Fairy Tale Origins - Part XI Cinderella, Part Two

For part one, go HERE


When someone talks about a “fairy tale ending” they’re almost always referring to the story of Cinderella. How many little girls dream of rising up and becoming a beautiful princess? And who doesn’t want to live happily ever after?

This story has been told across cultures for thousands of years before being made into numerous Hollywood movies. The identity of the Fairy Godmother changes often, and in fact she first showed up in Perrault's version, along with the pumpkin coach and the mice attendants which were all used in the Disney version.

One thing the early versions have in common, is that they revolve around the death of the true mother and the entrance of the wicked step-mother with her own daughters. The step-child is treated like a slave, while the step-sisters live in luxury. There is no fairy godmother to save the day, just the powerful magic of the dead.

Some scholars believe Perrault confused "vair" (an Old French word for "ermine or fur") with "verre" (Old French for "glass") when describing Cinderella’s shoes. Of course a prince looking for the owner of a “glass” slipper is very different from a prince who’s looking for the girl with the perfect “fur” slipper. Perhaps the prince wasn’t so noble after all. Other scholars believe that the tiny glass slipper can be equated to a small vagina, symbolizing virginity and the midnight curfew a taboo on pre-marital sex.

As with most fairy tales, the father is an ambiguous figure at best. Is he so blind that he can’t see what’s being done to his first daughter? Or does he just not want to cause disharmony in his new household? Yet he is the underlying, organizing principle. Without the absent father, there would have been no conflict, and therefore no story, much as in Snow White.

It’s not surprising that the Victorians preferred Perrault’s version of the fairy tale. It was a gentler, more elegant story. Cinderella is more virtuous, and less clearly self-motivated. The step-sisters are not obsessively cruel, merely vain and selfish. Not only does Cinderella forgive them in the end, she also finds husbands for them.

At its heart, Cinderella is a story concerned with relationships between women: between Cinderella and her mother; between the step-mother and her daughters; and between Cinderella and her step-family. It is not to her father that Cinderella turns for help — help must come from another source, such as the mother's ghost or the bones of a fish; a giant stork in a Javanese version; a talking doll in a Russian variant; the king of the frogs in an African version; or from spiders, eagle–women and spirits in Native American renditions.

Like most fairy tales, not only has the story changed subtly over the years, so has the character of Cinderella herself. She began as an intelligent, clever girl who overcame great hardships before she received magical assistance. Even then she needed to keep her wits about her to reach her happily ever after. Unfortunately, by the time Disney made his animated version in 1949, Cinderella had devolved into a long-suffering, passive character who would have been lost without her fairy godmother and little animal friends.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Cinderella fairy tale is the lie it perpetuates in the “happily ever after”. The term “fairy tale” itself has come to refer to a lie or fanciful untruth and Cinderella is no exception. “They lie to us by reducing our dreams to simplistic formulas that empower no one, neither those who wait for Happily Ever After to arrive on the back of a shining white horse, or those who seek it in a pretty face. By contrast, the oldest Ash Girl tales use simple language to tell stories that are not really simple at all. They go to the very heart of truth. They've spoken the truth for a thousand years.” From Terri Windling’s Cinderella: Ashes, Blood, and the Slipper of Glass.

We all would like good to triumph, evil be punished, and justice prevail. Our sense of justice and fair play is rewarded in the story of Cinderella. She is treated badly by her step-mother and step-sisters but, though they seem to be in charge and “winning” at the beginning of the story, they are relegated to misery and disappointment at the end. Those who treat others badly do not prosper in fairy tales.

Fairy Tale Origins - Part IXThe Princess and the Pea

The Princess and the Pea, one of Hans Christian Andersen's shortest yet best-known stories, first appeared in his first collection of Tales Told For Children in 1835. The unbound, 61-page booklet also included the Tinderbox, Little Claus and Big Claus, and Little Ida’s Flowers.

In his preface to the second volume of Tales and Stories (1863) Andersen claims to have heard the story in childhood, but the tale was not a traditional one in Denmark. There is, however, a Swedish version, "Princess Who Lay on Seven Peas", which tells of an orphan child who pretends to be a princess on the advice of her cat. After undergoing many tests, the last of which was having seven peas placed under her mattress, the girl claims to have slept poorly, thereby proving she is a real princess.

While the folk-tale heroine relies on deception, Andersen’s is relies on her sensitivity. One stormy night, a bedraggled girl seeks refuge at the castle. Although the girl claims to be a princess, the queen tests her claim by placing a single pea under 20 mattresses and 20 featherbeds. The next morning, the girl bemoans her sleeplessness, claiming the presence of ‘something so hard that I am black and blue all over’. That’s all the proof the queen needs. The girl and the prince are married and the pea is enshrined in a museum.

Tales of extreme sensitivity are not common but there are a few. The 11th-century Kathasaritsagara by Somadeva tells of a young man who claims to be especially fastidious about beds. After sleeping in a bed on top of seven mattresses, and newly made with clean sheets, the young man rises in great pain. A crooked red mark is discovered on his body, and upon investigation a hair is found on the bottommost mattress of the bed.

An Italian tale called "The Most Sensitive Woman" tells of a prince who wishes to marry “the most sensitive woman in the world.” He rejects a woman who is in great pain because of a pulled hair, a woman who was mad sick by a wrinkle in the sheet she slept on, and finally finds a woman whose foot is bandaged after a jasmine petal fell on it.

