Colette Dowling's The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independency

“Going up in the World: Class in ‘Cinderella’” is a scholarly article written by Elisabeth Panttaja that analyzes the roles of the mothers and the importance of class within these times. Panttaja focuses her article on the Grimm version, which is most famously critiqued and discussed. The article analyzes the importance of the mothers, which leads to the overall concept that the natural mother’s role seems irrelevant, yet Cinderella’s entire destiny is based upon her. The mother’s also show similar goals: get their daughter(s) married into power. Cinderella wins this battle, however, for she is the “true bride.”

Have you ever wondered if there were other versions of Cinderella? Well there are, there isn’t just one version of Cinderella. Each version is a little bit different from each story because of the culture behind it. For example the “Cinderella” we know and love and the Ireland version the “Cinderlad”.The two cinderella stories, “Cinderlad” the Irish version and “Cinderella” the French version have both differences and similarities. Using the Motif “Damsel in distress” I can show that they are different & similar because of the culture they originated from and their social necessities.

Cinderella discovers at one point in the story the king is giving a festival to find his son a bride. Her stepmother tells her she can go if she picks out all the lentils that they threw in the fireplace. Cinderella agrees and calls to all the birds under heaven that come and help her with her task. Yet no matter what she did, her stepmother had no intentions of letting her go to the festival. After the others leave, Cinderella weeps on her

This is a battle not of beauty, but of material. The prince does not recognize the face of Cinderella, only the gown she is wearing, making this fight for marriage one based on the clothing on the girls’ backs (288). While Cinderella comes home from the ball, her mother is hard at work making sure she is not seen for who she really is. Panttaja claims, “...it is quite possible that we are meant to see the mother's influence also at work in the rather mysterious way that Cinderella manages to avoid too-early detection” (287). This symbolizes how hard Cinderella's mother is working and how little it matters that Cinderella is pious and

The Disney version of the story, Cinderella, illustrates a different moral than that of the original story. This story believes an ideal child should do what they are told and follow directions and in the end they will reap the rewards. In this story, Cinderella’s mother dies and her father remarries to a woman who has two daughters. While the daughters are pampered, Cinderella must work to keep the house from falling into disrepair. She befriends the animals and they help her to get ready to go to the ball by finishing her chores and making her a dress. When the evil stepsisters discover the dress they become furious because the mice used trimming from their clothing when making the dress. In revenge, the stepsisters rip the dress, leaving Cinderella out of options and out of hope. Just as Cinderella is about to give up, her fairy godmother appears and with a wave of magic creates a dress and turns a pumpkin and the mice into a horse and carriage. The only problem is that everything will turn back to what it was beforehand at midnight. Cinderella and the Prince fall in love at the ball but she must quickly leave because the

The Grimm Brothers version of Cinderella is a written down oral story that people passed down from generation to generation, meant to teach a lesson about piety and good behavior. Before the Grimm Brothers ever wrote it down, the story had been told several times by memory. It is thus not surprising that the descriptions of certain events in the story, such as the way Cinderella went to the Ball, are lacking in details. It is obvious that these parts of the story are unimportant to the overall message of the story. Instead, it focuses on the piety of Cinderella and the wickedness of the step-sisters. Through the events of the story, it becomes obvious that the goodness of Cinderella is justly rewarded, and that

However, her true beauty lies within her skin, as Perrault’s interprets Cinderella as “a hundred times more handsome than her sisters”. He aims to focus more on female recognition and self-fulfillment, rather than provide a base for all readers to understand fully (Hühn). At an elementary level, this may not influence children to an extent, but other stories that reproduce this same structure of plot elements could possibly influence children in the future. For instance, she was not the hero of the story. The Prince isn’t the hero until he discovers her lost possession, a glass slipper, and searched for the person that fits. As told by Perrault, “he had done nothing but look at her all the time, and that most certainly he was very much in love with the beautiful owner of the glass slipper.” This enforces the fact that her beauty prevails over her actual personality but not behavior, and the appearance and mannerisms surely impressed the Prince.

