Background

Charles Perrault

The most widely known English version of Cinderella (‘Cinderilla’) is a translation of Charles Perrault’s ‘Cendrillon’, which first appeared in his important collection of fairy tales, ‘Contes de ma mere l’oye’ (‘Tales of Mother Goose’) 1697. (Also included in this collection were ‘Little Red Ridinghood’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast’.) A retired civil servant writing for a sophisticated audience at the French court, Perrault penned a sanitised tale that the modern world accepts as the ‘definitive’ story of Cinderella.

Perrault’s heroine, Cinderilla, is an exceptionally good-natured, pretty young girl who is mistreated by her stepmother and comparatively ugly stepsisters. The all-suffering Cinderilla dutifully performs all household chores for them, despite them becoming more and more persistent. It was Perrault who politely invented the now-familiar Fairy Godmother character (substituted for the traditional reincarnation of the dead mother as some benign animal) who wields a magic wand to provide a fantastic gown and glass slippers. His too are the whimsical embellishments of a pumpkin transformed into a coach, mice into horses and a rat into a footman, all to facilitate the downtrodden heroine’s attendance at a royal ball. In Perrault’s version it is the Fairy Godmother who warns Cinderilla that she must return home by midnight. When the prince discovers that the lost glass slipper fits the ragged Cinderilla, the Fairy Godmother reappears to magically restore Cinderilla’s clothes, more beautiful even than before. Concluding more with sensibility than sentimentality, Perrault has the stepsisters so plead for forgiveness that Cinderilla ‘forgave them with all her heart, and desired them always to love her’, and ‘Cinderilla, who was as good as handsome, gave her two sisters lodgings in the palace, and married them the same day to two great lords of the court’. Cinderilla marries her prince charming, and Perrault moralises not that she lived happily ever after, but rather that any lady who exhibits comparable ‘good grace’ and ‘graceful mien’ may be assured of doing ‘all things well and true’.

‘Cendrillon’ was first translated into English in 1729 by Robert Samber. Perrault’s sugar-sweet narrative, (and the 1950 Disney animation modelled on it) — rather than the more graphic rendering of the old oral tradition by the Brothers Grimm in their tale of Aschenputtel — has become the most popular and enduring modern version of the story.

Fairytale décor, S. Germany

German brothers Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859) Grimm collected 210 traditional German folktales (mainly from the Kassel area) and published them in ‘Kinder-und Hausmärchen’ (‘Children’s and Household Tales’)- popularly known as ‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales’ (vol.1: 1812; vol.2: 1815; final edition: 1857). Their most famous tales include Hänsel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow-White, Rumpelstiltskin, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, and three variants of Cinderella.

Hänsel and Gretel (house décor)

Cinderella through the ages

Cinderella, a story at least 1,000 years old, is the best-known and best-loved of all fairy tales. The tale has been found in North America, Scandinavia, Africa, the Middle and Far East, Asia and around the Mediterranean, with over 500 versions having been identified within Europe.

Perhaps the story’s fabulous slipper derives from third century Egyptian practice of gilding women’s slippers with precious metals or, maybe, the ancient Chinese tradition of binding the feet of young girls, in the belief that ‘small means beautiful’?

The story was first recorded in written form — ‘Yu Yang Ts Tsu’ — in ninth century China. The heroine, Yeh-hsien, befriends a fish that is subsequently killed by the girl’s wicked stepmother. Yeh-hsien discovers the hidden bones of her pet and finds that they will grant her wishes. By this means Yeh-hsien acquires exquisite clothes and jewellery but when she wears these to a ball, her stepmother and stepsisters still recognise her. Fleeing from the ball, Yeh-hsien loses a shoe which is found by a prince. The prince’s search for the beautiful owner of the shoe eventually leads him to Yeh-hsien, whom he marries.

Dark and graphic details characterised the traditional oral accounts of the tale. In an ancient Egyptian version, ‘The Princess in the Suit of Leather’, a widowed king who vows to marry only a woman whose feet fit the anklet worn by his late wife, discovers the only person eligible is his own daughter. In the ‘Armenian Cinderella’, the two older cannibalistic sisters resolve to eat their mother. In an old German version (recorded by the Brothers Grimm) the stepmother mutilates her daughters’ feet that they might pass the ‘shoe test’. Birds who witness the bloody operation inform the prince of the deceit and peck out the eyes of the stepsisters.

