also typical Cinderella tales with a similar plot: beginning with Cinderella as a young kind-hearted, innocent, and naive orphaned girl, being abused by her stepmother and stepsisters and forced to do all the house chores. She is treated like a tortured slave until she finally breaks free from her horrible situation.
The earlier Cinderella fairy tales have a strong didactic teaching: good eventually overcomes evil, except for Charles Perrault’s “Cendrillon,” in which Cinderella forgives her stepmother and stepsisters. A lot of conflicts between the protagonist (Cinderella) and the antagonists (stepmother and stepsisters) are depicted as the former represents
“good” while the latter represents “evil.” “Good” is abused by “evil” until the end of the tale when “good” defeats “evil.” Cinderella’s dream finally comes true and she is able to live happily ever after with her rescuer, the prince.
The moral of the earlier versions is to firmly believe that one day dreams will come
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true if readers keep their belief toward a happy life and work hard toward it. They might have to go through a hard time and could feel hopeless but, in the end, their efforts will pay off. As the saying goes, “Every cloud has a silver lining,” sooner or later difficult days will be over.
Although the earlier versions of Cinderella tales share a number of similar features, there exist some differences. In Yeh-hsien’s version, Cinderella is portrayed as a young girl, who is ill-treated by her stepmother and stepsister, but finally overcomes all the difficulties and marries the king when he finds out that only her small foot can fit into the gold slipper that she loses at the festival. This Chinese Cinderella fairy tale includes all the elements of the Cinderella story: the abused young girl, the wicked stepmother, the spoiled stepsister, the festival, and the magic slippers. However, compared to other earlier versions of Cinderella, a significant difference is that the magical helper is a fish.
The fish, Cinderella believes, is the incarnation of her mother who comes back to life to protect her. Also, the slipper the king uses to finally find her is a gold one. This is probably due to the fact that gold is a symbol of royalty and wealth in China. As for the ending, in “Yeh-hsien,” the good are rewarded and the evil are punished in the end. The good and kind Cinderella is rewarded for her suffering by marrying the king and living in the palace while the wicked stepmother and stepsister are “struck by flying stones, and died” (“Yeh-hsien” 108).
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The second of the earlier versions, Perrault’s version of the Cinderella tale, was first published in 1697. This version by Perrault is based on Giambattista Basile’s “Cat
Cinderella,” one of the first recorded versions of the “rags to riches” stories in Europe.
The differences between the two are that, in Perrault’s version, the now well-recognized elements of the story, the fairy godmother, the pumpkin carriage, and the glass (or fur in
Western Cinderella fairy tales or some other precious materials in Eastern origin) slippers6, 7 are added. However, one major part of the story, the situation of poor
Cinderella, has remained unchanged. In Perrault’s version, Cinderella’s father remarries a woman with two daughters of her own after Cinderella’s mother passes away. The stepmother and the two ugly stepsisters have become an iconic part of the fairy tale.
They torment and humiliate the beautiful Cinderella and make her sleep by the hearth on the floor, so she is always covered in cinders. Therefore, her elder stepsisters began to call her “Cinderella” (Perrault “Cinderella” 31).
The Grimm Brothers’ version is a far more vivid, dark, and wicked tale than
Perrault’s version. One of the noticeable differences from Perrault’s earlier tale is that, in the Grimm Brothers’ version, Cinderella starts to take some actions to affect her later
6 “For many years scholars debated the issue of whether the slipper was made of vair (an obsolete word for “fur”) or verre (“glass”). Folklorists have now discredited the view that the slipper was made of fur and endorse the notion that the slipper has a magical quality to it and is made of glass” (Tatar, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales 28). 7 “Artistically made slippers of precious material were reported in Egypt from the third century on” (Bettelheim 236).
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destiny. She plants a tree branch by her mother’s grave. Every day, she visits the tree and weeps and prays. As Cinderella weeps for hours, her tears water the branch, and it grows into a huge tree, where a bird listens to her wishes and grants them to her. A similar, but more detrimental, approach to change their lives can also be observed in the stepsisters. In order to fit in the small shoe so as to be able to marry the prince, the two stepsisters take their mother’s orders to deform their foot. The elder one cuts off her big toe and the younger one’s heel is sliced off (Grimm “Cinderella” 121). This irrational behavior shows that both of them want to be the prince’s wife at all cost.
There are several reasons that these three earlier Cinderella versions travel time and place and are still widely read now hundreds of years after they were published.
First, the Cinderella story is about a girl’s journey through life – from an ill-treated person who has nothing to a loved and wealthy princess. This kind of change from rags to riches is what most people are longing for. Cinderella’s story shows them that they can also reach the top if they never stop dreaming and keep waiting even though they have to start at the bottom as Cinderella does. In addition, this story also tells readers that life is not always fair, difficult circumstances might come at any time, but ordeals will not last forever. When faced with a tough situation, readers should keep a cheerful attitude and purity of heart as Cinderella does and never lose faith but take challenges head-on. These earlier versions also provide vivid descriptions of the female characters
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and the relationships among them as shaped by society’s expectations for women at that time.
The modern versions of Cinderella fairy tales selected for this thesis include Bound by the American writer and linguist Donna Jo Napoli, published in 2004 and set in 14th century China, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by the American novelist Gregory
Maguire, published in 1999 and set in 17th century Holland, All the Ever Afters by the
Canadian writer Danielle Teller, published in 2018 and set in 17th century France, and
Just Ella by the American writer Margaret Peterson Haddix, published in 1999 and set in medieval times in a kingdom. Except for Bound, all are told from the first person perspective instead of from the third. Each of them has a special feature. Bound is a retelling of “Yeh-hsien,” Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is portrayed from one of the stepsisters’ point of view, All the Ever Afters is narrated by the stepmother, and
Cinderella in Just Ella decides to have her own career instead of being a show piece for the royal family. An obvious difference between these modern versions from the earlier ones is that the modern versions, published in the late 20th or early 21st century, are no longer a short story in a collection, but have developed into fictional novels telling the
Cinderella story from different women’s points of view: Cinderella, the stepmother, and the stepsisters. Also, unlike the messages hidden in the earlier versions that a woman has to be beautiful, and delicate, and then she will be able to have a happy marriage, the
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female characters in the modern versions are much more independent. Instead of being told what to do, they choose and make decisions for themselves. After several waves of the feminist movement, not only have women in society successfully claimed their rights but the female characters in novels also have obtained their own voices and opinions.
Bound is a Chinese Cinderella story written by the American writer Donna Jo
Napoli, who is a prolific writer of children’s books. Quite a few of her children’s books are re-retellings of fairy tales and Bound is one of them. Donna Jo Napoli explained in an interview that her motivation to write the book Bound is that:
[…] when my children were little, we used to tell fairy stories from different
points of view. It was simply fun. Then I got more and more into it -- and
found it a major challenge to try to get from one (bizarre -- as they usually
are) point in a classic fairy tale to the next (usually equally bizarre) point in a
coherent way. With Bound, I spent the summer of 1997 in Beijing and went
crazy for China. For the next six years, I always had a book about China open
beside me. Then I decided I wanted to set a story there -- and, miracle of
miracles, I found out that our oldest version of Cinderella is Chinese.
(Braden)
Bound is based on the Chinese version of “Yeh-hsien” with similar plot: an abused
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young girl with lots of sufferings, a wicked stepmother and her daughter, a fish (an incarnation of her birthmother), a prince, and a happy ending. However, it also has some elements similar to “Ashputtel” and “Vasilissa the Beautiful” (a Russian Cinderella version). In the article “Cinderella from a Cross-Cultural Perspective” Roxane Hughes argues that, “She [Donna Jo Napoli] locates the Yexian Chinese women from the middle and upper classes, and thus associates the small feet of the heroine of the Yexian tale with the mutilation of the stepsisters’ feet in ‘Ashputtel’ through the motif of foot- binding” (Hughes 232). Donna Jo Napoli sets Bound in a time when people practiced foot-binding8 in China. If a girl wants to be married to a good family, small feet are necessary. As unfortunate as Ashputtel’s stepsisters, who deform their feet to fit in the tiny glass slipper in most modern day versions in English, the big and second toes of the left foot of the protagonist’s stepsister in Bound, whose feet have grown too big to be bound small, are chopped off by her own mother with a cleaver. Because of this, the protagonist Xing Xing in Bound is ordered by her stepmother to send for a lang zhong
(a physician who moves from town to town) home to examine the stepsister’s infectious wounds. Similarly, in Vasilissa the Beautiful, the protagonist Vasilissa is sent by her stepmother to fetch light from a supernatural cannibal because their light has gone out
8 “The practice of foot binding began in the Sung dynasty (AD 960-1280) in China [...] By the 12th century, the practice was widespread and more severe [...] Foot binding ceased in the 20th century with the end of imperial dynasties and the increasing influence of Western fashion” (Cummings, SR, et al. 1677).
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(Winthrop 14). These additional elements allow Xing Xing in Bound to show her problem-solving skills that Yeh-hsien in the earlier version of Chinese Cinderella does not have. By completing the errand, Xing Xing changes her image from a low and gentle girl to a person with the strength of overcoming problems and the will power to fulfill her task. The transformation from Yeh-hsien to Xing Xing shows how women have changed over time. The way that Bound was written also shows that the writer
Donna Jo Napoli, an American writer, has carefully studied Cinderella fairy tales from different countries and is able to make Bound a convincing story.
Another American writer, Gregory Maguire, looks at the story from a different angle. He tells the story in his novel Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister from the perspective of one of the stepsisters named Iris9. The Cinderella girl in this story is
Clara, whose father marries Iris’s mother Margarethe; therefore, the two girls become stepsisters. Iris looks after her mentally challenged elder sister Ruth, teaches Clara
English, and is a bridge between her mother and Clara to keep peace. As for Clara, she chooses to spend her time by the hearth and thinks of herself as “Cinderella” after her biological mother dies. She is manipulative, self-centered, and fears that the outside world is full of imps so that she chooses to withdraw from the outside world until she
9 The reason that Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister written by a male author is selected for analysis in this thesis is that my focus is on how women are narrated in the text. It is crucial that the book presents the perspectives through the eyes of women. The sex of the author, on the other hand, does not matter.
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meets the prince at the ball.
In addition to the reversal of personality of Cinderella and the stepsister in
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister from those in the earlier versions of Cinderella tales, the theme of this story is focused on the contrast of outside appearance and inner beauty.
Gregory Maguire talked about his intention of writing this book on a YouTube video uploaded on 17 March 2009. He said that he happened to be beginning to write the book on the weekend when Princess Diana died. At that time, all the talks in the press were about how she had been a victim of her own beauty and dazzling glory. This made him ponder whether a person who had splendid physical perfection is doomed and if so, what could happen. In Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, he therefore arouses the readers’ curiosity to deliberate over the cost of outside appearance.
