Cinderella de-censored, de-sanitized, de-wimpified
Cinderella illustrations by Harry Clarke
Cinderella is one of the best-known tales in the world, but the Cinderella we know is a censored, sanitized, gutted, Disney-fied version of the original as recorded by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. We read the Grimms’ Cinderella in an English translation recently and were surprised at the differences between the story we were told and the story as they wrote it.
In the old tale, Cinderella’s mother dies and her father remarries. As kids we were told that Cinderella had a wicked stepmother and two ugly, wicked stepsisters. According to the Grimms:
The stepsisters were not ugly. Then why were we told that they were hideous? Was it to assure us that cruelty and meanness can be spotted immediately, the bad being ugly and the good pretty? Leaving us to discover as we get older that there is little correlation between looks and character. Evil can be good-looking or ugly.
In the old tale, Cinderella’s father is still alive. In the version we were told, Cinderella’s father died, probably killed by the stepmother. Why the disparity? Was it to gloss over the fact that the father did nothing at all to protect his daughter from his new wife, and allowed her to be maltreated by her stepsisters?
Cinderella doesn’t help her own case by being a doormat and a goody-goody. Instead of protesting her maltreatment and asserting her rights as the daughter of the house, she meekly does what she is told. They enslave her and and throw her peas and lentils into the ashes so she has to pick them out again.
One day her father is going to the fair, so he asks the stepdaughters what he can get them. Beautiful dresses, they say, and jewels. Then he asks Cinderella what she would like, and Cinderella asks for the first branch that knocks against his hat on his way home. What! Fine, she’s not greedy and she’s a better person than her stepsisters, but she didn’t have to fling her goodness in everyone’s face. That’s irritating.
The father brings home the requested branch, which Cinderella plants on her mother’s grave and waters with her tears. A tree grows on it, then birds settle on it and whenever Cinderella asks for something, they throw it down to her. (She did not ask for a spine or a lawyer.)
In short, there is no Fairy Godmother in the original tale. Who added the fairy godmother character? Was it so all these stories could be called “fairy tales”? Granted, someone also grants Cinderella’s wishes, but that would be Nature and the memory of her mother. Who told us that in times of crisis, some magical creature would appear and solve our problems with a wave of her magic wand? Let’s find them and slap them.
The festival is announced, and the wicked stepmother and stepdaughter make plans. Cinderella also wants to go, and they mock her because she has nothing to wear. However, she insists upon going, so
Her benefactors the birds pick the lentils out of the ashes, and then they produce a gold and silver ballgown for her to wear. She goes to the festival, makes a great impression on the Prince, then escapes from him. She couldn’t report that she was being oppressed at home and ask him to send the police? Anyway, in the original tale the Prince accompanies her home because he wants to find out where he lives. She manages to elude him by hiding in the pigeon-coop.
As in the version we were told, she goes to the festival three times and runs away three times. The Prince is not a dolt.
He sets out to find the owner of the slipper by having the women of the kingdom try it on.
Also, he announces that he will marry the woman connected to the foot that fits—clearly he did not know that some people have the exact same size. He turns up at Cinderella’s house, and of course the eldest stepsister gets first dibs.
What a wonderful turn of events! It tells us that some people are so desperate to get what they want, they will even mutilate themselves. But this is left out of the version we were told. Why? Too gory?
After this outing by the birds, the eldest stepdaughter is returned to her mother. The second stepdaughter then tries the shoe, and since it doesn’t fit she cuts off her heels in order to wedge them in. Finally Cinderella gets her chance. The shoe is tried on. It fits. They have the wedding.
The stepsisters have the gall to accompany Cinderella to her wedding, and as they are standing on either side of her, birds pluck out the right eye of one and the left eye of the other. On their way out of the church they exchange places and the birds pluck out their other eyes. Thus they are punished for their wickedness.
What does the original tale tell young readers? That there is cruelty within families and they cannot always rely on the protection of their elders.
What did the sanitized and censored version tell us as young readers? That if we are patient, obedient, and especially, pretty, our fairy godmother will find us a handsome prince to marry. Because that is the solution to everything.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
May 19th, 2014 at 14:58
Saw this while browsing the British Library site. One re-write of the Cinderella story had ” the preparations for Cinderella’s marriage include the court throwing all alcohol in the palace on a bonfire.”
http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/george-cruikshanks-fairy-library#
Now looking for the “Frauds on the Fairies” by Dickens. :D
May 19th, 2014 at 15:17
Dickens on re-writing fairy stories:
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/pva/pva239.html
May 19th, 2014 at 21:33
Interesting.
