You probably know the
Perrault version. And chances are, you haven’t been able to
escape the Disney version. Maybe you know the slightly-darker
Grimm version, or even the original story of
Yeh-Shen. Maybe you’re a fan of musicals, and love Roger and Hammerstein’s
Cinderella or Sondheim’s
Into the Woods. But chances are, there’s a bit about this classic story you don’t know yet…
Cinderella is
Aarn-Thompson type 510A (
previously), which is:
510 -Cinderella and Cap o' Rushes. The Persecuted Heroine. a) The heroine is abused by her stepmother and stepsisters and (a1) stays on the hearth or in the ashes and (a2) is dressed in rough clothing b) flees in disguise from her father who wants to marry her, or (c) is cast out by him because she has said that she loved him like salt or (d) is to be killed by a servant. Magic Help. While she is acting as servant she is advised, provided for, and fed (a) by her dead mother, (b) by a tree on the mother's grave, or (c) by a supernatural being or (d) by birds, or (e) by a goat, sheep or cow. (f) When the animal is killed, there springs up from her remains a magic tree. Meeting the Prince. a) She dances in beautiful clothing several times with a prince who seeks in vain to keep her, or she is seen by him in church. (b) She gives hints of the abuse she has endured as servant girl, or (c) she is seen in her beautiful clothing in her room or in the church. Proof of Identity. (a) She is discovered through the slipper-test or (b) through a ring which she throws in to the prince's drink or bakes in his bread. (c) She alone is able to pluck the gold apple desired by the knight. Marriage with the Prince. Value of Salt. Her father is served unsalted food and thus learns the meaning of her earlier answer. 510A - Cinderella The two stepsisters.The stepdaughter at the grave of her mother, who helps her.Three-fold visit to church (dance).Slipper test. 510B - The Dress of Gold, of Silver, and of Stars. (Cap o' Rushes). Present of the father who wants to marry his own daughter. The maiden as servant of the prince, who throws various objects at her.The three-fold visit to the church and the forgotten shoe. Marriage. Or here for even more in-depth.
There are over
345 folk tales that fall under this classification. Various versions include
Cenerentola (Italian),
The Maiden and the Fish (Portuguese),
The Hearth Cat (also Portuguese), the
Bulgarian Cinderella,
Pepelyouga(Serbian),
Papalluga; or, The Golden Slipper (also Serbian),
The Wicked Stepmother (Kashmir),
The
Story of the Black Cow (Himalayan),
Sodewa Bai (Southern India),
The Little Gold Shoe (North Smâland),
Conkiajgharuna, the Little Rag Girl (Georgian) ,
The Wonderful Birch (Russian),
The Story of Tam and Cam(Vietnam),
Katie Woodencloak (Norwegian)
Fair, Brown, and Trembling (Irish),
The Sharp Grey Sheep (Gaelic),
RushenCoatie (English),
Rashin-Coatie (Scottish),
The Girl Clad in Mouse-Skin (Danish),
The Green Knight (also Danish),or the
Micmacor
indigenous Canadian version. Some people see
King Lear as a Cinderella variant.
And then there’s the modern retellings.There have been plenty of stories retelling the Cinderella myth. Louisa May Alcott (of Little Women fame) had
A Modern Cinderella:or, The Little Old Shoe: How it was Lost. Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie wrote the creatively-named “
Cinderella.” Or how about Tanith Lee’s
evil Cinderella (she also did an epistolary short story entitled “The Reason For Not Going To The Ball (A Letter To Cinderella From Her Stepmother)”) Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted (
brief
discussion of her inspiration) was popular enough to spawn a movie version (
trailer).Mercedes Lackey has done a
couple of
versions (excerpts available at links). Or Jim Hines’ The Stepsister Scheme (
preview).Gregory Maguire of Wicked fame did his own
take, with
book and
movie; Phillip Pullman had hisown
book and
television series, whimsically entitled I Was a Rat!Chick-lit is an obvious direction to take the Cinderella story, such as Jane Heller’s
Princess Charming. Napoli’s
Boundis a bit more serious take on the Chinese version of the tale.