Furthermore, in Holland in the 17th century when the story was set, the middle class was just starting to rise. Consequently, people with more income at their disposal suddenly could spend money on beautiful objects. They spent a lot of money on beautiful paintings and also on tulips which might be just a one-time blossom lasting for only two weeks. This leads to an important question addressed in Confessions of an
Ugly Stepsister: what will be spent for beauty and what is the most beautiful attribute people can have (“Gregory Maguire – Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister”). To give a sharp comparison of outer and inner beauty, Gregory Maguire shapes the Cinderella girl
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and her stepsister with a clear contrast: Iris is clever but has a plain look while Clara is beautiful but difficult.
All the Ever Afters by Danielle Teller takes a different approach by leading the reader to read the Cinderella fairy tale from the stepmother’s point of view. Danielle
Teller herself is a stepmother of two children. She wrote the story based on her own experiences to illustrate that stepparents should not be divided into two categories: the good or the bad, as shown in many original fairy tales. Her relationship with her stepchildren starts from being strangers and grows into a warm one as she spent time caring for them. This process is what she tries to mirror in the story. She also suggests that stepparents should not feel bad for not being perfect because people are supposed to accept both the good and bad in other people (Fancher). Based on this perception,
Danielle Teller writes the stepmother, Agnes, as a woman different from the one whom most readers are familiar with from reading the earlier versions of Cinderella tales. The stepmother is portrayed as a woman who goes through poverty as a child, and then faces a difficult situation when she grows into a woman: she has to raise two children without a husband. Agnes’s life takes a turn when she later marries Sir Emont Vis-de-Loup and becomes the stepmother of his daughter, Ella, who is a spoiled child with her outside beauty adored by almost everyone. Agnes goes through many stages of being a stepmother to Ella. There are times they cannot stand each other, and there are also
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times when Ella refuses Agnes’s attempt to show her love. But, in the end, they come to love each other after Ella marries the prince (Teller).
Another book chosen as a modern version is Just Ella by Margaret Peterson
Haddix. It is a retelling of the Cinderella story with feminist features. Margaret Peterson
Haddix mentioned in an interview that she got the idea of writing a retelling of the
Cinderella fairy tale when she was reading fairy tales to her daughter to inspire her love of reading. Although her daughter was very interested in fairy tales, she herself was quite tired of them. Margaret Peterson Haddix especially does not agree with love at first sight found in many old fairy tales. She argues that it is only the outer appearance which draws people to fall in love at first sight. Of all the fairy tales, she feels particularly frustrated with “Cinderella” because, throughout the whole story, the Cinder girl does not do anything. She depends only on the help from others to get what she wants. Margaret Peterson Haddix considers it too easy a way for a girl to get out of the situation of being mistreated, not to mention her being situated at almost the highest class of society in the end. Furthermore, Cinderella marries the prince she hardly knows, which is not a guarantee for a happy marriage to Margaret Peterson Haddix at all. Based on her sentiments about the “Cinderella” fairy tale, Margaret Peterson Haddix comes up with the idea of writing Just Ella, in which she keeps the plot of the original
“Cinderella” fairy tale but injects more reality of life into it (“Margaret Peterson Haddix
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In-depth Written Interview”). As a result, Ella shows up in this novel as an independent modern girl with judgmental thoughts and problem-solving abilities.
Just Ella is about a young girl of fifteen, who is successful in getting to the royal ball without the help of any magic power as was the case in the original story
“Cinderella” such as “Ashputtel.” However, after she is chosen by the prince to be his wife and moves to live at the palace a month before their big wedding day, she discovers that she neither loves the prince nor belongs to the place in which what women mostly do is to please men. To get herself out of that situation, she runs away instead of marrying Prince Charming. Living submissively to a man she doesn’t love is not what she wants. She would rather have the power to take charge of her own destiny.
She escapes to a refugee camp and works as a medical and agricultural adviser. She wants her life to be more meaningful rather than just living an easy life at the palace
(Haddix).
Based on these earlier and modern versions of the Cinderella tale, I will discuss several features in this chapter in order to see how the Cinderella girl has changed from the past to the present time. I will start with a discussion of the “Cinderella Complex” syndrome, followed by an analysis of how much the outer and inner beauty play parts in these female characters’ lives. Furthermore, in addition to their educational opportunities, financial autonomy, and views of happiness, under what kind of societal
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pressure these Cinderellas are living, is considered as well. Finally, the relationships among these female characters will be analyzed to conclude the discussion.
3.1 Cinderella Complex
The term “Cinderella Complex” was first introduced by Colette Dowling, an
American writer and also a psychotherapist, in her book The Cinderella Complex:
Women’s Hidden Fear of Independence published in 1981. “Cinderella Complex is a psychological syndrome that states women are unconsciously driven to be dependent on a dominant figure (preferably male)” (Quoted in Saha and Sfri 118). Unlike most independent women in contemporary society, women back in the times before the feminist movement were brought up to be submissive, to be dependent on men financially, emotionally, and/or physically, and not to express their own opinions. They would be loved and rewarded if they did what they had been told. Therefore, “Women wait for a ‘man’ to come and take over control of their lives, so that they can live happily and content with standing behind their men” (Saha and Sfri 119). They either unconsciously desire to be taken care of and wait for someone to come to tell them what to do and solve their problems or they are afraid of not being able to live by themselves for lack of money and without the skills to make a living.
The reason that the term “Cinderella Complex” is used in this thesis comes from
Sigmund Freud’s theory of the Oedipal Complex. Sigmund Freud introduced the
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Oedipal Complex in his theory of psychosexual stages of development to describe a child’s unconscious sexual desire for the opposite-sex parent and hostile sense of rivalry with the same-sex parent based on his reading of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (Britannica).
The term “Cinderella Complex” was developed by Dowling based on her reading of the fairy tale “Cinderella” and is used in this thesis to check whether female’s psychological dependence on other people, especially a male, matches with the female characters both in the earlier and modern versions of Cinderella fairy tale.
The three girls Yeh-hsien, Cinderella, and Ashputtel in the earlier Cinderella tales all wait, submissively, to be chosen by the king or Prince Charming and believe that they will live happily after marrying their prince. This syndrome is not only displayed by Cinderella, but also by her stepsisters and to some extent by her stepmother. Finding a loving husband with handsome looks and abundant wealth is like getting an insurance to live comfortably for the rest of their lives. When they are young, they rely on their father, and after they become a wife, their husband takes care of them. It never seems to be desirable to them to be independent and to choose to support themselves.
It is interesting to note that none of the protagonists of the earlier versions of the
Cinderella fairy tale are from poor families, but rather all belong to relatively noble ones. If the stepmothers would be willing to treat “Cinderella” equally as they do their own daughters, Yeh-hsien, Cinderella, and Ashputtel could actually live quite
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comfortable lives. However, the stepmother chooses not to do this so that she and her daughters have a servant and further in the hope she could ascertain her biological daughters’ future over that of her stepdaughter’s. Consequently, Cinderella has nothing of her own and has to rely on others. This dependence lasts throughout the whole fairy tale. In each of the earlier versions of the Cinderella story, even after Cinderella finally marries the prince, her happy life for sure needs to be supported by the prince’s ample wealth and she has to rely on her husband all the time. These kinds of financially inferior and behaviorally submissive roles for females serve the patriarchal purpose of male dominance in the society at that time. Apart from this, the earlier versions of the
Cinderella fairy tale also suggest that young girls like Cinderella and her stepsisters are not trained or expected to solve their own problems and that external help is necessary to improve their lives.
In Chinese Cinderella Yeh-hsien’s case, she fits the “Cinderella Complex” in the following ways. First of all, she is obedient to her stepmother. No matter what her stepmother asks her to do, she obeys. For example, “she [Cinderella] was ill-treated by her step-mother, who always made her collect firewood in dangerous places and draw water from deep pools” (“Yeh-hsien” 107). In fact, there is really not much she can do about her situation. She has no money, no other place to live, and she doesn’t have any skills to earn money to support herself. She even loses her fish which she keeps in the
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pond because of her obedience to her stepmother’s order to run an errand. While she is away, her stepmother puts on Yeh-hsien’s clothes to disguise herself and goes to the pond to fool the fish and to kill it when it mistakenly takes the stepmother for Yeh- hsien. Second, she relies on others to solve her problems. When the annual spring festival comes in the village, she asks the magic fish bones for beautiful clothes to wear for the festival. She longs to attend the festival because it is the time for young people to meet their right person to marry. Since she cannot make or buy herself beautiful clothes, she expects to get them from someone. She is lucky to have the spirit of the fish bones to provide her with a gown of azure, a cloak of kingfisher feathers, and a pair of gold slippers to solve her problem. Otherwise, there is no way that she can go to this spring festival that she desperately desires to attend. Third, when she loses one of the gold slippers, she does not manage to get it back by herself, but just panics. What she does is only to worry and to fall asleep under a fruit tree. Fourth, only when the king comes to her home and asks her to try on the gold slippers, “Yeh-hsien then comes forward, wearing her cloak spun from halcyon feather and her shoes. She was as beautiful as a heavenly being” (“Yeh-hsien” 108). Here, once again, she does what she has been told to and transforms into a beauty by the power of the spirit, and becomes the wife of a king. There is simply nothing that Yeh-hsien actually does by herself to reach this happy ending. In sum, submissive, powerless, dependent, Yeh-hsien surely demonstrates
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plenty of “Cinderella Complex” elements.
The European Cinderella in the Charles Perrault’s and Brothers Grimm’s versions also shows clearly many of the characteristics of the “Cinderella Complex.” After her father remarries an arrogant woman, the whole house is controlled by her stepmother.
When anything that is related to Cinderella happens, her father is on her stepmother’s side, not on hers. “The poor child endured everything with patience. She didn’t dare complain to her father, who would have scolded her, for he was completely under the thumb of his wife10” (Perrault 30). Therefore, Cinderella obeys to do whatever her stepmother and stepsisters order her to do because she is put in a submissive, powerless, and dependent position. When the ball hosted by the prince comes, she cries her eyes out when she cannot manage to attend it by herself. Crying does not seem to be a workable strategy for many people to solve their problems, but it works well for
Cinderella. Seeing her sobbing bitterly, Cinderella’s fairy godmother provides her with a golden coach, a coachman, fine horses, footmen, and beautiful garments (Perrault 34).
Glamorous as a real princess, Cinderella happily goes to the ball and successfully makes the prince fall in love with her, and then they live merrily together ever after. Cinderella should be overjoyed because she finally finds a handsome, rich prince to guarantee her a comfortable life. But what has Cinderella done by herself for this wonderful outcome?
10 The fact that the father is controlled by his second wife indicates that power relations between husband and wife could be more complex.
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It might not be a proper way to describe the beautiful Cinderella; however, she is really like a parasite moving from one organism to another, depending on whoever she can count on in order to survive.
