Fairy Tale Differences In The Tale Of Cinderella

Over the years, fairytales have been distorted in order to make them more family friendly. Once these changes occur, the moral and purpose of the stories begin to disappear. The tales featured in the many Disney movies - beloved by so many - have much more malignant and meaningful origins that often served to scare children into obeying their parents or learning valuable life lessons.

A perfect example of such plot alterations occur in the tale of Cinderella. This parable is "one of the oldest and most widespread fairy tales in western culture" ("The Origins of Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty" 4) originating in roughly 50 BCE. The Disney motion picture is most likely based on the brothers Grimm version although many changes did

This legend is based on the Brothers Grimm parable which is one of their earliest works. In the Grimm story, the Queen is the princess’s real mother. When the queen finds out from the mirror that her daughter is more beautiful than herself, she becomes jealous and grows to hate her own daughter - who is “fairest of them all” (The Origins of Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty" 2) at only seven years old. The queen sends the huntsman to kill Snow White like in the original story, however she requests the lungs and liver of her daughter, not the heart. The huntsman lets her go mostly because he thinks the wild animals will kill her anyways. During her sojourn with the dwarfs, the queen knows she is there and makes three more attempts on her life. The dwarves manage to save her the first two times, but they conclude that she is deceased the third time, when she gets a piece poison apple caught in her throat. A prince comes along one day and falls in love with the unconscious beauty. He then proceeds to take the corpse everywhere he goes, referring to her body as “his dearest possession,” (The Origins of Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty" 3). The piece of apple is dislodged waking the princess, and she falls in love with the prince. At their wedding, the queen is forced to put on red-hot iron shoes and dance until she dies. Although this tale had a happy ending, it contains a few gory details that the Disney animation did not