Cinderella and the Feminist Struggle for Independence

In her article, “Cinderella: Not So Morally Superior,” Elisabeth Panttaja illustrates the important role of parents in a childhood. She talks about the importance the mother plays in all versions of Cinderella as well as evidence showing what lack of parenthood does to children. Panttaja claims by way of the Grimms Brothers version of Cinderella and how each mother wants to guarantee a bright and happy future for their daughters by marrying them off to the prince. The similarities between the wanting of Cinderella and the stepsisters married- and doing anything to get it- contradicts the idea that Cinderella and her mother were morally superior, or different at all, from the stepmother and sisters.

“Oh, fairytales, where desperate, naïve girls sacrifice everything for their so-called prince charming”. The realities of these childhood classics are controversial, sexist, and dark, yet, it’s also adored by millions of young girls around the world. Cinderella, an often sugar-coated story, is a great example on how sexism and gender stereotypes prevail in literature. The Grimm Brothers touch on a variety of devices, from characterization to symbolism, all revealing the inequality in not only fictional literature but our real-life society as well. A feminist literary critic will interpret these controversial themes and apply their beliefs of equal rights into the study of the Grimm Brother’s Cinderella.

Have you ever had a dark and gloomy day? Imagine having that feeling every single day. The Grimm’s Cinderella was written in 1812. 1812 was one of the harshest years for America. An event that formed it was the war against Great Britain and the United States. Not only was there a war, but there was also a series of disastrous harvests. Taxes got higher, and more than twenty people who were involved with a Luddite Act were hung. In 1812, there was also the only assassination of a prime minister, who was shot dead in the House of Commons. The Grimm Brothers have put the dark times of 1812 into their stories. Some of their stories contain violence, child abuse, and wicked mothers. They came up with these types of stories after their father died, and when they struggled out of school. That gave them enough time to research and put together a collection of folk tales. Now you can see why the Grimm’s Cinderella was dark and gloomy. Although the plot stayed the same, over the years, the story did get lighter. Disney’s Cinderella came out in 1950. In 1950, learning information was not by fear, but by engaging happiness. Disney’s Cinderella transforms the Grimm’s Cinderella into a happier atmosphere. While some similarities between Disney’s Cinderella and Grimm’s Cinderella are noticeable, the differences are pronounced, especially when referring to the slippers, her father, and the ball.

The Prince stereotypes the role of women being in need of a destined lover. He is the one that identifies Cinderella as the one in the dress, though excluding behavior, her appearance dazzles him for two nights at the ball. Most importantly, he’s not the hero of the fairytale, but readers can interpret the fairy godmother as the savior of Cinderella’s demise. The role of magic comes in part with the acceptance of achieving the imagery of an elegant woman, impressing the Prince who gains interest in her. The

A fairytale that almost everyone knows is Cinderella. Cinderella is about a young girl whose father decides to remarry after her mother dies. The women who he remarries is evil with two evil daughters. As Cinderella's father is out of town for various things the evil step-mom makes Cinderella do all the chores. They treat her like a servant rather than someone apart of the family. Since Cinderella has no friends she becomes friends with animals who help her complete her daily chores. One day they receive an invitation to a ball. Cinderella is allowed to go if she completes a set of chores but Cinderella ends up staying home while her stepmother and stepsisters go to the ball. Cinderella's fairy godmother shows up and makes her beautiful (changes her dress, etc) but says she has to be home at midnight because her beautiful dress will disappear and she'll go back to her old self. She goes to the ball and the prince falls in love with her but she has to leave at the strike of midnight. As she is running out of the ball she loses one of her glass slippers. The prince searches town for Cinderella. He then finally finds her and they live happily ever after.

What people see is not necessarily all they get; there are more significant aspects that encompass what people use, hear, or see, besides the obvious messages employed throughout popular culture. It is not uncommon to find hidden messages within our culture today, especially in the context of movies. One movie in particular, the newest Cinderella, is full of these hidden messages. Besides the common message that is employed throughout Cinderella over and over again, the message to “have courage and be kind”, there are several hidden meanings that are often not discovered by viewers. These messages include “being a light” when surrounded on all sides by darkness, believing in the unbelievable, recognizing the fact that parent’s greatly influence their children, and seeing that it is okay to want a happily ever after kind of love.

After watching cinderella and reading cinder there was many similar things to the movie and book but there was also many different things that went on.Even though there were more difference between the to they still have the similarities.

The men in “Cinderella” also value women for their beauty. The prince has a ball for all the maidens in the land to find his future wife, which “amounts to a beauty contest” (Lieberman 386) for a new trophy wife. While some argue that Cinderella’s rebellion of going against her stepmother’s instructions of staying home shows that the story has feminist qualities, the prince weakens her achievement when he chooses her only because of her beauty as “girls win the prize if they are the fairest of them all” (Lieberman 385). Her need for independence is transformed into the prince’s need for a pretty wife, making her again an object in her family. Once integrated into the prince’s family, Cinderella goes from the maid of her family to the smiling porcelain doll next to the prince as the “first job of a fairy tale princess is to be beautiful” (Röhrich 110). This gives the impression that the only way