Like the Cinderella in the other two earlier versions of Cinderella tales, Ashputtel in the Grimm Brothers’ tale is as obedient as she could possibly be. “There she was forced to do hard work; to rise early before day-light, to bring the water, to make the fire, to cook and to wash” (Grimm et al. 209). She accepts to do whatever she is told to without questioning. For example, when Ashputtel’s stepmother orders her to pick peas out of an ash heap within a certain time, which is almost impossible for an ordinary person to do, so that she cannot go to the three-day feast, she obeys. Also, as another demonstration of the “Cinderella Complex,” Ashputtel is not capable to solve the problem by herself, she relies on birds. Unlike Yeh-hsien, who has a fish friend,
Ashputtel has birds to look after her. Her dove friends come to pick out the peas for her in the blink of an eye. A difficult task is perfectly done by birds, not by Ashputtel herself. Not only do the doves help her complete the impossible task, they also bring a beautiful dress and gold slippers for her to go to the feast for three nights. Because of the help of the doves, Ashputtel finally wins her Prince Charming, who is supposed to stay with her “For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part” (Lambert and Dollahite 592). Obedient,
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dependent, and also a crybaby, Ashputtel, like Yeh-hsien, has a lot of “Cinderella
Complex” in her.
To some extent, the “Cinderella Complex” syndrome is also displayed by
Ashputtel’s two stepsisters. These two are well protected by their mother and thus not independent. In addition, they are so obedient to their mother since both cut part of their foot to fit in that tiny gold slipper in order to marry the prince so that they have someone to depend on to live a comfortable life for the rest of their lives (Grimm et al.
216-217). Their “Cinderella Complex” unfortunately brings them tragedy, instead of a happy ending as that of Ashputtel’s.
Although “Cinderella Complex” is often seen in young women or girls, the stepmother, who finds a second husband to protect her, could also have had it rooted within her since her young age. Hoping that her daughters, like her, will be well looked after in the future, she asks her daughters to get the chance to marry the prince by all means, even though it is not quite right for a mother to ask her daughters to seriously hurt themselves physically.
Not many girls who have “Cinderella Complex” are as lucky as the protagonist in the Cinderella fairy tales to find a good man to rely on at the end. Actually, depending on others and being always obedient often makes a person lose his or her own ability to handle his or her own life problems. As a woman who is dependent and obedient,
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Cinderella will always be her husband’s compliant person and appendage.
After waves of feminist movements started to enlighten women, however, women started to overcome the “Cinderella Complex” hidden in their consciousness. They came to realize their inner power and executive ability to save themselves from ordeals.
The discussions in the rest of this chapter will be about the “Cinderella Complex” in the modern versions of Cinderella fairy tales. These modern versions published at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century reflect feminist elements in the rewording of the Cinderella tale. An obvious difference between the earlier and modern versions is that there is no magic power in the modern versions except for the Cinderella in Bound. As Bound is the retelling of “Yeh-hsien,” it keeps most of the plot of the earlier version. Therefore, the Cinderella “Xing Xing” in Bound has a fish as an incarnation of her mother to help her go through tough times, which might give the reader a false notion that Xing Xing is as dependent as Yeh-hsien. As a matter of fact,
Xing Xing is quite independent as most of the other Cinder girls in the modern versions.
They show little or less evidence of the “Cinderella Complex” than the ones in the earlier versions. They try to survive in a male-dominant society in their own unique way. Although the modern Cinderella still has a wicked stepmother and spoiled stepsisters controlling her, she tries to turn disadvantages into advantages and to make the situation in her favor. Each of them has her own characteristics: bravery,
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determination, independence, and their broad mindedness will be discussed respectively in the following paragraphs.
Clara in Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is a mixture of the “Cinderella
Complex” and women’s independence. Before her mother dies, she is well protected by her parents, who inculcate the “Cinderella Complex” into her. For example, she does not know anything about sewing. When the hem of her skirt drags, she does not know how to mend it. When Iris, Clara’s stepsister, is very surprised that Clara’s mother has not taught her anything about needlework, Clara explains, “She [Clara’s mother] taught me to turn for help when I needed it. She taught me that people would be kind and come to my aid” (Maguire 175). Upon hearing this, Iris tells her that “People admire you for your good looks, but sooner or later they’ll know it if you’ve never met a needle and thread [...] Even a pretty flower has to learn to work, you know” (Maguire 175).
Another example is about how Clara changes after her father remarries. Since the whole house is under the control of her stepmother except for the kitchen the place her stepmother despises, Clara chooses to hide herself in the kitchen, mentally and physically. The kitchen has then become her shelter as she says, “I’m the more secure in my kitchen. The more needed, the more private. Call me Cinderling [...] Call me
Ashgirl, Cinderella, I don’t care. I am safe in the kitchen” (Maguire 210). Isolating herself in the kitchen, Clara finds her comfort zone, ignoring her own problem.
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However, although Clara stays in the kitchen without any ambitions for her own future just as the earlier Cinderellas, she cares about the future of her stepsister, Iris.
Seeing that Iris has talents in painting and there is an opportunity for her to learn from the Master, a famous painter, in his studio, she encourages her to accept the Master’s offer to be his apprentice. Being a female painter in 17th century Holland society could still raise an eyebrow as Daniëlle van den Heuvel mentioned about women’s involvement in the job market as follows:
Society’s ideas on the maintenance of households, focused on a task division
in which the male household head functioned as the main breadwinner, and
women were only responsible for possible extra income. Nevertheless, in
cases when it was indeed necessary for a woman to earn an income on her
own, because she had no husband or father to rely on, an exception was made.
According to society, these independent women should however have limited
themselves to activities that were considered suitable for women such as
needlework, sewing and knitting. (46)
This might be why Iris herself shows her disapproval to the Master when she learns that he wants her to be his helper in the studio. She says, “[...] do you really think that God smiles on a maiden who is bold enough to paint?” (Maguire 179). This notion is however denied by Clara. In her opinion, “It may not be common [for women to paint],
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but surely it’s neither impossible nor illegal [...] and don’t you care for him [Casper, the
Master’s apprentice whom Iris is very fond of] [...] All the more reason to go spend time with him. A chance to get to know him better” (Maguire 207). Cinderella, in this modern version, encourages others, such as her stepsister Iris, to learn to know someone she is interested in. From doing so, she is no more the Cinderella in
Perrault’s “Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper,” who marries a person she hardly knows but dances with for only three nights at the ball. A better understanding of each other is now taken into consideration when choosing a lifelong partner. It is a sharp contrast that the modern Cinderella starts to choose a life partner, but is not merely being chosen. Furthermore, when the prince proposes to Clara, she asks the prince to protect her stepsister, Ruth, from being accused of arson (Maguire 359). Also, she offers her father and two stepsisters financial support from overseas after she marries the prince (Maguire 361, 365). In this Cinderella story written in the 20th century, Clara saves her family from falling apart, but does not just live contentedly with her prince.
In Just Ella, the Cinderella, Ella Brown, shows herself to the reader as a strong, independent, and determined girl. Unlike the stereotype of a woman in the earlier versions of Cinderella, who is abused, submissive, and dependent, the protagonist, Ella
Brown, is a modern kind of woman who has a clear mind about what she wants or what she does not want. She is bold, autonomous, and strong-minded.
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Ella Brown is brave and strong to do the right thing, even if she has to give up her royal identity as a princess, which means both fame and wealth. After the excitement of the dancing ball dies down, she soon learns that the reason the prince wants to marry her is not because he loves her but only because she is beautiful. In order to show off her beautiful figure to the audience at the horse-racing tournament, the queen and prince order her to wear a steel-and-wood corset to show her slim waist. However, she can hardly breathe in the tight corset and she cannot take it off without their permission.
This is too much for a person like her who very much wants to take charge of her own destiny, now she can’t even take charge of her own clothes (Haddix 85). Feeling frustrated by being treated as if she were a showpiece, she exclaims, “I absolutely could not live the way everyone wanted me to. I would go mad” (Haddix 92). Moreover, Ella also finds out that the prince doesn’t have his own opinions. Her maid tells her, “The prince isn’t really smart enough to know how to fall in love, is he? He wouldn’t know how to get out of bed in the morning if he didn’t have advisers telling him which foot to put on the floor first” (Haddix 98). From this, Ella figures out, “So he didn’t even choose me [at the ball]. He just did what he was told. He wasn’t in love with me. He isn’t” (Haddix 98). This makes Ella more convinced that the prince is not the right person to marry.
The last straw that completely diminishes Ella’s respect for a royal prince is when
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she witnesses the prince killing a male guard who casts greedy eyes over Ella. He pushes his sword through the guard’s heart without a blink just for showing off that he loves Ella and has the ability to protect her. The horrifying scene scares her: “It was all so cold and heartless and without reason” (Haddix 140). She then finally comes to understand that it is only the glamor of being a princess and the prince’s handsome look that make her jump into the palace like a flying moth darting itself into the flame as she says, “I now knew the real Prince Charming to be an insensitive dullard [...] only barely better than Quog [the dead guard]. But still I felt a pang for the ideal I’d thought I’d loved, the perfect male I’d made up in my mind with the image of the prince’s face”
(Haddix 141). With the understanding of her predicament, Ella bravely terminates her betrothal with the prince. When she tells the prince about her decision, the prince’s ridiculous response proves that her decision is the correct one. He surprises her with asking her to stay right at the place where she proposes the dismissal of marriage and wait until he returns with someone who can tell him what to do. She is astonished that the prince cannot handle the situation himself (Haddix 107). Refusing to blindly follow suit and to be controlled by vanity, Ella is shown to be a brave girl who has a clear mind and the courage to take charge by herself.
Furthermore, Ella Brown is also independent. First, she decides to make the ball at the palace a turning point of her life. On the way to the palace, Ella tells herself, “This
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night would mark my declaration of independence from Lucille [her stepmother]. One way or another, I would not go back to being her slave” (Haddix 73). She longs to leave the house and the control of her stepfamily and be herself. She has the nerve to have her own life decided by herself, not by others. Later, after she moves into the palace, she still looks after herself without being waited on by servants, unlike the other noble ladies in the palace. For example, during the time when she moves to live in the palace before her wedding day with the prince, she still helps herself with everything as any commoner would do. Early one morning, she wakes up feeling freezingly cold, she gets up to tend the fireplace without asking for the aid of a maid. She tells herself, “You’re no stranger to tending fireplaces. Just because they put a crown on your head doesn’t mean your hands forgot how to work” (Haddix 1). Unfortunately, what she does is against one of the rules of the palace. Her maid who is responsible for restarting her fireplace is dismissed on the very same morning. This is an example to show that a princess is trained and is expected to depend on other people. Doing any work that could make her hands dirty is forbidden. Once her decorum instructor, Madame Bisset, told her that:
As you must know, our duty as women is to be protected from unpleasantness,
so that our minds and our souls – and our brows – shall be unsullied by worry.