Much preferable to this theory I read years ago about how Cinderella could’ve originated from China: i.e., ‘lotus feet’. I was more inclined to think it probable back then, but not now with their “lahat ay amin” mentality. (Nag-‘level up’ na ang gaya-gaya mode nila.)
There’s an anthology of retold fairytales – Snow White, Blood Red – and my favorite Snow White was brilliantly exposed there as a freak, like the dwarfs. The story was so disturbing that I don’t remember much about it, and I’ve no intention of re-reading it just yet.
May 20th, 2014 at 10:48
My childhood books were Roald Dahl, the Greek myths, the Book of Revelations, and the original fairy tales, alongside the stories of Poe (what does this say of my childhood?). I read the bowdlerized and perfumed versions of the fairy stories but I got to read the grim Grimms, Perrault, and Andersen first (the Don Bosco grade school library was, let’s say eclectic, a true library). My favorites were the Princess and the Pea, Bluebeard, the Snow Queen. I was young so I got confused: why were the originals so nasty and so “unfit” for children (as if Poe was)? Why did the Little Mermaid marry the prince in the movie, she should’ve turned to seafoam! And that cork–“they lived happily ever after”–where did that come from? I thought the imagery in the Revelations was bizarre and violent; in the fairy tales more so–people/children getting chopped, cooked, eaten, crammed into boxes, punished in ways that could’ve inspired ritual killers.
Imagine the stepsisters sitting through the wedding with bleeding, recently emptied eye sockets. Anong sinabi ni Tippi Hedren sa ordeal nila?
I enjoyed Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes where he poked fun at famous fairy tales. A pistol-toting, animal-skin-collecting Little Red Hood stalks the woods, Cinderella’s prince lops off her sisters’ heads, the three bears eat Goldilocks, etc. Now, that I approve for children.
This is so timely; a Cinderella movie is in the works with that girl from Downton Abbey, Robb Stark as the prince, Helena Bonham-Carter as the Fairy Godmother and Cate Blanchett in the novercal role.
May 20th, 2014 at 10:54
(*as if Poe wasn’t)
May 20th, 2014 at 13:33
We used to have the Brother Grimm’s fairy tales when we were growing up. I remember this story, and the Sleeping Beauty version where the villain was trying to cook Beauty’s children near the end (and instead of making this a movie, they made Maleficent, sayang). Also that story where they decapitated children’s heads and they miraculously grew back.
My favorite was “The Robber Bridegroom,” where the young woman goes into a house full of cannibals – it was the first time I’ve read a fairy tale about a brave girl surviving something like a slasher flick, and who literally lived to tell the tale.
May 20th, 2014 at 15:48
Creepy stuff. Most of the folklores that were read to us contained Griselda type female characters. That kind of trope carried over to our current Filipino TV series. I read somewhere that the original sleeping beauty included incestuous rape and brutal punishment. There was no Prince Charming.
balqis, My grade school banned Ronald Dahl books in our library b’c they thought Dahl’s stories scared children and caused nightmares. It only got us intrigued.
May 20th, 2014 at 23:13
What more with Hansel and Gretel and other fairy tales that we listened and read that turn out to be more graphic, brutal and grim (heck, the GRIMM Brothers).
May 21st, 2014 at 01:33
Wow, heady stuff there, Balqis!
My childhood books were Lyman Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess, Nancy Drew, Choose Your Own Adventure, Sweet Valley Kids (Haha!), R.L. Stine, Encyclopaedia Britannica (and The Young Children’s 16-volume set that came with it), and of course… the Pentateuch of The Old Testament.
Also read a few copies of Archie and Jughead double digest. Ah, childhood.
May 21st, 2014 at 12:05
There was this excellent TV show back in the day, Jim Henson’s The Storyteller that featured some of the lesser known tales such as The Heartless Giant and The Soldier and Death. Episodes are occasionally uploaded on youtube from time to time (and taken down again, when youtube gets copyright complaints). Here’s The Soldier and Death.
http://youtu.be/ZvsnV0yNddc