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Happily Ever After: A Fictional Case Study of Cinderella and Her Prince Nina Moliver Cinderella wasn’t living happily ever after. But she began to learn how to make that happen. The story of Cinderella is perhaps the world’s most beloved fairytale, endlessly speaking to children everywhere. In this article I explore Cinderella as a Jungian archetype: A wonderful, innocent girl, victimized by a miserable family, makes her escape thanks to the grace of magic. A life story behind this archetype is followed through to a possible real-life conclusion. Cinderella Seeks Psychotherapy Cinderella Respucci was married for almost 12 years to a wonderful man. So far she was unable to have children. She had heard that yoga can be helpful for infertility, and so she started attending my classes. Toward the end of the third class, after some backbends, she collapsed onto the floor and started sobbing. She lay there and sobbed until the class ended; afterwards, she approached me and requested a private consultation. Because the consultation involved both private asana work and a preliminary evaluation, I scheduled two hours for Cinderella. I prepared a room with soft candlelight and gentle flute 1 music in the background. We began with a series of hip openers to help bring oxygen to the pelvic organs and a good blood flow up and down the spine. I then led her into a few backbends to open her chest, liberate her breathing, and squeeze old, held tensions from her digestive and reproductive organs. Once again, the backbends released a well of sadness and pain. When the sobbing subsided, I guided her in some deep breathing and a few moments of quiet, focused mindfulness. When she appeared ready, I invited her to talk to me. She then told me her story. Cinderella, Cinderella Cindy’s mother was a social climber who was always striving to appear wealthier than she was. She wanted her three daughters to be a part of this charade. Her father worked long hours, adulated her mother, and never challenged her mother’s authority in the home. Cindy never really saw him very much. All the children had household chores to do, but Cindy felt especially persecuted when it was her turn. She never noticed her sisters doing their chores, and in her childish perceptions she assumed that they were just having fun while she was singled out and scapegoated. Drizella and Anastasia were close in age and always played together, but Cindy, who was several years younger, kept to herself and never felt included in their play. She found her own territory in the attic, where she could paint, sew, and smoke pot unbothered. Drizella and Anastasia used to mock and tease her for being different, in the heartless way that children sometimes do. Her mother stayed aloof from these sibling tensions and was probably unaware of them. 2 Cindy’s mother offered music lessons to all three children, as she felt that they would be positioned well socially if they could each play an instrument. However, Cindy preferred visual and tactile arts such as sewing. She enjoyed rummaging in the closet for her mother’s old clothes and fixing them up into beautiful dresses for herself. She fantasized that her mother wore those clothes when she was young, warm, loving, and all for Cindy, her sisters magically gone. She had pretend companions who lived in the attic with her and never teased or mocked her. These pretend companions co-created her works of art and gave her the only feeling of connection that she had. Cindy felt so distant from her parents and her sisters that she often wondered if this was her real family. The real mother of her dreams was rotund, huggable, unconcerned with social status, and totally devoted to her welfare. This real mother had no other children. She was imperfect, but her faults, such as a slipping memory, were benign. Cindy had a vague preverbal sense of somebody in her life who fit this description. At one point when she was 16, rumors started to circulate in Cindy’s town that a particularly handsome and wealthy bachelor named Giuseppe Respucci was planning to be at the next town ball. All three sisters decided to go, and their mother was happy to let them go, provided only that their chores were done first. On the night of the ball, everybody finished her chores on time, but Cindy was adamant about putting the finishing touches on the dress of her own creation, so she was running late. At the 3 moment before their taxi arrived, as she rushed to the door, Drizella accidentally tripped over Cindy’s sash and tore it. Cindy screamed, “Now I can’t go to the ball! I will never get out of this house! Everybody persecutes me! I hate you all!” Furious and hysterical, she fled to the garden and sobbed her heart out. The other girls had to leave or they would be late. Her mother dismissed the matter and took a bit of whiskey to relax for the evening. When Cindy could cry no longer, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a joint. Soon she began to relax under the stars. Dejection and despair were suddenly transformed into a radical amazement with the grandeur and unity of the cosmos. This was her first real peak experience. While deep in a marijuana high, captivated in her gaze at the North Star, Cindy was jolted to see her Aunt Clara standing by her. Clara had passed the house on her way to a bridge game and saw Cindy alone in the garden. To Cindy, Aunt Clara appeared as the original Madonna, suddenly descended from the heavens without sin or blemish, a fairy godmother who would erase all of the cruelty from her wicked stepfamily, as she had taken to calling them in her conversations with her attic companions. Clara resembled Cindy’s image of the mother she needed. She was not vain, she was not fixated on her appearance or on staying slim, she was childless, she was more huggable than anyone in Cindy’s immediate family, and she seemed undividedly for Cindy. She was a bit forgetful and not always a mind reader, but these benign flaws were overshadowed by the sense of acceptance that she communicated. 4 All of a sudden, it seemed, Aunt Clara was gone. Equally suddenly, she reappeared, with a new sash for Cindy’s dress. Clara volunteered her squeaky, diminutive husband, Jacques, and his rotund but equally mousy friend, Gus, to drive Cindy to the ball on their way to a poker game. But they would be waiting for her at the foot of the stairs at midnight, and if she wanted a ride back, she had to be there on time. They could not wait longer than that, because Gus needed to be home to take his insulin. Cindy didn’t want her family to know that she was at the ball, so she knew she had to catch that ride. But soon after she walked into the party, Giuseppe asked her to dance, and within moments she was oblivious to all time and place beyond his presence. When midnight arrived, Giuseppe had not yet thought to get her full name and number. As the clock struck, Cindy turned around and fled down the stairs of the palace, dashing into Jacques’ car wearing only one shoe. She was in too much of a trance to mention it. The next morning, a friend of Giuseppe’s knocked on the door, wondering if the spare shoe belonged to anybody in the household, because Giuseppe was looking for the girl who had worn it. Cindy’s mother quietly urged Anastasia and Drizella to force their feet into the shoe so as to claim Giuseppe. She never mentioned to Cindy that this man was here, since she assumed that Cindy had not gone to the ball. At the last moment, Cindy ran downstairs from the attic and tried on the slipper. When it fit, she brought out the matching shoe and screamed, “You see! It’s mine! He’s mine, no thanks to you!” 5 She fled the house with Giuseppe’s friend. She met Giuseppe in a pub, wandered off with him, and eloped. Nobody in her family was at the wedding. From Cindy to Cinderella After she married, Cindy decided to call herself Cinderella. She found the name Cindy too babyish, and she disliked the name Cynthia. The name Cinderella appealed to her because it was longer, dramatic, and evoked a sense of romance. It also validated her own sense of personal persecution, because she had seen herself as being under constant pressure to do the dirtiest jobs in the house, such as cleaning the cinders from the fireplace. Guiseppe was Cinderella’s Prince Charming of her dreams, and when she married him, she felt sure that now she could leave her birth family behind and live happily ever after with him. Over time, however, the unresolved issues of her past began to catch up with her. She was paralyzed at the thought of doing housework, and her home was an unattended-to mess where mice scampered about with impunity. To provide herself with an escape from her dull, chaotic surroundings, she spent time during the day smoking pot when her husband was away. She ate sweet pastries throughout the day, she was always exhausted, and she never exercised beyond the occasional walk outside for errands. Cinderella wanted to lose weight, reclaim her youthful body, bring joy back into her marriage, and have children.

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