Women were created to be like flowers, providing color and beauty to the
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world. We leave troubling matters to men. (Haddix 18-19)
However, Ella does not approve of her instructor’s demand. She has in her mind that “I considered suggesting that Madame Bisset ask the female servants in the palace if they believed they were protected from unpleasantness” (Haddix 19). Also, women in the village, as Ella describes, “worked from sunup until sundown scrubbing and baking and wiping snotty noses” (Haddix 19). She also believes that hard work pays off. Maybe people think that she is lucky enough to transform from a ragged commoner to a royal member and will live joyfully with a handsome, rich prince; however, she is not like that. On the contrary, she makes it joyful on her own. “I’d made something happen. I’d done something everybody had told me I couldn’t. I’d changed my life all by myself”
(Haddix 57). Ella refuses to be an object tended carefully like a fragile glass doll. She knows her strength and develops herself to be helpful and independent.
Determination is another more feminist element in Just Ella which shows that she does not have “Cinderella Complex.” It is not a prompt decision to break the betrothal without knowing what to do after that. Ella is determined to be a medical and agricultural adviser at the refugee camp on the border. She wants to decide her own future. As Parsons indicates in the article about “Ella Evolving,” “The protagonist assumes a subject position in which she is an active agent. A frequent theme [about women’s power] is that women must achieve autonomy in order to determine their own
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destiny” (Parsons 140). On her long and difficult journey to the border, Ella overcomes hunger and fear and keeps moving on with the hope that she will make it. What is even more about her determination for her own future is that she digs a tunnel under the dungeon where she is imprisoned by the prince and his party after she breaks the engagement. Through the tunnel, she runs away. From a feminist point of view,
“[Female] protagonists prove to be capable of taking responsibility for themselves and their situations, of making decisions and acting on them independently of masculine protection or approval” (Trousdale and McMillan 12). Thus, Ella demonstrates that she is not suffering from “Cinderella Complex.”
In addition to her power to pull herself out of the situation where she is always hungry, cold and angry at her stepmother’s and stepsisters’ cruelties (Haddix 58), Ella is also thoughtful and thinks critically. Having spent two years with her stepfamily members who do not think that she deserves food or life (Haddix 66), she starts to think about walking away from the house to find her own future and based on that perception she would like to work as a tutor instead of being a maid or servant or getting married.
What she plans is that “If I brushed up on my Latin and Greek, I was sure I could do that [being a tutor] quite well. I could save my money and someday come back and buy the house from Lucille [Ella’s stepmother]” (Haddix 66). However, incidents happening one after another cause her to think about whether the palace is the right place for her to
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spend the rest of her life. Once, when she and the prince are talking about poor people lacking food, the prince does not seem to care about them because he says, “It matters not to me” (Haddix 28). It raises a question in Ella’s mind: “Why didn’t his own hungry subjects matter to him? What was wrong with this man?” (Haddix 28). To this point,
“Cinderella Complex” is not in the personality of Ella at all. However, it does exist in the other girls. One of the girls says: “That is what women do. We wait [...] Men go out and have adventures, and we wait for their return. They like to know that we are safe at home, waiting” (Haddix 89). Ella is obvious not one of them. Her notion of female independence makes her noticeably different from the other girls.
Similar to Ella in Just Ella, the protagonist, Xing Xing, a twelve-year-girl in the
14th century, in the novel Bound has also a clear mind and the courage to solve her own problems and to decide what she should do. For example, when her stepmother sends her off to find a lang zhong to cure her stepsister, Wei Ping’s feet, she met on the way a driver of an ox-drawn cart who offers to give her a ride to another village (Napoli 69).
Considering the distance she has to travel and the urgent need to cure her stepsister’s feet, she accepts the offer to take the stranger’s cart although she knows that it might be dangerous. When she senses that the driver has evil intentions on her, she bravely jumps off the cart and escapes (Napoli 76). Eventually, she finds the lang zhong and brings some medicine back for Wei Ping so that she can finally walk after some time. Besides
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her bravery to do what other girls would not be able to do, what she does for her stepsister also proves that she is a girl who can forgive. She does not bear grudges against her stepfamily members. She does not take revenge to see her stepsister suffering, but chooses to help her.
In summary, taking a brief look at the three Cinderellas, Clara, Ella, and Xing
Xing, the reader can find in them the virtues of being considerate, strong, independent, determined, and broad-minded. The three ladies have gotten rid of the notorious impression “Cinderella Complex” that Cinderella in the earlier versions carried for so long. These modern versions of Cinderella portray a protagonist who depends on herself to control her own life. With courage, independence, and determination, the contemporary Cinderella knows what she wants and how to become the person she wants to be. Therefore, modern versions of Cinderella demonstrate to young female readers the value of independence and how important it is to make one’s own path to happiness.
3.2 Outer and Inner Beauty
Whether in the earlier or modern versions of Cinderella fairy tales, the protagonist is stunningly beautiful. In the earlier versions: Yeh-hsien is “as beautiful as a heavenly being” (“Yeh-hsien” 108); when the Brothers Grimm’s Cinderella appears at the ball,
“no one knew what to say for wonder at her beauty” (Grimm et al. 215); Charles
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Perrault’s Cinderella also draws people’s full attention at the ball. “[...] everyone was so absorbed in contemplating the great beauty of the unknown lady [Cinderella] who had just entered” (Perrault 37). Likewise, in the modern versions: “They [people at the annual spring feast] watched Xing Xing walk by, and they instantly perked up. They called out about how pretty she was” (Napoli 156); in Just Ella, the prince whispered in her ear and said, “You’re the most beautiful girl here [the palace]” (Haddix 26); Clara in
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is as beautiful as an angel. When the prince sees her, he “seems thunderstruck” (Maguire 323); as for Ella in All the Ever Afters, her beauty makes other pretty girls fade like ghosts, “just as the moon disappears when the sun rises in all of its glory” (Teller 337). In earlier versions of Cinderella, the protagonist successfully attracts the prince with her beauty and lives blissfully with the prince.
However, the protagonist shows no concern to the fact that the prince is just attracted to her beauty and recognizes her only by her missing slipper. Through her looks, she attracts the ideal prince, who immediately comes to take her away from her abusive stepmother and stepsisters, and they leap together to a bright future, or a happy marriage, or whatever any good terms people can use to name it, all as a result of her good looks. However, just imagine what will happen if she went to the ball with messy hair, bare feet, in the tattered dress of her mother’s. Will the result be the same? It is very unlikely that Cinderella would be able to catch the prince’s attention. Thus, this
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fairy tale shows that some men only care about women’s appearances. Beautiful women are taken as men’s belongings to look at or to show off to others, but not necessarily as a companion whom they can share their lives with.
No matter what, Cinderella ends up in a rather unrealistic example of romance. Not only did Cinderella and the prince fall in love at first sight, but it was also a perfect, happily-ever-after romance, in a situation only driven by the outside appearances of both of them. This is a pretty common theme in almost every fairy tale that features a pure, innocent, helpless, beautiful girl in a disastrous situation. She ultimately gets rewarded for her good looks to marry a handsome prince who is totally a stranger. In fairy tales, sudden declarations of love and marriage are almost always acceptable. Yet, in real life nowadays, any girl who spends only a few hours with a man before she agrees to marry him would be considered irrational and impulsive. Therefore, what kind of message does the Cinderella fairy tale send to young girls who may have to deal with unfortunate reality that might not turn out good?
Outer beauty is about the appearance people are born with and it often gives other people a first impression of the person. Yet, inner beauty is not only about what people are born with but also about what they are really like as a person: the way they treat other people and their personal traits. At the same time, many people are easily confused by the outside look of a woman when they see her for the first time. It is that stereotype:
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“beautiful women possess virtue and good character, whereas no amount of virtue can make an ugly woman beautiful” (Teller 3). In both the earlier and modern versions of
Cinderella fairy tales, women’s beautiful looks are emphasized. Baker-Sperry and
Grauerholz indicate in their study of feminine beauty ideals in children’s fairy tales:
Fairy tales, like other media, convey messages about the importance of
feminine beauty not only by making “beauties” prominent in stories but also
in demonstrating how beauty gets it rewards. So ingrained is the image of
women’s beauty in fairy tales that it is difficult to imagine any that do not
highlight and glorify it. Recent Disney films and even contemporary feminist
retellings of popular fairy tales often involve women who differ from their
earlier counterparts in ingenuity, activity, and independence but not physical
attractiveness. (Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz 722)
Yet, outer beauty is judged differently across cultures. Because of the practice of foot- binding in ancient China, women with tiny feet were considered sexy and beautiful at that time. “The modern hearer does not connect sexual attractiveness and beauty in general with extreme smallness of the foot, as the ancient Chinese did, in accordance with their practice of binding women’s feet” (Bettelheim 236). However, even though the norms of outer beauty may be different, the concept of outer beauty itself remains across cultures.
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Among the four modern versions of Cinderella fairy tales, Confessions of an Ugly
Stepsister and Just Ella mention more about women’s inner and outer beauty. In
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, there is a poignant contrast between Cinderella Clara and her stepsister Iris. Iris has a plain look, but is kind; while Clara is beautiful but fragile. Iris is never considered as a beauty: “[...] the eyes are flat, lacking in intelligence; the lips pursed, practicing resentment; the brows furrowed, the chin weak, the nose large” (Maguire 50). Her mother also says, “Iris is plain to look at. Painfully plain [...] she must accept it like the rest of us” (Maguire 50). Therefore, Iris wishes that her sorry looks can be unnoticeable, for “Iris [herself] knows that she’s not the insult to the human form [...]; but Iris also knows that she’s not a proof of a divine presence in a corrupt world” (Maguire 45). Once, in the kitchen, out of a sense of inferiority, she asks her mother to teach her how to skin hares. At first her mother refuses because she does not want her daughter to be a cook preparing food for guests in the future. However, Iris insists with the reason that “Because I’m ugly and I have to know these things, so I can take care of myself someday” (Maguire 115). Being well aware of her own plain looks,
Iris is deeply convinced that she will not have a good marriage and that she, therefore, has to learn some useful skills to survive in the future.
The Master painter and Iris once talk about her future shortly after her mother decides to marry Clara’s father. When Iris makes fun of herself about not having a good
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appearance to stand foot in Dutch society, the Master tells her:
Self-mockery is an uglier thing than any human face, Iris. No one can pretend
you are a pretty wench, but you are smart and you are kind. Don’t betray
those impulses in yourself. Don’t labor the lack of physical beauty, which in
any case eventually flees those who have it, and makes them sad. (Maguire
178)
Also, while at the ball, Iris draws the prince’s attention to talk to her. The Master observes her engaging in the conversation with the prince and tells her later that:
[...] you hold your chin up high, you answer him in a language few of your
neighbors can understand. You are mysterious and alluring. Besides, you do
what few other young women have done: You’re an occasional apprentice to
the painter [...] Are you still so young that you can’t see you have some cachet
of your own. (Maguire 336)
Beauty is really not everything. As beautiful as Clara can be, she does not feel proud of it. On the contrary, she curses her beauty for blinding people to see the true inside of her. “[...] it’s my beauty that’s monstrous, for it sweeps away any other aspect of my character” (Maguire 238). The outside beauty has actually become a burden for Clara.
