Not all parents love their children equally. Circumstances and personal vendettas influence feelings and actions. People attempt to justify their reasoning, but most know their reasoning appears personal and petty. Stepparents hold such grudges and ill will. “The ‘Cinderella Effect’: Elevated Mistreatment of Stepchildren in Comparison to Those Living with Genetic Parents” by Martin Daly & Margo Wilson supports the argument that villainous stepparents are created in tales such as “Cinderella” by the Brothers Grimm to create a more interesting story and to reflect real family relations.
The Cinderella effect states that child abuse is more likely to come from stepparents than biological parents. Abuse stems from the lack of love and the presence
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“Stepchildren receive reduced investment in the form of support for higher education, routine medical and dental care, and even food” (Daly & Wilson 7). Stepparents care less about their stepchildren’s future. Cinderella’s family does not care about her future. In the time of the Grimm’s tale, a future meant marriage, but they would not let her attend the ball and find someone to marry. She was stuck at home completing meaningless tasks. Cinderella’s attendance of the ball was an act of rebellion and, subconsciously, a way to escape her current situation. If she could find someone to marry she could escape her current situation. “In view of all the above, it is no surprise to learn that stepchildren find their home life stressful. Many studies have reported that they leave home at a substantially younger age than children from intact birth families…and not only do they leave earlier, but they are far more likely to cite family conflict as the reason” (Daly & Wilson 8). The neglect or abuse of a child becomes detrimental to their mental and physical health. Cinderella was so unhappy that she cried enough to grow a tree. At the end of the story, the evil stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by birds. “And so they were condemned to go blind for the rest of their days because of their wickedness and falsehood” (Grimm 87). Their punishment signals Cinderella’s freedom from the abuse of her family. Without an evil stepfamily to prod Cinderella into action, the story would not
Step Mother (second wife of fathers and mother to the youngest children) was only a young girl when her parents were killed. After a series of unfortunate events she was bought from a village clan and sold to become someone’s “companion”. None of this was her choice. “She was taken to a mission house, then taken away again, reclaimed by the village clan, and eventually sold into fathers canton merchant family” (13). Objectified and forced to be what someone else wants, stepmother is told to be exactly how the father wants her. She is forced to be submissive, and acts as a mother to the children, a wife to the husband, and a servant to the grandmother, or Poh-Poh. Throughout the novel her life is not hers to live, and her children are taught to treat her differently because of it. She is father’s second wife and not his first and because of this the children-even those who are biological- are expected to call her stepmother: “Poh-oh insisted we simplify our kinship terms in Canada, so my mother became “step mother.”… What the sons called my mother, my mother became… Father did not protest. Nor did the slim, pretty woman that was my mother seem to protest, though she must have cast a glance at the old one and decided to buy her time” (15). Stepmother is forced to be a third party in the raising of her children. She is only able to step out of
Cinderella is about a beautiful young girl that is mistreated by her step family. They give her the worst chores, make her sleep in a very dirty room up in an attic, and even give her the name “Cinderella” because they say she is always playing in the cinders of the fire. Cinderella is different though because despite being mistreated, she is still very nice and warmhearted. She represents how you should act in a world full of hate. If you are nice to everyone despite their rudeness and hate you will be rewarded in the end. Since Cinderella was so nice to her step sisters throughout her whole life, when she wanted to go to the ball her fairy godmother granted her wish. Cinderella got to go to the ball and looked absolutely beautiful, beautiful enough to catch the attention of the prince. While at the ball she was still very nice to her stepsisters, giving them food and telling them how nice they looked. When the stepsisters got home from the ball that night, they explain how lovely the mysterious princess was and how they thought she was so beautiful, not knowing that the mysterious princess was Cinderella. Cinderella played it off like she knew nothing of the princess but agreed with them that she must have been very beautiful. The next day came around and the stepsisters returned to the ball the
This is typical of antagonistic characters written during the time Perrault was alive and writing. In a certain variation rehashing of Cinderella, “Confessions of an Ugly Step-Sister” by Gregory Maguire, even though the setting is a long time ago like Perrault’s version, the writer is of modern times and it is a book instead of a short tale. Because of these factors the characters are more fleshed out and person-like. The reader sees that these ‘ugly stepsister’ are merely girls in poverty trying to have a happy life. They are not evil or cruel; if anything Clara, the Cinderella of this story, can be very cruel despite her beauty. One factor that is similar in both the modern and old tale is the eventual antagonism the stepmother directs at Cinderella. In Maguire’s version even though (stepmothers name) does not force Clara to become a maid(it is in fact Clara’s own choice), the reader finds out that the evil stepmother actually poisoned Clara’s mother so that she could marry Clara’s rich father. In Perrault’s version, the stepmother isn’t shown to be evil to that extent, but she is much more cruel to Cinderella. In both the old and new stories the stepmother remains an evil character, which is a common trop in fairy
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...
A young woman named Cheryl wrote a very humorous and entertaining version of Cinderella on her blog. My favorite part of her fairytale is when she included the most precise details that no other would think to include. At one part of her story she states: “Invitations were sent out at no little cost in postage stamps, and all the young woman were excited to attend. Naturally the ugly stepsisters wanted very much to go, and naturally they forbade Ella from attending, just to live up their reputation as wicked stepsisters. – Getting an education or maybe a job and achieving better life from her stepfamily – one with more fulfillment and fewer cinders – didn’t occur.”