If poetry is more your thing, there’s:
Anne Sexton’s poem “Cinderella” , Jane Yolen’s “
Fat is not a Fairy Tale,” Barbara Hamby’s “
"Achtung My Princess, Good Night"Estha Weiner’s
"Transfiguration Begins at Home", Ingrid Wendt’s
"Cinderella Dream at Ten", Russell Edson’s "
Cinderella's Life at the Castle" (scroll down), Margarita Engle’s “
A Cuban Cinderella”, Enid Dame’s “
Cinderella," (mildly nsfw), Olga Broumas' "
Cinderella," Emma Bull’s “
The Stepsister’s Story,” Denise Duhamel’s "
The Ugly Stepsister" (also has a clip of the author reading), Guy Wetmore Carryl’s “
How Fair Cinderella Disposed of Her Shoe,” Barbara Crooker’s “
Masquerade” with, for some reason, piano and soprano, Caroline Hazard’s “
Cinderella,” Henry Lawson’s “
Cinderella,” Vachel Lindsay's “
Parvenu,” Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt's “
Questions of the Hour,” Sarah Helen Whitman’s “
Cinderella,” the always popular children’s poets Roald Dahl and Shel Silverstein had “
Cinderella” and “
In Search of Cinderella” respectively, Miroslav Holub’s “
Cinderella,” Randall Jarrell’s “
Cinderella” Yusef Komunyakaa’s "
Cinderella at Big Sur" (google books), Ellen Kushner’s “
Sonata: For Two Friends in Different Times of the Same Trouble,” Stephen Mitchell’s “Cinderella,” Sylvia Plath’s “
Cinderella,” Tennessee Reed’s “
Disney’s Cinderella” (google books), Elizabeth Maddox Robert’s “
Cinderella’s Song” and Judith Viorst’s “
And Then the Prince Knelt Down and Tried to Put the Glass Slipper on Cinderella's Foot.”
Of course, the version most people are familiar with wasn't written down—it was animated. But it’s hardly the only animated take on old Cindy. There's the old
Betty Boop cartoon or maybe
a Popeye short. Tex Avery’s “
Swing Shift Cinderella” (video) You can get hooked on phonics with
Cinderelephant. Or, for those of a more Christian bent,
Adventures in the Book of Virtues. Rocky and Bullwinkle did a fractured fairy tale version in Episode 15 of Season 1, though unfortunately no link. Technically not animated, but there's the lesser known muppet classic
Hey Cinderella!
If live action movies are more your métier, there's plenty to choose from there as well. The earliest I could find was the 1899 “
Cinderella” by Georges Melies. Or perhaps the 1912 Cendrillon ou la Pantoufle merveilleuse , based on the 1879 play by Henry Monnier (
Wikipedia). Then there was Cinder-Elfred in 1914 (for which there is almost zero information), followed in 1917 by
The Cigarette Girl (not to be confused with the 2009
Cigarette Girl, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Cinderella.) Then there's Lotte Reiniger’s silhouette film
Aschenputtel (
UK only film here) (
more about the amazing Lotte Reiniger and some of her other films here); 1937,
Pierre Caron1. The 1952 April in Paris (
trailer) starring Doris Day has its Cinderella moments
2. The Bogart/Gardner The Barefoot Contessa continues the foot-fetish-fun with a meta kind of twist (
clip) (the Food Network star took her name from the movie, but her show has nothing to do with Cinderella). The 1983
Bristlelip is a bit of a reverse-Cinderella based on the Grimms’
King Thrushbeard, and the 1984
Bearskin by the same director combines elements of Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and the lesser known
Donkeyskin by Perrault.