Even the practical stepmother, Margarethe, ponders the meaning of beauty for once. At the Master’s studio looking at his paintings, Margarethe shoots out several questions
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about beauty: “What about the beauty of goodness? What about the splendid act? The question of Parcifal, the gesture of the Samaritan on the road? What about the widow who gives her only penny?” (Maguire 248). Skin-deep beauty indeed can be pleasing to the eye; however, only inner beauty really matters.
Ella in Just Ella expects that the prince is falling head over heels in love with her and that is the reason he decides to marry her. However, when she asks a royal adviser,
Jed Reston, about why the prince is willing to marry a commoner like her, the answer disappoints her. The adviser, who knows the prince well, said that “I’d guess it’s because you’re not ugly and wart covered like a Domulian princess11” (Haddix 55). It is hard for Ella to accept that the only reason that the prince marries her is just that she is beautiful. Her outer attractiveness might blind people from seeing her inside beauty; however, it cannot be denied that her beautiful appearance smooths her way to a better future. For example, outside the palace on the ball night, she asks a carriage driver to take her to the castle gate in his carriage, the driver not only takes her to the gate but also offers to take her for some distance after the ball ends without asking for the fare.
He told her that: “[...] someone like you needs to leave in elegance” (Haddix 74). Later, looking at herself in the wall mirror in the front of the palace while waiting to get into the castle, she is astonished by her own beauty with amazement in her mind, “I was
11 Domulia is the farthest land from the palace and Domulian princesses are famously ugly and wart covered (Haddix 53).
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beautiful. Truly beautiful” (Haddix 75). It is also her lovely look that makes her surpass all the other girls and draws the prince’s attention to her. Her stepsisters, who dance in the other ball room for unattractive girls, do not even see the prince. Beauty indeed gives Ella some privilege to obtain success much easier.
However, outer beauty also brings her trouble. Without knowing that the prince is only a mommy’s boy whom she will never want to marry, she makes all the effort to attend the ball and she becomes a princess. After she refuses to marry the prince, she is imprisoned in the dungeon, but that is also the time she shows her strong personality: “I got myself into this mess, so I’ve got to get myself out” (Haddix 127). Inner power rises while encountering difficulties. That is inner beauty.
Inner beauty also includes caring for other people. Ella is considerate even when she herself is in trouble. For example, a maid, Mary, finds her a shovel to dig a tunnel out of the dungeon where she is imprisoned. When she successfully digs her way out, she does not leave the shovel behind her. She carries it with her for fear that Mary will get into trouble for helping her with her escape. She says, “I picked it up to take along
[with the food bag that Mary prepares for her] too, just in case it could incriminate
Mary” (Haddix 144). All these examples demonstrate that Ella’s inner beauty outshines her outer appearance, and with her inner virtues, she finds her way out of the place which she loathes.
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In Bound, Xing Xing’s stepsister, Wei Ping, suffers from foot-binding. In the 14th century in China, the setting in the novel, besides a pretty face, a thin figure and bound feet are also what a woman should have, for a man put these into consideration to choose an ideal wife. “[...] she [Wei Ping] was slender as a reed, exactly as men preferred their wives. If she’d had her feet bound at the age of six [...] her feet would be small enough to fit in a man’s hand like a golden lotus blossom, and she’d already undoubtedly be betrothed” (Napoli 7). Unfortunately, her feet are bound only after Xing
Xing’s father, who does not want his daughters’ feet bound, dies12. Wei Ping is, at that time, already twelve years old so that it is difficult to bind her feet to be very small.
With her feet bound too tight by her mother, “Wei Ping’s feet oozed a foul-smelling yellow liquid that seemed to drain away her energy” (Napoli 11). After Wei Ping’s big and second toes on her left foot are accidentally bitten off by a raccoon, the big and second toes on the girl’s right foot are unfortunately cut off by the girl’s own mother with a cleaver to make both feet equally small. Looking back to that period of Chinese history while foot binding was practiced, women with small feet were considered attractive, which caused numerous women to suffer from pains in their feet. However, they accepted it and went to every conceivable extreme to make their feet as small as
12 Some men were enlightened and were against foot binding. Xing Xing’s father had grown up way down south, where not so many women bound their feet, and he didn’t like the custom (Napoli 7).
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possible. Patriarchal beauty standards were accepted without questioning and were enforced by mothers. This kind of blind acceptance to patriarchal beauty concepts also exists in present modern societies, especially in Asian countries. Cosmetics, bras, corsets, wigs, curlers, false eyelashes, cosmetic surgery, high heels, and weight watch projects, among others are widespread and women in modern society are unconsciously forced to follow suit in every possible way to compete for male approval by meeting ridiculous beauty standards (Rhode 698). It seems that the game for women to beautify themselves for men will never end, no matter how many waves of feminist movements have already come and gone. It seems that all parts of the female body are always in constant need of improvement, and the cost spent on beauty is considerable.
Although there is no denying that the Cinderella fairy tale has set a stereotypical appearance of an ideal woman upon the minds of many girls: young, beautiful, slim, she has also shown readers her kind heart, consideration, patience, and forgiveness. It is suggested that while imitating Cinderella’s outer beauty in order to be “Cinderella-ish,” young girls should focus more on cultivating their inner beauty, their real self. Outer beauty might help solve realistic problems once in a while, but not always. Outer beauty fades, inner beauty stays.
3.3 Women in Society
The protagonist, Cinderella, portrayed in the earlier versions of Cinderella fairy
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tales is submissive, passive, and silent, which was the common concept for how a woman should behave in the society at that time. In “The Portrayal of Women in the
Fairy Tales,” Dr. Silima Nanda argues that:
Fairy tales embody the ways that societies attempted to silence and oppress
women making them passive. Much of the fairy tale literature reinforces the
idea that women should be wives and mothers, submissive and self-
sacrificing. Good women in stories are to be silent passive, without ambition,
beautiful and eager to marry. (248)
Not only is it hard for the Cinderella in the earlier versions to break through the restrictions the society imposed on her, the modern Cinderella still lives under the societal expectations to be obedient, loving, beautiful, graceful, polite, among others. As in Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, although the painter, “the Master,” thinks much of
Iris’s talents in painting and asks her to be an apprentice to him so that she can help him out with his increasing load of work, Iris neither approves of a woman being a painter in
Dutch society nor does she believe in her own ability to become a painter. The Master agrees to some extent that “Many talented housewives of Haarlem put their nimble fingers to the creation of needlework or of etching on glass […] It isn’t such a bold step to move from needle to paintbrush” (Maguire 179). However, he encourages her that
“To consider what other people might say is hardly a good reason to take action or to
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defer it. You have your own life to live, Iris, and at its end, the only opinion that amounts to anything is that which God bestows” (Maguire 179). So it is obvious that
Iris has already internalized social constrictions.
In Just Ella, Ella’s father encourages her to have her own thought. He tells Ella:
“I’d prefer to hear an original thought, if you have one” (Haddix 4). Therefore, Ella can think clearly when she has to make a decision. At that time, it is not acceptable for girls to be apprentices. However interested Ella is in glassblowing, she cannot be an apprentice at the glassblower’s shop because “I [Ella] had never heard of any of the craftsmen in the village apprenticing girls. Just boys” (Haddix 69). Therefore, under the societal pressure, a woman should be virtuous, beautiful, obedient, patient, sacrificial, and sexually innocent, but does not have the right to choose a career under societal pressure.
Although earlier and later versions show the constrictions of society, how each
Cinderella reacts to her own fate is different between the earlier and modern versions:
Even though all books are set in earlier historical periods, the Cinderella in earlier versions is acquiescent to societal expectations on girls while the modern ones fight for themselves. As nowadays men and women are mostly equal in society, the rewritten fairy tales begin to show a constant change in social values. Dr. Silima Nanda gives her opinion about the influence of fairy tales on society, “Fairy tales are beginning to
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recognize the change in societal values, being evolved and morphed to mirror the current society and their present day values. The roles of women are already changing in today’s culture” (249). Therefore, fairy tales have a new look of a society with men and women valued the same. Women nowadays indeed can lead their lives under a more sensible societal expectation and in a more balanced status with their male counterparts.
Another aspect that is talked about only a little in Cinderella fairy tales is women’s education. Women are expected to be beautiful, graceful, and obedient; however, they are never expected to be educated. In the earlier versions, women’s education is never mentioned. Cinderella is busy doing housework and her stepsisters spend time making themselves perfect for marriage, but none of them ever seem to work on reading and learning. In the modern versions, there is a little bit about learning mentioned here and there throughout the story. For example, in Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, the
Cinderella, Clara, has learned three languages, and some other skills. Her parents are concerned about her education and arrange language lessons for her: English, French, and Latin. Clara says that her mother brings the world in to her: “[...] there was a woman from Flanders to teach me lace making. Before her, a woman from Paris who spoke to me in French. I had a man to teach me fingering on the keys of the virginal, and a man to train me in Scripture verses” (Maguire 134). About girls’ upbringing in the
17th century of Holland, Daniëlle van den Heuvel indicates:
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After finishing knitting or sewing school, girls of the common people (de
gemeene lieden) looked for a job as a maidservant. Daughters of middlemen
(burgers) were supposed to stay at home to help their mothers in the
household. In addition to that, they had to occupy themselves with the
production of, among other things, millinery, robes and dresses, and with
needlework and other feminine handiworks. (44)
Although Clara does not go to school but is tutored at home, those lessons she takes are not just needlework which girls are required to take, but are broader. However, after her mother dies, her home schooling also stops.
Influenced by her father, the Cinderella, Ella, in Just Ella likes reading. She takes her father’s books with her to run away to the border: an atlas, a physician’s textbook, a volume on plant and animal husbandry, a collection of poems, a book of stories, and a book of philosophy (Haddix 149). On the way, she studies medical and agricultural books (Haddix 155) so that she can be the medical and agricultural adviser when she settles down at the refugee camp. Although it is not a complete medical education, self- studying and training can be regarded as a kind of education at that time. Certainly, from a modern perspective, two books do not provide sufficient knowledge. Compared with a medical student nowadays who has to spend several years at school gaining all kinds of medical knowledge and working as an intern to get real life experience, it is not
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very convincing that Ella has sufficient knowledge and experience to treat the patients at the refugee camp. Yet, since this fairy tale is set in an unspecified mediaeval times, her medical knowledge would have been considered sufficient to treat patients at that time.
Before Ella escapes from the palace, she has to take a series of training to make her, an ordinary girl, into a proper princess at the palace: decorum, dancing, palace protocol, needlepoint, painting, etc. Although compared with the present education for girls to learn any subject they like: science, math, languages, chemistry, biology, among others, these kinds of training cannot be called education but only a means to coach girls to become good subordinates to their future husbands. However, they are, at least something about learning, even though it may seem stereotypical female types of knowledge, to be mentioned in the modern Cinderella stories.
Agnes, the stepmother in All the Ever Afters, does not go through a formal education, either, because of poverty and her low social status as a servant at the abbey where she is staying. Her first learning starts from studying psalms. A noble woman,
Lady Wenslock, teaches her how to recognize the English alphabet and words, and then she studies on her own. Knowing that education is important, she sends her two daughters to study at the convent where she knows her daughters will be well educated.
