Introduction
What is perhaps more remarkable than the differences between Cinderella stories from other cultures is their similarities. In the African, Chinese and the European version the hatred the stepmother feels toward her stepdaughter is so intense it stops just barely short of being murderous. In every case the stepmother would have prevented the Cinderella figure from ever marrying had not a higher power intervened. There are important cultural differences, of course, and these should be examined closely; but in this essay the similarities will be emphasized in order to show that in all the Cinderella stories supernatural powers are needed to make it possible for her to assume her rightful place at the top of the social ladder. That menacing element is sanitized in the Disney version, leaving only a conflict between Cinderella and her ugly stepsisters but even that has to be mediated by a fairy godmother. By this time the story has lost its power but, as I will show, that shows that cultural changes have made life much better for women in real life.
Discussion
The Chinese story, by Tuan Ch-Eng Shih, is by far the oldest known version and the most ambiguous. Here the stepmother is left to look after her late husband’s beloved daughter as well as her own daughter. The stepmother hates Yeh-Hsien so much that she kills the fish she has raised from two inches in length to ten feet. In order to do so she dresses herself in her stepdaughter’s tattered clothes to lure the fish onto the pond’s bank where she cuts off its head, then proceeds to eat the fish and pronounce it delicious. In that way she destroys the girl’s last possession and if a god had not descended from the sky she would have died a miserable domestic slave. As in all stories, there is a festival to which the stepmother and stepsister go, leaving Yeh-Hsien home to watch the fruit trees. This story has perhaps a stronger sexual element than the others, if only for the fact that the king falls in love with a shoe that is an inch shorter than the smallest foot in his kingdom.
In Tuan’s version it is the sexual rivalry the stepmother feels toward her husband’s beloved daughter that motivates her to force her into a life that is dangerous and will eventually ruin her beauty. Yeh-Hsien only has one stepsister who plays a minor part in the tale before being killed, along with her mother, by flying stones. The two are buried in the Tomb of the Distressed Women which becomes a site for bachelors to pray for a wife and “any girl they prayed for there, they got.” It is tempting to interpret these seemingly irrelevant touches to the story as having sexually symbolic meaning but throughout the story the main concern is with the mother’s attempt to keep Yeh-Hsien in the background so her own daughter can find a suitable husband. This ties in with the Chinese custom of footbinding, an inhumane custom in which mothers broke and reset their daughter’s feet to make her more eligible, indicating that in those times mothers were prepared to make terrible sacrifices to ensure that their daughters would live “happily ever after.”
The African version, “The Maiden, the Frog, and the Chief’s Son” has the same theme, although here the father dislikes one of his wives and the daughter he has with her, but he loves his other wife and the daughter they had together. When the wife he dislikes dies, he moves her daughter in with the woman he loves, who promptly turns the girl into a domestic slave. The father plays no further part in the story, presumably because in that culture men and women live separate lives in separate huts. The stepmother and her daughter refused to give her water or decent food, and made her do all the hard work around the hut. Again the hope is that the Cinderella figure will die and so give her biological daughter a better chance to find a wealthy husband. She prevents the girl from attending the Festival, forcing her to do her household chores instead, and the African Cinderella is saved by a frog who repays her kindness to him in the past by straightening her out and adorning her. This reflects the animist religions of that culture, as does the act of vomiting her up in order to straighten her body, then vomiting out all the adornments she will need to attract the chief’s son. Here, as in the other stories, the wealthy, powerful male becomes obsessed with the mysterious beauty to the point where he cannot eat or look at other women, and when she withdraws, leaving him only with a shoe, he must pursue her.
In the Charles Perrault story the father remains alive but is oblivious to the way his second wife and her daughters treat Cinderella. To some extent Cinderella has been turned into a Christian martyr, humble, unselfish and capable of loving her enemies, even inviting her stepsisters to move into the palace after her wedding and marrying them off to “two great lords” – although there is no mention of her stepmother being forgiven. The sexual rivalry is partly disguised by Cinderella’s loving kindness but then is manifested in the extremes to which the women go to attract the prince’s attention. However, Cinderella’s fairy godmother is aware of the need for adornment and outdoes the stepsisters by dressing her god-daughter in “cloth of gold and silver, all beset with jewels” and completing the outfit with glass slippers. Moreover, the fairy godmother stipulates that Cinderella leaves the ball at midnight, knowing that withdrawal is the most powerful way to gain a man’s attention. On the second night she has to outrun the Prince but waits confidently for him to find her and to find in her his bride.
The sexual element in these stories is best highlighted by contrasting them with the Campbell Grant adaptation which he wrote for Walt Disney. By this time even Perrault’s version was too troublesome for modern children, and had to be fully sanitized before it was made into a film. The language, when compared to earlier versions, is infantile and the characterizations are simplistic; the evil stepmother is now a “mean old stepmother,” and the fairy godmother a sweet old lady. While in the other stories the Cinderella figure retains her mystery and forces her admirer to perform tests of his ardor before giving him her hand, in this story she and the Prince spend the whole evening dancing together and happily smiling into each others’ eyes. There is no suspense in this tale, because the Grand Duke loves her and she loves him and therefore they will find each other. There are many other touches that render the story harmless such as the magic formula used by the fairy godmother. In the Perrault story, rodents were turned into coach drivers and pages but here only pet mice and Cinderella’s dog are used, both of which move into the palace with her after the and the Prince marry.
Conclusion
The Cinderella story emerged from times and cultures where a woman’s fate depended on the quality of her marriage. Alone, unprotected by her father and mother, she was vulnerable to every ill-intentioned person in her extended family. It is a story told many times and in many different ways but perhaps never quite so simply and powerfully as in the African Cinderella. In many cultures women were and are (think of female genital mutilation) made to endure pain and suffering simply because marriage is their only option. Perhaps the sanitized Disney version should not be condemned as clichéd and inane, but should be seen as a sign of better times for women when they are free from the tyrannical rule of stepmothers; or, as in some cultures, mothers-in-law. As cultures change the old stories lose their power and turn into historical curiosities. That is already evident in the Perrault version where the over-elaborate descriptions of costumes and jewelry, and its saccharine heroine have replaced the life-or-death urgency the earlier stories have.
Works Cited
Grant, Campbell. “Walt Disney’s ‘Cinderella’.”
Perrault, Charles. “Cinderella.” Andrew Lang, ed. The Blue Fairy Book. New York: Dover, 1965. Web.
Shih, Tuan Ch’Eng. “A Chinese ‘Cinderella’.”
Skinner, Neil, trans. “The Maiden, the Frog, and the Chief’s Son.”