¨Then her mother gave her a knife and said, ´Cut off your toe. When you are queen you will no longer have to go on foot´¨(Grimm par. 49). In the Grimm Brothers version of “Cinderella”, in an attempt to fit their feet into the slipper in which the Prince uses to decide his wife, the Stepsisters of Cinderella cut of parts of their heel and toes. Along with losing parts of their feet, at the end of the story, both Stepsisters have both of their eyes pecked out by pigeons. All of the misfortune the Stepsisters exhibit at the end of the story help develop the morals of this story; revenge. The Stepsisters deserve the revenge they receive for all the adversity they bring to Cinderella's life. The Stepsisters bring Cinderella misery in all three versions, …show more content…
In the Grimm Brothers version, the color red is used to portray violence. This can be recognized when the Stepsisters cut off parts of their feet to try and fit it in the slipper to become the new princess. “Then he looked at her foot and saw how the blood was running from it. He turned his horse around and took the false bride home again,”(Grimm 53). This utilization of blood creates a violent feeling connected to the Stepsisters due to the color red’s association with blood and violence. The use of the red archetype in the Grimm Brothers version separates it from the other two versions by creating a violent mood throughout the story while the other two versions give off a rather positive mood, however, the color red is still used as an archetype in each version. The color red is more commonly used to represent power rather than violence. For example, in the Little Golden Book Version the evil Stepmother wears a red dress the entire time to show that she has power over the household and Cinderella. The story shows the Stepmother’s power over Cinderella by describing how the Stepmother treated her. The story states that “The Stepmother gave Ella a little room in the attic, old rags to wear, and all the housework to do”(Little Golden Book 4). In The Little Golden book version, red is also use to illustrate power through the Prince. The Prince wears a red …show more content…
How the stepfamily treats Cinderella is echoed through each version; like a maid. In each version Cinderella is taken away from her room and forced to sleep in some absurd place. In the Grimm Brothers Version, Cinderella did not have a bed, “Instead she had to sleep by the hearth in the ashes”(Grimm 6). A hearth is the floor of a fireplace, which means Cinderella was forced to sleep on a floor next to a fireplace. In the Little Golden Book Version, “The Stepmother gave Ella a little room in the attic,”(Little Golden Book 4). This piece is just like the film version, where the Stepmother forces Cinderella to stay in a dark room in the attic, and forces her out of her own bedroom. Where Cinderella sleeps is an example of how the relationships between Cinderella and the stepfamily are all similar. Differences can be found in what they make her do to be able to go to the Prince’s ball. In the Grimm Brothers version, after they get news of the ball the Stepsisters force call Cinderella and tell her “‘Comb our hair for us. Brush our shoes and fasten our buckles. We are going to the festival at the kings castle’”(Grimm 16). In this version they force her to get them ready for the ball, which doesn’t happen in any of the other versions. The Stepmother’s reaction to Cinderella’s proposal of her going to the ball is also different in this version.
In “Cinderella” by the Grimm Brothers, the moral is that one should never lie or be wicked to others. In the story, Cinderella’s mother passed away and a year later her father gets remarried to an evil woman who has two daughters. The wife and daughters torment Cinderella, making her complete tedious chores. Eventually, Cinderella attends a ball for the Prince and they fall in love. However, she runs away every night and he cannot find her. The Prince finally takes one of her slippers and sets out to find the love of his life. He then goes to her household and asks all the sisters to try the slipper on. The stepsisters try to deceive the Prince but “the blood was streaming from” their feet and they are eventually caught. When Cinderella tries on the shoe it fits perfectly and the two get married. At the reception, two birds peck out the stepsisters’ eyes, punishing them “with blindness as long as they lived.” The archetypes in the story are Cinderella who is the damsel in distress, the Prince who saves her and the evil stepsisters and mother who are the villains. A convention is that true love always...
Unquestionably, the Grimm's tale is the darkest between the two as denoted by Aschenputtel's sisters cutting their feet in an attempt to wear the slipper to marry the prince (Aschenputtel p 63) and ending with Aschenputtel's sisters being blinded by the magical birds which helped her throughout (Aschenputtel p 64). In contrast, Cinderella's first actions upon acknowledgement of her newfound stature in life were to grant forgiveness to the very sisters, which caused her so much pain.
(Cheryl 1) I love how she always refers back to the stepsisters as ugly instead of evil. This (re)telling is absolutely my favorite and I would encourage anyone with a mind to read it. Another (re)telling that really caught my attention, like I know it did many others, was the one written in France in 1697. An author named Charles Perrault proved, yet again, that Cinderella is not who everyone expects her to be. According to this article, “scholars think Perrault may have confused vair (French for “fur”) with the word verre (French for “glass”).”