Jane Yolen discusses the variations in Cinderella throughout history in America’s “Cinderella” Yolen began a career in publications as an editor and later became a professional writer, winning numerous awards and publishing over seventy novels. Yolen observes that the European Cinderella and the Asian Cinderella possess more strength than the helpless modern Cinderella. She attributes this evolution to cultural incorporations and mass market’s reproductions of the tale. American interpretations of Cinderella result in a lasting change to a dependent heroine. Yolen reveals many people are familiar with the changed Cinderella and not the former Cinderella. In Jane Yolen’s essay, America’s “Cinderella”, she denounces the debasement of women in today’s society by comparing the past Cinderella to modern Cinderella, characterizing Cinderella as reliant, and criticizing the example of Walt Disney’s Cinderella.

In some instances, Cinderella’s behaviour in Perrault’s tale display characteristics that are alike to a modern western woman, today. On the first night of the Ball, the fairy godmother struggles to find something turn into a coachman. Then Cinderella suggests to transform the “...rate in the rat trap...into a coachman” (Perrault). This act reveals that Cinderella is capable of solving problems individually (Robbins, 107); a quality of a modern western woman. In addition, Cinderella demonstrates intelligence when the step sisters talk to Cinderella after returning from the first night of the Ball (Robbins, 107). Cinderella pretends to be sleepy by “...rubbing her eyes and stretching...” (Perrault) when the step sisters visit Cinderella’s room, after returning from the first night of the ball. By pretending to be sleepy, the step sisters assume that Cinderella did not attend the Ball. The step sisters tell Cinderella that a “finest princess” (Perrault) came to the Ball, however, when Cinderella inquires about the unknown princess name, the step sisters state that they did not know. Also, the step sisters tell Cinderella that the prince “would give all the world to know who...” (Perrault) is the unknown princess. This way Cinderella slyly and confidently interrogates the step

Elizabeth Pantajja made us realize the things that we fail to see about Cinderella’s true character. Pantajja provides evidence and used quotations to influence the reader’s perception. She also captured the readers mind by questioning Cinderella’s morality and love doesn’t exist in her story. Panttaja effectively uses pathos in describing Cinderella’s “alleged” romantic love with the prince. (Panttaja, 1993, p. 646) While

However, this is not the case in Perrault’s version of Cinderella. In Perrault’s version there are no doves sent by Cinderella’s late mother, but rather Cinderella has a fairy godmother who uses her magic to help Cinderella attend the ball. The fairy godmother turns a pumpkin into a coach, mice into horses, a rat into a coachman, lizards into footmen, and her old rags into a dress of gold and silver and warns Cinderella that the spell will break at midnight and everything will turn back as it once was. Similarly, when Cinderella enters the ball she meets the prince and they dance while her stepmother and sister do not recognize her. However, in Perrault’s version

Cinderella's story began with her mother being really sick in the brink of death. As Cinderella's mother was about to die her mother told Cinderella that she will always keep an eye on her, and will always be Cinderella's guardian and will always protect Cinderella. Also, her mother told Cinderella to always be good and pious. Immediately after that Cinderella's mother passed away. As a result, all of a sudden an unfortunate event took place in Cinderella's life and that was the appearance of an evil stepmother that Cinderella's father married.

Fairytales are usually shown as stories where no one ever gets hurt, and dreams always come true. The original story of “Cinderella” defies this stereotype, and shows true punishment to those who hurt others. Cinderella is a girl who always remains a good and kind person even though her stepsisters are always mean to her. Cinderella goes to a ball against her stepmother’s instructions, and she meets a prince who falls in love with her. The prince later marries her, while the stepsisters are punished for their cruelty to Cinderella.

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

In order to be able to understand Snow White’s text one must first look at the relationship between Cinderella and her stepmother in Cinderella.