Common to traditional versions of the Cinderella story is the motherless daughter’s once-loving family relationship, then her appalling victimisation, supernatural intervention on her behalf, her eventual rescue as the recognised owner of a lost (golden or silver) shoe or ring, and marriage to a love-struck king or his son. A key difference is often the actual cause of her initial fall from favour.

Historically, the essential framework of the traditional versions centered on the mother-daughter bond, which not even death could break. To help and protect her daughter, the mother’s sprit is reincarnated, often as a helpful animal or bird (that might appear from a tree that the daughter has planted on her mother’s grave). Traditionally also, the girl would actively combat her loneliness and the abuse meted out by a cruel and greedy stepmother and stepsisters. In contrast to the modern tale that derives from Perrault, Cinderella was usually rather plain whereas her stepsisters were pretty.

Rashin Coatie

Among several Gaelic versions of the Cinderella story is ‘Rashin Coatie’, a Scottish (Morayshire) tale that dates from 1540. The heroine, Princess Rashin Coatie, though cruelly abused by a vindictive stepmother, derives help from a pet calf (even after its death). Her wish for fine clothes so that she may attend church is granted, and there she meets a young prince. ‘He put a guard on the door to keep her,’ we read, ‘but she jumped ower their heads and lost one of her beautiful satin slippers’. The stepmother, desperate to have the slipper fit the foot of one of her three ugly daughters, cuts off one girl’s toes and heel. A bird betrays her duplicity to the prince. Eventually, the prince discovers that the slipper fits ‘a poor dirty thing that sits in the kitchen neuk and wears a rashin coatie’. (A rashin coatie was a coat made from reed fibre.) As may be expected, ‘the prince married her and they lived happy all their days’.

King Lear

In other variants of the traditional story, the evil protagonist is not female but the heroine’s own father. Shakespeare may well have had an influence on the spread and development of such versions. The action of ‘King Lear’ (1605) hinges on the father’s ‘love test’ of filial devotion: ‘Which of you shall we say does love us most?’ (Act 1, Scene 1). The flattery of the two cruel sisters — Goneril and Regan — contrasts with the loving response of the youngest and truest daughter, Cordelia. However, the misunderstood Cordelia is cast aside by her father. Indeed, Shakespeare was drawing upon a tale that was first recorded in the ‘Historia Regum Britanniae’ (‘History of the Kings of Britain’), compiled by the Welsh bishop, Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1136).

The Cat Cinderella

Europe’s earliest printed version of Cinderella appeared as ‘La Gatta Cenerentola’ (‘The Cat Cinderella’), a cycle of fifty tales by the Neapolitan courtier and poet, Giambattista Basile (published in 1634). His heroine, Princess Zezolla, is incited by her governess to murder the hateful stepmother. However, once the governess has become the new stepmother, she reveals her preference for her own six daughters and becomes vindictive towards Zezolla. Consequently, Zezolla falls ‘from the salon to the kitchen...from splendid silks and gold to dishcloths, from sceptre to spits; not only did she change her state but also her name, and was no longer Zezolla but given the name "La Gatta Cenerentola" (Cat-among-the-Cinders)’. In a ‘love test’ by the father, while her sisters plead for riches, Zezolla asks that she be recommended to the fairies. After Zezolla plants and tends a magical tree given to her by the fairies, a female fairy appears from it to assist Zezolla attend a royal feast. The king at once falls in love with Zezolla but finds her very elusive. He eventually tracks her down by means of the highly fashionable shoe that she lost at his court. Once married to the king, Cat-Cinderella wreaks vengeance on the stepmother and stepsisters, banishing them from the kingdom.