Even though the time periods are very different (by 200 years) the formulas for their fairy tales seems to remain constant. Character development, which is very important in fairy tales is both well done and accurately portrays the living situation for a character in the time period of when it was written. Perrault's version seems to put Cinderella's family in a higher, well-off situation of the Grimm's because she is still abided to obey the rules that her dying mother had set for her. Something that you would see a women do in the late 1600's. Her higher class and the rules of her generation has set her to not have revenge on her step-sisters and helps them marry in the end, making a happy ending to the story for everyone. This also gives off the rules of the time to the young girls who would be listening or reading this story back then. They knew their place in society and tales like Perrault's reinforced it. The Grimm's version, titled Ashenputtle, has key elements in the story line that make it very different from Perrault's Cinderella. The theme becomes very different as the end of the tale results in revenge on the step-sisters from Ashenputtle. This variation in the story line represents the setting in which the Grimm's either lived in themselves, or the living situation of the people who related this tale to the Grimm's.
In “The Stepsister’s Tale” written by Theodora Goss, where there is one speaker in the poem where she names off various bones, tendons and joints found in the feet (Goss 3-6). The poem becomes gruesome once the speaker states how she cut off her big toe, while her sister cut off a part of her heel for a woman whom they love, their mother (Goss 8-22). The speaker of the poem has a lot of character development as well for fitting into five stanzas. If “The Stepsister’s Tale” were compared to the Grimm Brother’s Tale of Cinderella, then Goss’s character can easily be compared to one of Cinderella’s stepsisters. Specifically, the eldest stepsister who cut’s off her big toe to fit a slipper. Since the speaker says, “Years later, when I had become
On the other hand, Cinderella’s perspective of what is going on around her is different in both films. In the older film she has the perspective of her being a maid as a punishment. She believes that her stepmother and stepsisters do not like her and she feels mistreated. While in the new film she has a bigger perspective of her role in the household. When her stepmother and stepsisters first arrive she has a vulnerable and open heart towards them. She goes out her way to make them feel welcomed and loved no matter how much they mistreat
The version in the United States is known as Cinderella. Cinderella's mother dies when she is young and her father remarries. The woman he gets married to has two daughters. They become Cinderella´s new evil stepsisters. Her sisters are jealous because she is very pretty and petite. They treat her very poorly. She is to do chores around the house and attend to every need of her stepmother and stepsisters. The Prince is having a ball and requests that every available lady in the kingdom attends. Cinderella is told by her stepmother that she can not attend the ball unless she finishes her chores. She finishes her chores and
A lot of the fairy tale stories that we have seen as young adults and even as adults are original folk tale stories that have been modified and rewritten to accommodate our new cultures. Cinderella happens to be one of these stories that have been changed over the years. There are many different versions of Cinderella, an African Cinderella, a Hungarian Cinderella and even a Chinese version. All of the Cinderella’s are similar in plot, but the author dictates the story’s theme based on the people whom he is writing for which completely changes the story’s tone, mood and other elements. While Perrault's version stresses the values and materialistic worries of his middle-class audience, Grimm’s' focus is on the harsh realities of life associated with the peasant culture. Perrault’s and Grimm’s Cinderella’s have the same plot, but their writing style is different which completely modifies the tale.
There is obvious competition between Cinderella, her step-mother, and her step-sisters. The conflict between them began because they both want the father’s/ husband’s love and attention; this explains the step-mother’s cruelty toward the step-daughter. Cinderella 's stepmother declared “No, Cinderella..../you have no clothes and cannot dance./That 's the way with stepmothers”(li.53-55); this statement reveals the step-mother’s abiding envy towards Cinderella because even after she had picked up the lentils the step-mother had thrown, she still made up excuses to keep Cinderella at home and isolated. Although there were two step-daughters, “Cinderella was their maid./She slept on the sooty hearth each night/ and walked around looking like Al Jolson(li.30-32). This line refers to how Cinderella walked around the house with dirt and sludge on her all day and slept on the fireplace each night while the two step-sisters walked around the house clean and slept in comfortable beds. This shows the contrast between the two step -sisters and Cinderella and how they are treated differently throughout daily life. Obviously, there is no reason the step-family should envy Cinderella; however, they do anything in their power to make sure they receive the most attention from the rich father/husband to get whatever they
The Glass Slipper Fairytales, the short stories that most children hear as they go to bed, are actually folktales from previous decades. The fairytales today are primarily adaptations of older versions recreated by Disney— the pioneers of this generation. With that said, the modern versions consistently display good triumph over evil, a prince charming that constantly comes to the rescue, and a happily ever after ending. However, the original folktale version didn’t always come with fortunate events, but often were more violent and gruesome. With the fairytale Cinderella, Disney maintains a similar theme as its Grimm version; however, the conflicts, events, and characters that support this idea are rather different.
