aliceinHerLand

The tale of Cinderella and its variances

In The Classic Fairy Tales, the tale of Cinderella was introduced with many variants. Maria Tartar also presents Antti Aerne and Stith Thompson’s idea in The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography of categorising all Cinderella stories into two types: ‘Cinderella’ AT 510A and ‘Catskin’ AT 510B. The focus of the first type, Cinderella, is the jealousy of the stepmothers and stepsisters “produced by a father remarriage” (Tartar 102). This concept of a wicked, evil stepmother is common in the category of fairy tales since many stories such as Snow White and Hansel and Gretel share the concept. On the other hand, the concept of Catskin, “fathers who persecute their daughters by showing them too much affection are virtually unknown” (103). One explanation for this bias is the image of a cruel father is not encouraged to be introduced to young children. This makes the first type of Cinderella tale more famous worldwide than the second one. Yet, the two types both convey meaningful messages. If Cinderella “endures humiliation at home and becomes the beneficiary of lavish gifts”, Catskin celebrates the heroine with the image of independent and inventive daughters (105). Despite many differences, the two types of Cinderella tales share a few similarities. In every variant, the female characters were asked to perfectly fit a standard. In Donkeyskin, the standard was either a wedding ring of the mother or a superior beauty and goddess look. In Grimm’s Cinderella, the standard is the glass slippers. Tartar argued that the task of finding a perfect fit for those standards was set by a male (the father or the prince). In most variants, the main female character in the stories is passive. The climax of those tales is also the running of the woman away from the male character (either from her father or from her prince). While in the folklores of some countries, there were tales such as The Little Red Ox and Story Of The Black Cow that feature “male Cinderellas” and “neutralize the persecutions of a wicked stepmother”, there were no pictures of a miserable male who suffered from a stepmother in the Western cultural horizon (106). The topic of gender in the two types of Cinderella tales evokes many thoughts surrounding what our ancestors thought about “girls and boys to participate in the developmental trajectory outlined in the tale” (107). Overall, the story of Cinderella as a whole is still many generations’ favourite. The fame of it is irrefutable.  

Tatar, M. Introduction, The Classic Fairy Tales, 1st ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.