Fairytale house décor, S. Germany

In modern times

An attempted reconstruction of the traditional Cinderella narrative was published as Cinder Maid by Joseph Jacobs in 1916. The story has continued to be reworked and updated around the world. Composer Gioachino Rossini reworked the tale as the opera ‘La Cenerentola’, first performed in Rome in 1817. In the twentieth century it became popular as ballet and has become the most frequently staged (Christmas) pantomime, the first such performance being at the Theatre Royal in London’s Drury Lane, in 1804. Many film versions have been made for worldwide cinema screening; most notably Disney’s animated Cinderella (1950), ‘The Glass Slipper’ starring Leslie Caron (1954), and, with a humorous gender change, Jerry Lewis’ ‘Cinderfella’, (1960).

Modern psychologists detect expressions of universal fears and desires in fairy tales. In ‘The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales’ (1976), Bruno Bettelheim dissects Cinderella and other tales to find profound psychoanalytic connotations. For the majority of its readers, however, Cinderella remains simply a wonderful and reassuring affirmation that happy consequences may attend those who confront their profoundest desires and fears.

Fairytale house décor, S. Germany

Genre

‘Once upon a time...’ and a very long time ago it was, when generation after generation orally repeated and embellished local folklore that nowadays print and modern technology have established as universally-loved fairy tales. We think of ‘fairy tales’ as traditional and magical children’s stories though they are rarely about small and supernatural beings. The term derives from the French ‘contes des fee’; literary fairy tales of seventeenth century France were significantly rich in fairy characters. The familiar ‘Once upon a time. . .’ signals at once that a young hero(ine) will struggle courageously against extraordinary odds but, with some magical assistance, will succeed to live ‘happy ever after’, often with a perfect partner.

Fairytale house décor, S. Germany

Setting

Perrault wrote for a courtly audience at King Louis XV’s Versailles palace. Here was an environment of princes, fashionable clothes and royal galas. Whereas the tale’s settings would have varied in the oral tradition to reflect the time and country, Perrault’s writing down of the tale has given his setting a permanence. Satisfying audience expectation of such a setting (as well as characterisation and plot) has become so central to recognition and acceptance of the genre that extreme care is required when any attempt is made to change or modernise any fairy tale.

Cinderella

Characterisation

Think of Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, and characterisation stereotypical of the fairy tale genre is instantly recognisable. The young heroine at once exhibits inherent goodness and vulnerability. Her physical appearance and clothing add appropriate comment. Her plight is immediately acknowledged as unfair. The sympathetic audience wills her to escape her misery and find genuine happiness.

Cinderella’s loving mother is dead, and her once-caring father has become estranged and rendered ineffectual if not actively hostile. Ranged against the good but departed mother is the evil spiritless stepmother, but her influence is never as profound as the mother’s, whose reincarnated spirit protects and guides the motherless daughter. The wicked stepmother and stepsisters are duly punished, or perhaps nobly forgiven.

Narrative conventions

‘Once upon a time...’ clearly signals a simple fantasy. The narrative problem is that, like other fairy tale heroines, she is disadvantaged, mistreated and rejected, heightening audience anxiety. In the development of the plot, the heroine’s inherent virtue is recognised and rewarded by a magical guardian. Resolution of the conflict arrives when her worth is eventually discovered by a handsome nobleman. The audience, each of whom harbours their own fears and desires, is reassured that wishes can come true if we but recognise ‘the lesson of Cinderella, which is the same as that of the Magnificat — exaltavit humiles ("He lifted up the humble")’ -’Orthodoxy’, G K Chesterton.

The heroine steadfastly overcomes all difficulties and enriches her life as a consequence. Versions of the story where she forgives her enemies further strengthen the characterisation. In control of herself, she is given control of the kingdom. Of course such a person will be able to, and deserves to, live happily ever after.

Production style

The current drama production deftly mixes fantasy and realism, juxtaposes sentimentality and brutality, and features of Perrault tangle with characteristics of the ancient oral versions of the tale. Time-hallowed narrative elements are skilfully fused with rock music, limousines and computer animated sequences. In doing so, it follows the manner in which people of every time and place have varied the tale to suit local needs and taste. Nonetheless, the filmic medium itself is such a familiar communication tool that, possibly, we do miss something of the essential intimacy that the fireside intonation, cadence and gesture of the traditional storyteller used to fire listeners’ imagination.