Ella, the Cinderella in this book, does not go to school, but Agnes teaches Ella her
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prayers in Latin until she starts having tutorial lessons at eight years old (259-262).
In Bound, education is not taken seriously by Xing Xing’s fellow villagers. “Before potter Wu [Xing Xing’s father] moved to this area, no one had heard of an ordinary person getting an education. None of the boys around here was educated, much less the girls” (Napoli 12). Moreover, as a Chinese saying initiated in the Ming dynasty (14th –
17th century) goes, “Innocence is a virtue for women,” what women have to do is to take care of their family but not to take education lessons. Therefore, it is hard for an educated girl to find an ideal husband in ancient China, as Xing Xing’s stepmother says,
“[...] an educated girl would be harder to marry off” (Napoli 13). However, Xing Xing’s father wants his daughters (Xing Xing and her stepsister) to be educated. Therefore, he himself teaches Xing Xing calligraphy and asks a famous painter and his wife to teach her painting and poetry (Napoli 13). Unfortunately, Xing Xing’s father suddenly died, which also brings Xing Xing’s learning to an end.
Without proper education, Cinderella and many other women are locked away from society and can only be housewives or do labor work. This brings up another concern about women’s financial independence. The female characters in the Cinderella fairy tale, whether in the earlier or in the modern versions, are all dependent on men financially.
In Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, the experience of being in poverty makes
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Iris’s (Clara’s stepsister) mother, Margarethe, chooses to marry Clara’s father, a rich man named Cornelius van den Meer, rather than a famous and talented painter called
“the Master,” who loves her and has a promising future, but can afford only a modest standard of living at that time. When Iris questions her mother about that, she says, “He
[the Master] hadn’t the correct prospects [...] Talent doesn’t buy bread” (Maguire 173).
There is no evidence in the story whether Margarethe loves Clara’s father or not; however, the obvious reason that drives her to make the decision is her financial worries. She tells Iris, “[...] you don’t know what sacrifices I make to protect you and your sister. What if I should drop dead of the plague next week? Where would you turn?” (Maguire 173). Margarethe’s life experience of being a penniless widow with two daughters to feed makes her a practical woman. She trusts wealth (Clara’s father) more than love (the painter and his apprentice). In her opinion, the painter and his apprentice might take Iris in for one or two nights if Iris were really in trouble.
However, it is impossible for them to offer her a shelter for a long time. She reminds Iris that “[...] my girl, you know nothing of how we women are imprisoned in our lives, but there are ways to determine the sentence we must serve. You’ll live to thank me [...] To be dead [of hunger] is more cold-blooded” (Maguire 174). Margarethe has a strong sense of insecurity about lack of money. She even kills Clara’s mother to take her place to be the hostess of the house. She confesses to her daughter, “Henrika [Clara’s
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biological mother] comes back from the grave, to assail me with tales of my wrongdoings [...] returns to the scene of her murder, to accuse a poor housemistress of poisoning her” (Maguire 347). To Margarethe, money is on the heavy side of a scale while everything else is on the other side.
However, she cannot earn money on her own but has to rely on a man to support her and look after her and her daughters. For example, before she becomes the house mistress, she first does housework for the painter who, out of kindness, takes her and her daughters in when they have no other place to stay (Maguire 19), and then when
Clara’s father wants Iris (Margarethe’s daughter) to stay at his house and teach his daughter English (Maguire 75), she also moves to stay with Iris and works at the kitchen. Another incidence that shows Margarethe’s greed for money is the time when her new husband is facing the crisis of his tulip business. When they go bankrupt, he blames Margarethe for her greed because she urges him to carry out short bear transaction of the tulips he imports. First, they sell their tulips, then buy back the ownership of the lot of tulips from the person, and then sell the ownership to another purchaser when the price of tulips is getting higher and higher until suddenly the price plunges and the market of tulips collapses because the flowers are not wanted anymore.
Van den Meer says that “It is her [Margarethe’s] greed [...] She is the fisherman’s wife: always wanting something more, and more than that besides, and then still more”
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(Maguire 227). Depending on men to make money for women seems to be the only way that women survive in that society.
Cinderella in the earlier versions is not an independent woman from a financial point of view. Before she gets married, she has to depend on her stepmother. If she is driven out of the house, she has no money and cannot make a living on her own.
Therefore, she has to listen to her stepmother and bear with her abuse. After she marries the prince, she depends on him, a very rich man. As for the Cinderella in modern versions, Ella in Just Ella is the only Cinderella who can support herself by working at the refugee camp. There, she finds her happiness by being independent.
Talking about happiness, every female character, in both the earlier and the modern versions, has her own way to enjoy happiness. Clara in Confessions of an Ugly
Stepsister enjoys being alone. Her stepsister, Iris, falls in love with the Master’s apprentice, Caspar. Her time with Caspar is lovely. She says that “He is full of a very household sort of joy, like the kind that abounds from ripe grapes, from big-bellied lutes” (Maguire 235). The love between Caspar and her is the source of her happiness although he is only a poor apprentice of a painter. Ella in Just Ella is also pondering the question about what real happiness is. Actually Ella feels lonely while staying at the palace and waiting for the wedding day. After all the excitement at the ball and the proposal of the prince is over, she starts to face the reality. She has no friends at the
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palace, she has to get used to the life style there, and she does not see the prince often.
How she truly feels is that: “I was cold. I was lonely [...] but I had never felt so alone in all my life, not even shivering in rags in my garret the day they came to say my father was dead. This was happiness?” (Haddix 8). However, what really strikes her is to wake up from the dream that she will live delightedly with the prince is that she comes to figure out that she does not love him. Pacing around in her room, she tries to envisage up the prince’s handsome face and feels her heart pounding fast for him, but she feels nothing. What she finds out is that:
I felt nothing. Except – bored. I paced faster, almost running, as if I could
escape the thought I didn’t want to think. It caught me anyway. I stood still,
overcome with dread, knowing what I didn’t want to know. I didn’t love
Prince Charming. (Haddix 92)
The realization of having fallen out of love with the prince consequently causes her to bravely make the second jump of her life. She escapes from the palace to find her own happiness. When she successfully escapes from the palace, she goes back to the house where she grew up to change into an ordinary dress. On the way to escape to the border, she throws her royal gown into a creek, seeing it slithering away until it is out of sight.
Standing by the creek, she thinks that: “I tried not to think about how happy I’d expected to be, ever after, with everything shining around me” (Haddix 153). This
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includes the metaphor of the vanishing of false happiness.
Although a good marriage is often associated with happiness, at the refugee camp, when Jed, who is an adviser of the palace but works temporarily there, proposes to her,
Ella hesitates. The first time she accepted a man’s proposal was when the prince did it when he came to her house to take her to the palace. Now she has figured out that: “I knew now that that had been infatuation with an ideal, not love for a real human being
[...] But when I agreed to marry him, I was thinking mainly of getting away from – and getting back at – Lucille [Ella’s stepmother]” (Haddix 174). It seems that now she is escaping from the prince and seeking refuge with Jed. She does not want to be in the same situation again, not knowing whether it might truly be a happy marriage or not.
She would rather wait for a while and see if Jed and she are a match to each other.
Suffering makes a person grow, and so do they influence a person’s view of happiness.
However, it turns out that Ella escapes to the border and works hard there as a medical and agricultural adviser, taking care of children “with rugged clothes, runny noses, and win-chapped faces” (Haddix 187) while ironically one of her stepsisters takes her place and marries the prince and then the three members of Ella’s stepfamily live a happy life at the palace together. Ella might be considered as an idiot not knowing how to appreciate the rich and glorious life at the palace she could have owned.
However, how Ella understands happiness is that: “Happiness was like beauty – in the
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eye of the beholder [...] I liked my life the way I was living it” (Haddix 188). It is like fitting feet into a pair of beautiful shoes. If they do not fit, no matter how beautiful they are, they are useless and could be painful. It will only be possible to walk a long way in comfortable shoes.
Happiness is quite a personal feeling. Something that makes someone happy might not please other people. Therefore, people have to be honest to themselves and figure out what can really bring them happiness for a lifetime, but not just for a short while.
3.4 The Relationship among Female Characters
The conflicts between Cinderella and her stepfamily members are portrayed both in the earlier versions and the modern ones, either between Cinderella and her stepmother or between Cinderella and her stepsisters. For the mother-daughter relationships in fairy tales, there is an overwhelming impression of wicked, demanding, and absent mothers who are portrayed as evil and destructive witches such as Snow
White’s stepmother who tries to kill her, Bella’s mother who never shows up, and
Hansel and Gretel’s stepmother who forces their father to desert them in the forest.
However, there are also fairy godmothers and the incarnation of dead mothers who try to protect innocent heroines. Cinderella, however, usually has an absent mother who is seldom mentioned in the story, an abusive stepmother who treats her as a servant, a spirit mother who incarnates into an animal helper to her, or a fairy godmother who
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grants her wishes to go to the ball. A particular type of mothers in “Cinderella” appears in the version that the reader chooses to read.
Apart from the tension between a mother and daughter, for young readers of the
Cinderella fairy tale who are experiencing sibling rivalry, Cinderella is a perfect character for them to identify with. As Bettelheim mentioned in The Uses of
Enchantment:
No other fairy tale renders so well as the ‘Cinderella’ stories the inner
experiences of the young child in the throes of sibling rivalry, when he feels
hopelessly outclassed by his brothers and sisters. Cinderella is pushed down
and degraded by her stepsisters; her interests are sacrificed to theirs by her
(step)mother; she is expected to do the dirtiest work and although she
performs it well, she receives no credit for it; only more is demanded of her.
This is how the child feels when divested by the miseries of sibling rivalry
[...] The child carried away by sibling rivalry feels, ‘That’s me, that’s how
they mistreat me, or would want to; that’s how little they think of me.’ (237)
Therefore, both mother-daughter and sibling relationships are essential features of
Cinderella tales.
3.4.1 Mother-Daughter Relationships
In the earlier versions of Cinderella fairy tales, Cinderella is always abused by her
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stepmother. In “Yeh-hsien,” “she was ill-treated by her stepmother, who always made her collect firewood in dangerous places and draw water from deep pools” (“Yeh-hsien”
107). In the Brothers Grimm’s “Ashputtel,” Cinderella labored all day, every day.
“There she was forced to do hard work; to rise early before day-light, to bring the water, to make the fire, to cook and to wash” (Grimm et al. 209-10). As for the Cinderella in
Charles Perrault’s “Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper,” “She [Cinderella’s stepmother] ordered the girl to carry out all the menial household chores. It was she who had to wash the dishes and scrub the stairs, who cleaned the rooms of the mistress and her daughters. She herself slept on a wretched bed of straw in a garret” (Perrault
30). As she cannot survive in society on her own with only her good personality but without any skills to make a living, she is always obedient, or may even feel a sense of security by having a place to stay at and food to eat, although she does not always have enough to eat.