In the article, “Fairy Tales and a Dose of Reality,” Catherine Orenstein attempts to show the contrast between the modern romanticism of marriage and the classic fairy tale’s presentation of them (285). She looks at the aristocratic motivations for marriage and the way these motivations are prominent in Cinderella. She then looks at the 20th century to highlight the innate difference of our mentalities, showing a much more optimistic and glorified relationship. In the article, “Cinderella: Not So Morally Superior,” Elisabeth Panttaja claims that Cinderella’s success can be attributed to her craftiness (288). She shows her and her mother as an equal to the stepfamily, analyzing each family’s goals and values. She attempts to show their similarities,
Whether it is a loss of a parent, a divorce, or the change of having a new authoritative figure as a stepparent, children need the support from their genetic parent. “The bird-the departed mother’s spirit, always near- brings Cinderella everything but her father’s loving eye. He seems to be oblivious to the abuse she suffers at her sister’s hands” (Schectman 296). Another way blindness is evident in both the articles is the fact that stepparents are willing to do this to a child. In The Truth about Cinderella, Daly and Margo say that a theory for the abuse demonstrated by a stepparent is a pseudo-parental obligation, yet how can a human physically feel the need to harm anyone, especially a child like
In the essay: “ ‘Cinderella’: A Story of Sibling Rivalry and Oedipal Conflicts”’, Bruno Bettelheim discusses how Cinderella is a story about the difficulties of sibling rivalry and the degraded heroine ending up on top of the siblings that oppressed her. Bettelheim argues that sibling rivalry is created when a child feels that they cannot win their parents love and esteem in comparison to his brothers or sisters. In addition he argues that every child feels that they deserve to be degraded at some point in their life. The concept of Oedipal guilt, his last point, has some intriguing details included in it, concepts of which could be disputed. However, the main focus of this essay is on how children justify the idea that they should be degraded, and because of the hardships they have faced, risen up and exalted like Cinderella was. He states that Cinderella relates very closely to the youth because they feel like they can relate to her situation more than the majority of people could.
Cinderella lost her mother tragically and throughout the story she seemed to never have gotten over her loss. Cinderella seemed to have been traumatized from the loss of her mother, and that could be the answer for why she act and allowed such inappropriate treatment from her step family. It is said that a ‘traumatic event is more likely to leave an individual with longer-lasting emotional and psychological trauma if the event occurred out of the blue, if the individual was unprepared for the event, and if the individual felt powerless to prevent the event from happening (Symptoms, Signs & Effects of Emotional Trauma). All of which apply to Cinderella’s situation when her mother became very ill and passed away right before her eyes. Some effects of untreated trauma can include inability to maintain healthy close relationships or choose appropriate people to befriend, feeling of depression, shame, hopelessness, and social withdrawal (Symptoms, Signs & Effects of Emotional Trauma). Cinderella would go to her mother’s grave and weep for her often representing she may have been depressed, although “some traumatic events are so painful that victims understandably want to withdraw from others and avoid painful reminders of the situation” (Raymond B. Flannery) . Cinderella was withdrawn from any social encounters and had to figure out life on her own. She was put through a lot but ended up coming out of a horrible situation into a new life to live with her
A young girl is forced to live with her step-mother and step-sisters after her father and mother die. She becomes the maid of the family, tending to their every need. Eventually there is a ball; she acquires a fairy Godmother, goes to the ball, falls in love with the prince, blah blah blah. All you really need to know is that she has a happy ending. A happy ending. No matter how much suffering she went through in her early years, at the end, it all came together and she had no more worries. And this is the problem. Cinderella is not realistic. It never was and never will be. Watching this movie when I was young made me believe there was a prince waiting for me somewhere. I grew up thinking that life was simple and uncomplicated, that I did not need to worry about the future because there was a man that would provide everything I wanted and needed. But as I got older, I realized this was not the case. I saw many of my friend’s parents divorce, people die, and the world fight with each other. My fantasy died off, and I realized I had to work hard for myself, and not others. The poem Cinderella by Anne Sexton made fun of the ending of Cinderella. She states, “Cinderella and the prince / lived … happily ever after … / their darling smiles pasted on for eternity. / Regular Bobbsey Twins. / That story.” (Sexton 11). Notice who she referenced and how she has a sarcastic tone. Cinderella and the prince smiled for others, trying to convince
Growing up, all of us probably have read fairy tales where there is a stepmother who is seen as a witch for treating her stepdaughter so poorly. We associate the stepmother with ideas of evil. When many of us hear of the words black, cold, jealousy and evil we often times think of stepmothers from fairy tales who devised plans in order to stop their stepdaughters from gaining anything. These arrogant stepmothers have different moods relating to the setting and symbols, they have developed the idea of dramatic irony and also have their own point of view for their actions throughout different fairy tales.
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
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
Setting the tale in Nazi Germany creates an atmosphere of fear and anxiety, and establishes a set of circumstances in which it is possible for people to act in ways that would be unacceptable under other circumstances. The stepmother is a good example of this. She is the force in the family – it is she who decides that everyone in the family will have a better chance of survival, if they split up – the children going off alone together and the parents going in another direction. Unlike the portrayal of the stepmother in the Grimm fairy tale, this stepmother is not wicked. She is strong willed and determined, but not evil, although she is protecting herself and her husband by abandoning the children.
The story teaches us that society expects women to be passive. Cinderella’s abuse by her stepsisters and stepmother cause her to live in grief silently without expressing her emotions. She does nothing to fight for her freedom except sing about all the dreams of happiness that she hopes will come true someday. She only wishes for things to change rather than attempt to do anything to change it for herself. Cinderella waits to be rescued by Prince Charming instead of fighting for her own freedom. This teaches women that they should suffer in silence without doing anything for themselves.