It is more obvious in this tale than others, but some of these aspects are the nickname of Cinderella, the evil stepfamily, the three balls, and the beautiful slipper. However, Perrault and the brothers Grimm made some parts of the story very different. In the Grimm’s version, Cinderella’s mother was very important to her and she was very important to her father, while in Perrault’s her mother is not even mentioned and her father is more attached to his new wife than he is to his daughter. Perrault described the stepsister’s as less beautiful than Cinderella, while the brothers Grimm described them as just as beautiful but with bad personalities. Another major difference was Cinderella’s magic helper. In Perrault’s story Cinderella had a fairy godmother that gave her horses, a carriage, footmen to escort her, and new beautiful clothes, and in Grimm’s story her magic helper was birds that only provided clothes. A main difference that a lot of people would notice is the fact that in the Grimm’s tale Cinderella’s slipper was made of gold, and in Perrault’s it was glass which is what most people are familiar with. The endings of the stories also differed. The Grimm’s version ended in a much darker way. Both stepsisters got their eyes pecked out and were doomed to live a life of blindness, which was clearly not a very child friendly way to end a story. In
In Snow White, she does not serve as a servant to her stepmother, but has to escape from her envious stepmother to survive. Then she lives in the forest with seven dwarfs who take care of her after she is deserted in the forest. However, Snow White is still seduced by her stepmother three times. This shows that Snow White is vulnerable because she trusts a stranger easily. Moreover, the way Snow White gets saved by the prince is different from Cinderella because she gets saved after she was buried in a glass coffin. Her envious stepmother gets punished by fire when she attends Snow White and the Prince’s wedding. On the other hand, Cinderella lives with her stepmother and two stepsisters who mistreat her. She can’t escape from their curse and is treated as a maid. She meets the prince before she goes to the ball when he tries to steal her father’s horse. She isn’t permitted to go to the ball, but her childhood friend helps her out. She gets saved by the prince when she fits in her slipper, and her wick stepmother and older stepsister get punished by the king to work as laundry maids for the rest of their
There are many things one has learned from the experience, although the twelve versions of Cinderella are similar to each other but yet in some way they are different, which make it unique. Similar plot and similar circumstances however, different author with different minds. They are portraying with similar knowledge but the way the story may be told is different such as the characters names, locations, and the time it was created. No matter what it is I’ve learn that Cinderella will be Cinderella regardless of the different author, different time or different title. These creations of different versions is precisely similar to when one tells another person a story and is passed on to another person than the story will be shorten with less details and added with a few other exaggerations, in which will cause the stories to be different from each other.
The narrator says this to further the idea that the character of Cinderella evolves during the entire tale. She begins being this beautiful girl to this bottom-feeder only bossed around by her own family. This is significant when the stepmother takes “her beautiful clothes away” and dresses Cinderella “in an old gray smock” with “wooden shoes” (Grimm 1). This change makes the character more vulnerable in which it can make the other characters push her around more. The taking away of beauty can also show the true colors of the other characters because it shows that they are insecure. They are scared of Cinderella and by changing a simple look, it can give them the confidence to rule over her. Another personality trait that Cinderella has is the “damsel in distress” princess. This was very common in older princesses like The Little Mermaid, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Rapunzel. All of these characters engulf this idea that princesses are passive, naive, innocent, easy targets, and always wanting to be rescued. For example, Cinderella never speaks up to her stepmother. Many older princesses were commonly known for doing nothing and letting stuff happen around them. As a result, the quote illustrates certain personality traits that are common in
Some of the exact differences between the different versions include, the fact that in the story we see that after the mother dies the father is still alive but he stays alive throughout the story and does not love his daughter the same as the other two girls. Whereas in the Disney version the father dies and that is when the stepmother and the two stepdaughters start to treat (Cinderella/ashputtle) differently. In the movie ?Ever After? we see that the father also dies and again that is when the evilness in the family comes out. A few other differences that were discussed include the differences in the prince's portrayal, in one version he was outgoing and honest, and in another he was very shy, and reserved but very dedicated.