However, the Cinderella in the modern versions has started to have some negative feelings towards her stepmother. For example, in the novel Confessions of an Ugly
Stepsister, the stepmother, Margarethe, and the stepdaughter, Clara, never see eye to eye. Take one of the confrontations between them for example. When Clara stays in the kitchen, refusing to come out to greet the guests who are the investors in her father’s tulip business, Margarethe scolded her, “Live with what life brings you, young one, or
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you stay young and stupid forever” (Maguire 112). Upon hearing this, Clara “starts up like a cat whose tail has been trod upon” (Maguire 112), and starts screaming without stopping. When Clara’s birthmother, Henrika, who is expecting her second child but later dies of child birth, comes to take a look, Margarethe says, “No child of mine ever screamed like a hellcat [...] A good dose of chamomile will settle her down”
(Maguire 112). Hearing this, Henrika turns her back to Margarethe and says angrily and anxiously in a cold voice, “Don’t lecture me on the management of my own child”
(Maguire 113) before she storms out of the room. After Clara’s mother, Henrika, dies,
Margarethe tries to push Clara to do housework which Clara thinks is servants’ work and does not want to do. Margarethe sarcastically says while sweeping the floor, “What delicate tender feet you have, too wonderful to stand upon to do some work and help us laboring folk” (Maguire 156). Margarethe also wants to make Clara obey her as now she is her stepmother. She tells Clara that “The commandment [the Fourth
Commandment about the harmony at home] requires that you yield to me as you did to her [Clara’s mother]” (Maguire 188). Being the new hostess in the house, Margarethe wants to show Clara her dominant power over her and make her obedient to her, and there are times when even the young girl’s father cannot but listen to his new wife. At the dinner when the Master and his apprentice are invited over to join them, Margarethe wants Clara to sit beside her instead of on her usual place at her father’s side and she
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also decides what and when Clara should eat. Clara’s father tells her that “Clara, you will obey her or – you will obey her; that’s all I have to say” (Maguire 193). Later, Clara changes to the place where she always stays.
Having married a rich man, Margarethe spends more time shopping for clothes than doing chores in the kitchen. Caused by the change of Margarethe’s life style,
Clara’s life has also become different. The kitchen is now the place where Clara wants to stay. “It is a private place, the kitchen [...] Now that Margarethe is no longer here”
(Maguire 205). Even at the end, they still do not see eye to eye. After Clara marries the prince and has her own children, she brings her children back to visit her father for the last time before she moves to New Amsterdam, because her husband, the prince, has died of pox. However, Margarethe does not want to see her. She “wouldn’t descend from her room, claiming that the presence of Clara might restore her eyesight, and in her old age she preferred her blindness” (Maguire 367). Normally, to restore eyesight should be a blessing; however, unwilling to see Clara, the stepmother would rather stay blind. As for Clara, she does not want to see Margarethe, either. “She never once inquired after her, in letter or in person [after she gets married]” (Maguire 361).
Margarethe, a domineering stepmother, and Clara, a mistreated but unbending stepdaughter, can never get along with each other.
In Just Ella, Ella calls her stepmother and stepsisters “Step Evils” (Haddix 16), and
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her stepmother calls her “a wretched creature” (Haddix 62) and considers herself a better person than Ella. She asks Ella to address her as “Madame” while answering her.
She says, “Say ‘Yes, Madame’ when addressing your betters. How many times do I have to tell you that?” (Haddix 62). However, Ella does not want to obey her. She snaps back, “You are older than me. You have more power than me. But you are not my better.
How many times do I have to tell you that?” (Haddix 62). She sees her stepmother as a woman who is “base and lazy and greedy and mendacious” (Haddix 46) and what her stepmother cares about is only “gossip and fashion and getting her own way” (Haddix
46). Ella hates her stepmother so much that “what matters most to her is beating Lucille
[Ella’s stepmother]” (Haddix 47). To torture Ella, her stepmother dismisses all their servants and makes Ella do all the housework because she considers the money spent on servants “an unnecessary expense” (Haddix 64). Apart from that, she constantly starves
Ella. Ella describes the two years she has been with her stepfamily since her father dies as “I had been living for the past two years on whatever food I could pilfer from the kitchen without Lucille noticing. When was the last time I hadn’t been ordered to bed without supper?” (Haddix 65). It is clear that this relationship is extremely fraught.
Although the stepmother in the Cinderella fairy tale is traditionally considered evil and the image of the stepmother who treats Cinderella cruelly but is kind to her own children lingers in the readers’ minds, the novel All the Ever Afters gives readers a more
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objective point of view of the relationship between the stepmother and stepdaughter. An article about step-parenting issues and relationship quality argues that stepchildren often hold contradictory attitudes toward the proper role of a stepparent. Many children report that while maintaining emotional distance from stepparents, they also want a close personal and supportive relationship with them (Baxter et al.13 qtd. in Kinniburgh-
White et al. 892-893). However, “stepchildren often reacted poorly to attempts by stepparents to influence the rules and values of the family” (Hetherington & Kelly,
2002; Kinniburgh-White et al.14 qtd. in Pace, Garrett T, et al. 5). This can be particularly problematic for stepmothers, who are often stereotyped by children as the
‘‘wicked stepmother’’ (Weaver & Coleman, 200515 qtd. in Pace, Garrett T, et al. 5).
Similarly, stepparents attempting to take on a strong parental role are often rejected by their stepchildren.
In All the Ever Afters, the Cinderella, Princess Elfilda (nicknamed Ella), is a young girl who is spoiled by her loving father, the son of Lord Henry Vis-de-Loup (Teller
267). Ella’s stepmother complains that “He [Ella’s father] had no appetite for disciplining his daughter, and her tears invariably melted his heart [...] Ella’s behaviors
13 Baxter, L. A., Braithwaite, D., Bryant, L., & Wagner, A. (2004). “Stepchildren’s Perceptions of the Contradictions in Communications with Stepparents.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 21, 447–467. 14 Hetherington, E., & Kelly, J. (2002). Divorce Reconsidered: For Better or Worse. New York: Norton. 15 Weaver, S. E., & Coleman, M. (2010). “Caught in the Middle: Mothers in Stepfamilies.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 27(3), 305–326.
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needed to be tamed, but Emont [Ella’s father] was no help” (Teller 305). The relationship between the stepmother and stepdaughter, Agnes and Ella starts when
Agnes breast-feeds Ella as her nurse because Ella’s mother, who is with mental illness, does not look after her own child Ella. Agnes’s baby daughter has died shortly before she arrives at Ella’s father’s manor, so she has sufficient breast milk to feed Ella.
However Agnes’s breast milk flows too fast for Ella to match up with the rapid flow of milk (Teller 205); therefore, the feeding does not go smoothly. This awkward beginning is followed by one event after another which causes uneasiness between them in the following years, especially during the years when Agnes’s daughters move in to live with them in the manor. To Ella, her two stepsisters, Charlotte and Matilda, are like intruders to her territory, which is a common situation in a stepfamily. According to an article about stepfamilies published by a therapist, Papernow, “In families with two sets of children [...] .Those who live more full-time in the house may feel stuck in an
‘insider’ position, feeling intruded upon and invaded” (Papernow 30). For example, once Ella yelled at Agnes, “‘Why do you always scarp at me? You never yell at them!’
She pointed across the table at her stepsisters” (Teller 296). Not only Agnes’s daughters, but also Agnes is taken as an intruder by Ella. First, Agnes, whom Ella sometimes still considers as her servant (Teller 304), marries her father and takes the place of her mother. When Agnes tells Ella that she is going to marry her father, Ella’s eyes are cool
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and then she cries. “Ella stares at the floor; tears made silver paths down her face and beaded on her long eyelashes” (Teller 278). Second, Ella blames Agnes in some way for her father’s death (Teller 326). She clings to her father’s dead body crying and throwing glares at Agnes. Also, after her father dies, Ella might also feel herself turn from an insider to an outsider in the stepfamily. She yells at Agnes, “You are all mean to me!
You treat me like a servant in my own house now that my parents are dead! You are glad that Father died and left you in charge” (Teller 330).
Another cause of the tension between them is the way in which Agnes disciplines
Ella. From Agnes’s side to explain the discipline, it is what a mother should do to educate her children; however, Agnes’s strict discipline often makes Ella angry or agitated. For example, Agnes finds out that Ella keeps rats as pets in her room, and she sends servants to clean out the nest of those rats (Teller 304). Agnes tries to teach Ella that it is not right to keep rats as pets while Ella takes Agnes as a killer to her rat friends and what Agnes has done to her as a threat to her privacy.
Another example is their argument on the night of the ball. Ella refuses to go home with Agnes when it is very late at night. Ella shouts at Agnes and behaves violently:
Her [Ella’s] voice cracked with the threat of tears. “You don’t own me! [...] I
don’t have to do as you say. You are not my mother! My mother is dead, and
you took my father from me, and now he is dead too, and you are…You are
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simply wicked! I don’t care if you are my stepmother, leave me alone!” She
pulled her arm back in a swift motion and threw her slipper at me with
startling strength. (Teller 347)
Although the relationship between Ella and Agnes does not go well for some time, it has started to become harmonious when the prince comes to take Ella to the palace. When
Ella was about to leave with the prince to the palace, she holds Agnes and tells her that she does not want to leave her and her two stepsisters and that she wants them to live with her in the palace (Teller 354). Agnes cries with happy tears and feels, “It was the happiest miracle of my life to hold Ella for no other reason than because I craved her nearness [...] She was my daughter, but that was the first time I allowed myself to be her mother” (Teller 355). Ella even tells her stepmother about carrying a baby before she tells the prince, king, and queen about it. She sends for Agnes to her chamber and they talk about her pregnancy just like a mother and daughter. For example, when Ella asks
Agnes how painful the birthing is, Agnes responds, “I thought about how to respond. I wanted neither to frighten nor mislead her. ‘It is bearable, Your Highness, and it ends in the greatest joy you can know’” (Teller 99). It is a very thoughtful and considerate answer to an expecting mother, which also shows that their relationship has been mended.
In Bound, the Cinderella, Xing Xing, mentally depends on a beautiful carp which
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she keeps in a pool. She takes the carp as the incarnation of her biological mother after she dies. When the raccoon which she brings back from the woods bites her stepsister’s toes, she runs to the pool and talks to the fish, “Mother, Mother, what can I do? Where can I go?’ The beautiful fish sucked at the tip of her thumb. She turned her head [...] so that she could look at the fish while she talked to the spirit of her mother” (Napoli 43).
Also, Xing Xing feels her mother with her all the time. “[...] Xing Xing knew that
Mother’s spirit didn’t stay in her grave much. Mother’s spirit liked to follow Xing Xing about” (Napoli 61). When Xing Xing swims with the fish in the pool, “The two of them circled around each other [...] the beautiful fish was the reincarnation of Mother. They were together again, at last” (Napoli 117). Feeling herself wrapped with mother’s love all the time gives Xing Xing the strength to face her tough life and overcome her problems.