Cinderella, by the Brothers Grimm, described the life of a maiden named Cinderella. Born to a loving family, Cinderella’s life had drastically changed when her ailing mother had perished from her disease. After the death of Cinderella’s mother, her father had married another woman, who had two daughters. Unfortunately, Cinderella’s step-mother and step-sisters were cruel to Cinderella, forcing her to wear rags and perform chores. Instead of voicing the abuse, Cinderella submissively endured the appalling treatment and had her value reduced to a servant. As years progressed, the king organized an extravagant ball for three days, designed to attract the prince to the maidens in the ball. Even though Cinderella desperately wanted to attend the ball, because of the cruelty of her step-sisters, Cinderella remained meek and was warned she would be severely punished if she didn’t sort the lentils. Rather than performing the task and arguing for her freedom, Cinderella wept and was helped by the pigeons. As the ball continued, the step-sisters were discontent with the completion of their tasks, so they resumed to mistreat Cinderella by requesting her to complete further preposterous tasks. However, the pigeons would resume assisting Cinderella, even advising her to shake the tree on her mother’s grave for the appropriate attire to attend the ball. Thanks to the pigeons and the tree, Cinderella attended the ball and established herself as the candidate of the prince’s affection,

Each person in the world has heard of Cinderella, no matter what kind of version it may be. Cinderella is the one fairy tale story that has been popular and will always be the one tale that has to be told to children. Words and story lines might be twist and turn, but in the end the knowledge of the story will be learned in similar ways. As we all know when one story is told another is created, when one is at its best then another is at its worse. One version will always be better than another, but no matter what version it might be the story will be told.

Cinderella is a fairytale for children that displayed love, loss and miracles; however, when it is further analyzed, it has a deeper meaning. Cinderella is a story about a young girl who became a servant in her own home after her father remarried a malicious woman with two spoiled daughters. She was humiliated and abused yet she remained gentle and kind. She received help from her fairy godmother to go to the prince’s ball after her stepmother rejected her proposal. Cinderella and the Prince fell madly in love but she had to leave at twelve o’clock and forgot to tell him her name but she left her glass slipper behind. He sent his servants to find her and Cinderella was the only maiden in the kingdom to fit into the shoes. She

With the power the step-mother has obtained, she utilizes it in order to oppress Cinderella as she is forced to become a maid within her own place of dwelling. For this reason, it causes Cinderella to become apart of an inferior level. Cinderella continues to stay passive and an inactive contributor within her life. Not resorting to the chance of rebelling or escaping the unfortunate situation. But even so, some may insist upon her attempting to break free as a form of escaping, yet she does not use it for instead she choses to wait in order to be saved. In view of that, Cinderella is presented as a goodhearted, but submissive character in need of rescuing. Above all, both the step-mother and Cinderella are seen as stereotypical characters. In fact the step-mother is showcased to hold great power, thus being a vision of dark evil ways. Much less, Cinderella and her character is not endowed with any power whatsoever, thus being looked upon as a good hearts and beautiful person inside and out. Accordingly this represents the message of female characters and power relationships between them. Being that those with power are seen as evil, while on the other hand those who have no power are meant to be good. Therefore a happy ending is give to those powerless, instead of female individuals with

When someone mentions the name “Cinderella”, the first thing that usually comes to our minds is the fairytale in which the fair maiden who works so hard yet it treated so poorly gains her “fairytale ending” with a wave of a magic wand. However, the fairytale of Cinderella written by the Grimm Brothers has multiple differences in plot from the fairytale we all usually think of. The plot of the Cinderella written by the Grimm Brothers, written in 1812, is that a young female’s mother passes away early in the story, departing with the message to Cinderella to remain “pious and good”. Cinderella remained true to this message given to her by her mother, and she showed this in her work ethic. Because Cinderella had remained pious and good, her mother, in return, watched over her in the form of the birds above her grave that gave Cinderella help and material things that she needed. In the end, Cinderella has her “happily ever after”, for when the prince held a festival to find a new bride, she was chosen due to her insurmountable beauty. The feminist lens critiques how females are commonly represented in texts, and how insufficient these representations are as a categorizing device. These representations of women often include them being passive and emotional—staying back while the men do the work. Cinderella relates to the feminist lens because she fits into the typical representations of women created by men. Feminist criticism is important to recognize because women are often falsely represented as helpless, thus needing a man to come to their rescue. It is common in literature to see helpless women, crying and begging for help instead of being able to work out their own problems and hardships. Others, however, may believe that it is still important to uphold the fundamentals of the feminist lens because it keeps the man in power, which they say is important in keeping the man the head of the household. Cinderella thoroughly represents the feminist lens because it shows how women in literature uphold the representations of passive and emotional, created by the man.

     When examining adaptations of fairytales you must look at the original source. This can be a very difficult task because with fairytales we never really know where the original came from. I will base my paper on the theory that the original tale of Cinderella comes from the Grimm Brothers version of Ashputtle. In comparison we will examine two movies. First there is the Disney version Cinderella. Secondly we will look at the movie 'Ever After'.

Despite gender, living conditions or cultural backgrounds most people grow up reading or hearing stories of heroism and damsel in distress scenarios. Anne Sexton turns stereotypes on their head in her satirical poems of classic fairy tales, including Snow White and The Seven Dwarves and Cinderella. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves tells the tale of a young princess with hair as black as coal and skin as pale as snow, whose life is thrown into turmoil at the hands of her overbearing stepmother. Cinderella tells the story of a young girl who she spends her life is yearning for the prince’s ball, and similar to Snow White, Cinderella’s stepmother is influencing her life, however she is a positive character throughout the story. This sheds light on the stepmother in Snow White’s piece as despite the fact that Snow White’s stepmother clearly does inherently evil things, a re-reading demands a re-examination of why. It is throughout these tales’ where stepmothers are only trying to protect their children from the world around them, however in Snow White an outside motive, the beauty provided by the mirror and the pride manifested by poison, creates a barrier between the queen and her stepdaughter, thus giving her the title “Evil”.