Ever After, with Da Vinci as an unconventional fairy god-father, remains popular, as does the television miniseries The 10th Kingdom (
trailer). Hillary Duff and Chad Michael Murray do
the teen movie version.For a more Appalachian bent, try
Ashpet. Or maybe you prefer a
New Zealand bush setting. Or perhaps a
Celtic Dance (part
B,
C, and
D)? Then there’s the Russian Zulushka, directed by Nadezhda Kosheverova, and Mikhail Shapiro (
clip), or the Czech
Three Nuts for Cinderella. Or maybe you’re a huge fan of 50s “educational” videos, in which case “
Cindy Goes to a Party” might scratch that highly-specific itch.
Some Cinderella stories are harder to spot, especially when they decide to make everything go wrong.
Some people (google books) see Stephen King’s Carrie as a dark version of Cinderella: “With the exception of the glass slipper, King has retained the essential elements of the classic fairy tale in his version of ‘Cinderella’: familial discord, peer pressure, and sexuality with its bloody connotations.”
Or how about Opera? Michael William Balfe’s The Bohemian Girl (
libretto;
photos) is loosely based on the Cinderella story. It has gone through many incarnations, including a Laurel and Hardy film in 1936 (
TCM Article;
NYTimes Review). The most famous song from The Bohemian Girl is “
I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls,” which, to go down the literary rabbit hole even further, was used by
James Joyce in “Eveline” and “Maria” in Dubliners. Or there's the Italian Opera by Rossini, La Cenerentola (
Italian libretto;
story and audio clip;
video preview). There’s also a
film version of the opera. Cenerentola ’80, despite the name, is not based on the opera, but does have some
interesting music of its own. If you prefer your musical theater without singing, you could always go for the
ballet Cinderella or a clip of the
Moscow Festival Ballet.
And then there’s advertisements. The Disney Princesses, of course, but there have been some other, shall we say, less obvious uses of the Cinderella story to sell people stuff. Chevrolet, for example, had the 1936 advertising classic “
A Coach for Cinderella.”
Shoes are an obvious choice, for all that the shoes in question aren’t actually in the ad. I suppose
pantyhose is also a somewhat logical choice for this 1980’s ad (youtube). Or
hair products (though
Rapunzel was even more logical). Or maybe
what every princess wants to eat. A bizzare
Cinderella themed advert for paint (youtube). Cinderella
advertises for advertising. Fancy cappuccino,
for when one princess isn’t enough. If not cappuccino, Cinderella is
just a little naughty for fat free chocolate drink. Or then there's
whatever they’re trying to sell here. Or hey,
just go the NSFW route to sell… jewelry, I guess?
Of course, not everyone loves the prominence of the Cinderella story in our collective psyches. There have been
plenty (video) of
feminist critiques (pdf) (and
more (doc) and
more (pdf)
here (pdf) and
here (also
previously)) some with a particular slant, such as Laura Miller’s
analysis of how Cinderella affects the Japanese beauty industry. Or, if you prefer the scholarly “critical” as opposed to the “I don’t like this” critical, there's a wealth of analysis. Fransisco Vaz de Silva analyzes
the similarity between the Cinderella story and Irish folktales of dragon slaying (pdf) and also elaborates on “
symbolic themes in the European Cinderella cycle”. Wayne Schelp explores the
Cinderella motif in Tibetian folklore (pdf).
If that isn't enough for you, have an obligatory
tvtropes link, or Russell Peck's exhaustively in-depth
Cinderella Biography
To finish up, enjoy some
clips of
small children enjoying
Cinderella.
1. His next film was entitled The Buttock.
2. Not entirely relatedly, the title April in Paris is itself an homage to the classic Jazz song “
April in Paris” which has had renditions done by such luminaries as Ella Fitzgerald, Coleman Hawkins, Mel Torme, Ahmad Jamal, Stan Kenton, Artie Shaw, Bill Evans, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Frank Sinatra, Mary Kaye Trio, Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Dinah Shore, Glenn Miller, Doris Day, Alex Chilton, Tommy Dorsey, Blossom Dearie, Wynton Marsalis, Sal Viviano, and Dawn Upshaw. and Erroll Garner.
Bravo. Brilliant post.
posted by hippybear at 9:12 PM on October 27, 2011 [1 favorite]