However harsh Xing Xing’s stepmother is to her, the wicked stepmother and her daughter actually rely heavily on Xing Xing. While Xing Xing is away to find the lang zhong to cure her stepsister’s (Wei Ping) feet, her stepmother and stepsister cannot take care of themselves. When Xing Xing is back to the cave, her stepmother and stepsister are waiting for her helplessly. She finds that “The chamber pot in the corner of the screened area had overflowed. Pits and cleanly gnawed bones had been shoved into a small pile. The water bucket was empty. The stove fire had gone out” (Napoli 114).
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Xing Xing also has to wash her stepmother and stepsister. “She undressed her half sister and her stepmother [...] washed them thoroughly” (Napoli 114). Xing Xing’s stepmother and stepsister have been used to having Xing Xing around. Whatever they want, they just order Xing Xing to do for them. With Xing Xing taking care of everything for them day and night. Once Xing Xing leaves them, they cannot look after themselves at all.
3.4.2 Sibling Relationships
The relationship between Cinderella and her stepsisters has become more harmonious and friendlier in later versions than that in the earlier versions. In the earlier versions of the Cinderella fairy tale, she is mocked and treated as a slave by her stepsister(s). Readers do not know much about Yeh-hsien’s stepsister in “Yeh-hsien” because there are only a few words about her. However, at the end of the tale, both she and her mother are stoned to death by the villagers (“Yeh-hsien” 108) because she is also a perpetrator to torture Cinderella. In the Brothers Grimm’s “Ashputtel,”
Cinderella’s stepsisters “took away her fine clothes, and gave her an old grey frock to put on, and laughed at her and turned her into the kitchen [...] the sisters plagued her in all sorts of ways and laughed at her” (Grimm et al. 209-10). As for the Cinderella in
Charles Perrault’s “Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper,” she is the servant for her two stepsisters, who are vain and haughty just like their mother (Perrault 30). To help them prepare for the coming ball, Cinderella has to “iron her sisters’ linen, set their ruffles,
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and do their hair” (Perrault 31). Cinderella is so good-natured that she bears with all the requirements from her stepsisters without complaining. However, the relationship between Cinderella and her stepsister(s) has ultimately made a positive turn in the newer versions.
In Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, the relationship between the two stepsisters seems to be a mutually beneficial one. Iris looks after her stepsister, Clara, and encourages her to recover from the horrifying experience of being kidnapped at a young age. She urges Clara to go to the ball by saying, “Come now, Clara, come; it’s time to grow up. And up you come. You aren’t a changeling. You’re still yourself. The dark hole is too small for you now. You can leave the little box, you can climb out. All the way out” (Maguire 282).When Iris threatened Clara that she is going back to England if she keeps hiding upstairs to avoid greeting guests, Clara throws her arms around Iris and asks her not to go back to England. She says, “Learning English with you is the only joy
I have” (Maguire 121). Iris also tries to smooth the relationship between her mother and her stepsister. To avoid Clara being punished by her mother, she said, “Mama, don’t take Clara’s words seriously. She is still suffering herself, and learning how to be a daughter in a new family” (Maguire 188). Clara is also kind to Iris, and encourages Iris to pursue her interest in painting and the man she loves. Even after Clara marries the prince, she offers Iris financial aid (Maguire 364). It proves that Clara actually cares for
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her stepsisters with no regard to how bad her relationship with her stepmother is.
In All the Ever Afters, the stepsisters have also heartwarming occasions together.
For example, “On Sundays, when Ella had no lessons, she spent most of the day with her stepsisters. They chattered and braided one another’s hair, or sipped cider, or sang songs. Sometimes Matilda read aloud from one of Frere Joachim’s books. On such occasions, they were the picture of sisterly love” (Teller 321). Furthermore, the relationship between the two stepsisters and Ella is also getting better. For instance, when it is near the due time for the princess to give birth of her first child, her stepmother and two stepsisters show that they care a lot about her. “We were keeping watch in Ella’s antechamber; now that the princess has entered her confinement, she must be closely attended day and night. Though we happily anticipate the baby’s arrival, we are nervous, because the princess is so small and the birth may be dangerous” (Teller
112). Having had all sorts of arguments throughout the years they have been together, this step family has actually established an invisible and strong bond with care and love among them.
In Bound, Xing Xing cares about her stepsister’s feelings. When Xing Xing learns that her stepmother has killed her “mother fish,” her anger does not make her take revenge of making her stepsister hate her mother. She has in her mind:
She wanted Wei Ping to wake up and hear it [the fish is killed by her
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stepmother] all and scream words of hate at her mother. She wanted
Stepmother to lose the love of the person she cared about more than anything
else. She wanted Stepmother to feel a loss like the one Xing Xing felt now.
But she wouldn’t do that. Not for Stepmother’s sake. For Wei Ping’s sake.
(Napoli 139)
The above examples show that the relationships among the female characters in the modern versions have, to some extent, turned into a situation with more communication among them than in the earlier versions. Readers hear more about Cinderella’s voice and see more interaction among the young and old women.
Stepmothers are one of the most common villains in fairy tales. However, people may change and so does Cinderella’s stepmother as nowadays more and more retellings of Cinderella fairy tales have been published with a more positive image of the stepmother. The reader might have no idea how a Cinderella fairy tale will be depicted if Cinderella’s stepmother gets rid of her staple evil feature and turns into a nice lady.
Comparing the earlier and modern versions of the Cinderella fairy tale as above, on the surface, it seems to be Cinderella’s misfortune to have a cruel stepmother and stepsisters to torture her all the time until she finally survives their mistreatment.
However, all that makes Cinderella miserable is also what makes her successful. It is like a double-edged sword which can be both beneficial and problematic. Bettelheim
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explains this idea in The Uses of Enchantment that:
Overtly the story [“Cinderella”] helps the child to accept sibling rivalry as a
rather common fact of life and promises that he need not fear being destroyed
by it; on the contrary, if these siblings were not so nasty to him, he could
never triumph to the same degree at the end [...] Without having first been
forced to become a “Cinderella,” the heroine would never have become the
bride of the prince [...] In order to achieve personal identity and gain self-
realization on the highest level, the story tells us, both are needed: the original
good parents, and later the “step”-parents who seem to demand “cruelly” and
“insensitively.” The two together make up the “Cinderella” story. If the good
mother did not for a time turn into the evil stepmother, there would be no
impetus to develop a separate self, to discover the difference between good
and evil, develop initiative and self-determination. (273-74)
Indeed, before Cinderella can live a happy life ever after, she must go through the suffering that was bestowed on her from her stepmother and stepsisters. Once she succeeds in breaking away from their control, her nightmare ends.
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Chapter 4 Conclusion
Ever since “Cinderella” was created hundreds of years ago, this fairy tale has been rewritten into many different forms. However, no matter whether the story is presented as a novel, a poem, a comic book, a film, or a play, the attention of readers or viewers has always been on the young female protagonist, Cinderella. She is mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters before she meets the prince who rescues her from her miseries.
In literary works, this female character over time has nevertheless evolved, reflecting changes in society on the role of women through the incorporation of women- centered perspectives. Many writers, when retelling the Cinderella story, gave their female protagonist a voice to speak for herself. They also advocate a proper role for females in a more modern society. For example, this young lady, who, in the earlier versions, was suppressed in a patriarchal society and whose happiness depended on others, has become an independent lady with her own thoughts and ways of tackling her own challenges in the modern versions. Overall, the writers in the modern versions have made Cinderella a member of a more present-day society in which she has the right to choose, learn, strive, love and be equal to her male counterparts. She has been embedded with the ability to face her problems and with it to figure out a proper way to solve them without depending on a fairy godmother or any other able agent.
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Moreover, readers and writers across time and regions also use this fairy tale of
Cinderella to advocate their views on different issues. For example, readers such as educators use this fairy tale to teach lessons on morals. From these lessons, young readers learn about the power of positive thinking: even though they are trapped in an agonizing situation, they can still find a way to get out of it or to fight for themselves to pursue what they deserve. They also learn that eventually those who are kind to other people will be rewarded like what Cinderella has experienced. Because of her kindness, her stepmother and animal friends are willing to help her, and because of the help she gets, she climbs up the happy ladder to enjoy a contented life. As for those who are cruel, they will be punished like Cinderella’s stepsisters in “Yeh-hsien,” who are stoned to death or in Charles Perrault’s “Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper,” whose feet are deformed.
On the other hand, writers also use the Cinderella fairy tale to deliver their criticisms against unfairness in society. Even though people are claimed to be born equal, it is not actually the case. In a patriarchal society, women are overpowered by men; in schools or stepfamilies, the weak are likely to be bullied or enslaved by the strong. Some writers also propose that it is unfair that some people are born to a poor family and have to spend their whole life struggling to get rid of poverty while others are born rich and live a luxurious life without having to make any efforts.
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In this thesis, I use the Cinderella fairy tale for the discussions over what is commonly happening in people’s ordinary lives such as the syndrome of the Cinderella
Complex, the importance of outer and inner beauty, the relationship among female characters, and how to define happiness. Nowadays, people face rather rapid changes in society, and books are no longer the only way for ideas to travel. With the development of technology, smart phones change the way people communicate, big screens create idols for people to imitate, modern transportation changes the way people travel and also broadens their world view. However, there are not only positive changes in society, many negative influences are also undermining people from each and every possible way as well. This could mean that people have more chance to compare themselves with others: their appearance, income, wealth, social status, among others. For some people, when they cannot get what they want to satisfy their greed, they depend on others to get it just as what the “Cinderella Complex” syndrome suggests.
Also, it has become more affordable for women to change their outer appearance with a new hairstyle, fancy dresses, trendy handbags, smart shoes, or cosmetic surgery.
While they are spending time on making themselves look better in appearance, are they also spending time cultivating their inner beauty like Cinderella who is beautiful inside and out?
Furthermore, the way how people work and live also changes the way they interact
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with their family members. In modern versions of Cinderella fairy tale in this thesis like
All the Ever Afters, Cinderella and her stepfamily members keep a harmonious relationship as a family even though they are not blood related. Nowadays, while busy with heavy workloads, do people spend valuable time with their family to have a strong bond with them?
Moreover, in an open, modern society, how do people define happiness and what really makes people happy? Is it a mansion, an expensive car, a prosperous business, scholarly degrees, or like Cinderella, a happy marriage to a handsome prince? Through the sharing of ideas and opinions on the above questions mentioned, this Cinderella fairy tale has no wonder been able to withstand the test of time.
There is no doubt that the Cinderella character will continue to change in accordance with the development of society and be adapted to different cultures around the globe. More and more new variations and renditions of this tale will be produced and spread around the world in the future. Wearing her beautiful slippers, wherever
Cinderella is, she will walk into the future confidently and bravely. What Cinderella, especially in the modern versions, shows is a young lady who is capable of being in charge of her own life. She will encourage those who are facing ordeals and are in torment to choose the happy trail and have their best way of living.
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