From India we have the Three Delicate Wives of King Virtue-Banner, a tale told to a kind by a goblin. The first wife is injured when a lotus petal falls on her. The second is burned by moonbeams. The third is bruised by the sound of pestles grinding grain. At the end the goblin asks the king to decide who is most delicate.

Unlike the folk heroine of his source material for the story, Andersen's princess has no need to resort to deceit to establish her identity; her sensitivity is enough to validate her nobility. For Andersen, "true" nobility derived not from an individual's birth but from their sensitivity.

The Princess and the Pea is told from the aristocratic perspective of the young prince seeking a royal bride. This reflects Andersen's preoccupation with issues of class as well as, by his own direct admission elsewhere, his feelings of personal fragility.

Andersen’s Princess and the Pea was not well-received by critics: "[the story] seems to the reviewer not only indelicate but indefensible, in so far as the child might absorb the false idea that great ladies must always be so terribly thin-skinned." One literary journal failed to mention his Tales Told For Children at all, while another advised Andersen not to waste his time writing "wonder stories".

The Princess and the Pea (full text)

Fairy Tale Origins – Part IIHansel and Gretel

As in Little Red Riding Hood, this is a tale of children who are alone in a wood, away from parental influence, and must, through their wits, find a way to navigate the forest and avoid danger.

The story of Hansel and Gretel and its many variations are considered to be simple childrens fairy tales, but many contemporary folk scholars, such as Jack Zipes and Maria Tatar, believe that these tales of poverty, child abandonment, starvation and cannibalism can be traced back to the Middle Ages when people were actually experiencing these problems.

As with most folklore, these early stories were passed down orally. It was not until the 17th century that they were collected and published. The earliest version of Hansel and Gretel was written by Italian folklorist Giambattista Basile, whose Nennillo and Nennella was published posthumously in The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones (1634). In this story a selfish stepmother and her weak husband abandon his two children in order to conserve food. There is no evil witch however. Instead, a pirate kidnaps Nennella and a large fish saves her.

Other early versions involved French writers. Charles Perrault's Le petit Poucet (Little Thumb - 1697) involves seven brothers who stumble upon an ogre’s house after being abandoned by their parents. A year later, Madame Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy wrote Finette Cendron, a similar story of three princesses who are abandoned by their parents in the woods and find their way to a giant's house.

The most well known of these tales is, of course, the story of Hansel and Gretel as told by the German scholars Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, first in 1812 and then in revised versions in 1819 and 1857. In the earliest versions of the story, it was Hansel and Gretel’s mother who suggests that they abandon the children not a stepmother, and in fact both parents participated in the decision.

During the Middle Ages, there were many disasters such as famine, war, and plague, which would cause parents to abandon their children. However, while creating a story based on familiar stereotypes, the brothers Grimm were also writing for middle class patrons during the nineteenth century. As a result, some of the original themes were converted to something less unpleasant for children of that era.

For instance, the mother and father’s collaboration in abandoning the children becomes something less sinister but also more morally ambiguous. The mother was turned into a wicked stepmother, so that there was no longer the conflict between mother and child. The father became a weak pawn in the hands of this witch.

Both the witch’s and the stepmother’s relationship with the children and their threat to the children is based on an overwhelming desire for food. The stepmother does not want competition for what little food is available and the witch wishes to consume the children as a delicacy.

In the end, the witch is burned to death in her own oven. Death by fire is a fitting ending that works not only for the genre but also fits with the mode of punishment for those accused of witch-craft.

The ending of the story is particularly difficult. The Grimms attempted to modify the story to fit into the satisfactory ‘happily ever after’ mode, but Hansel and Gretel doesn’t really reach a moral high note. It takes wealth to change them into a happy family and there is no resolution for the father’s lack of character in allowing the children to be abandoned in the first place.

The major change effected by the Grimms during the revision process from the 1810 manuscript edition to the final product lies in the reshaping of the parental figures. In an early version of the tale, both (natural) parents can be seen as "evil" in that they each contribute to the abandonment of their children actively. In subsequent editions, the roles begin to subtly shift so that the father slowly emerges as reluctant victim to the step -mother's evil designs-the "witching" of the female begins.

The mother becomes increasingly sinister in the first edition of the tale, but she is not the only female character to be presented as clearly evil; in this edition, the "old woman" becomes a wicked witch who lay in wait for children and had built her house to tempt them. Whenever one of them got into her power, she killed it, cooked it, and ate it.

The duplicitous nature of the woman/witch is illustrated by her behavior. Before she reveals her evil nature, she first gives the children a good meal of and then puts them into bed. The next morning she puts Hansel in a stable and puts Gretel to work. The story progresses as the manuscript draft does, but when Gretel is asked to enter the oven it is "God" who inspires her to shove the witch in instead.

The second edition (1819) follows the first almost identically until the death of the witch, after which the children take her jewels and then try to return home but can only do so with the aid of a white duck who ferries them across a river.

In the fifth edition (1843), the mother becomes "the wife" and thus a step- mother. She has gained even more zeal to rid herself and her husband of his children, and perhaps to soften the maternal threat to the children, she loses her status as a biological parent. When they return home, the wife blames the children for falling asleep in the wood and being left behind. Again the duplicity of the evil female character is shown, this time in reference to the wife. Much as the wife pretends the children are at fault and pretends that she is happy for their return, so does the witch "pretend to be so kind" in order to fool the children into entering her home. The tale, with some added details, follows the previous editions to its end. This double nature of the female character is corresponds to the split of the child's perception of its mother into good and bad elements.

Grimm’s version of the story
The story the operatic version is based on
Yet another version of the story
The History of Hansel and Gretel