Feminist Perspective On Cinderella

Disney’s Cinderella demonstrates that, whatever the intention of its makers, modern day fairy tales function in our society as hidden instructions for morals and behaviors that we give children. On the surface, it seems to be a simple story about a young woman whose wishes come true. However, the story also reflects cultural expectations of women’s behaviors and goals and defines expectations of “goodness” for women. Power belongs to men in “Cinderella”, and it is depicted as a female ambition and goal. The storyline describes the rise of the submissive haracter to becoming a Princess; she is portrayed as a passive character who waits for the Prince to come for her. While waiting for her Prince Charming she also bears the mistreatment from her stepmother and stepsisters. While masculine power is taken for granted in the figure of the Prince, becoming his wife is the only way women have to share this power. The

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

Throughout the story, the characterization is heavily influenced by gender roles and sexist stereotypes. The role of the stepmother and stepsisters is to solely use their power as a source of evil in order to bring down Cinderella, while Cinderella is depicted to be beautiful yet weak and

There also is another form of symbolism in this essay and that is Cinderella’s dress. This too provides magical powers so that the prince notices the immaculate beauty that Cinderella possesses. It is believed that the prince or Cinderella never actually confessed any love, but in the magical powers that the dress endows has the prince so enchanted that marrying Cinderella could only be the right choice. The author just simply wants the reader to grasp the fact that there really

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.

When I started analyzing Cinderella I noticed some gender roles/stereotypes that are brought to light. One of them being how women are the ones who stay home and perform household chores. They are “housewives” who depend on a man. The father is briefly in the beginning and afterwards we do not hear of him, initiating that he is off working, or on a business trip while the mom and daughters are home. We also see through Cinderella (who is forced to do all the chores) how their are consequences if she (or women) don’t complete or do the chores that are expected of them (like not being able to go to a ball in Cinderella's case). Another theme that is consistent in Cinderella as it is in other princess stories is the value of being beautiful. We see this when the fairy godmother shows up and makes Cinderella beautiful. She transforms her house clothes into a gown and so forth showing us that beauty is in the way you look or your appearance. If we pursue this theme further we see that the prince falls in love with Cinderella based on how she looks (love at first

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.

Cinderella is innocent just as the child, and this allows the child to not feel guilt about his jealous judgements towards siblings. Cinderella’s story helps the child realize how terrible things could be for them and to appreciate how lucky they are instead of looking at the negative side of their life.

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,

Cinderella held on to what her mother had told her and put up with everything her step- family was making her do. Cinderella always did what she was supposed to do, not once did she stop short of finishing or try to fight back. Cinderella kept her faith and believed that what her mother had told her was the truth and that life would get better. Eventually life did get better. By keeping her faith Cinderella was able to get all her chores done and get dressed for the ball, with the help from some creatures. If Cinderella wouldn’t have kept her faith she wouldn’t have dance with the prince and the prince wouldn’t have fallen in love with her. Cinderella wasn’t self-centered and believed if she was a good person she would be rewarded and in the end, she was able to live happily ever after with her prince. The exact opposite can be said about the step-sisters. The two sisters were awful people telling Cinderella to do their dirty work. When the prince came looking for the owner of the shoe the two girls would have done anything to fit the shoe. Anything is exactly what they did, one sister cut off her toe and another cut off her heel. The girls “hearts were foul and black” (Grimm 117), because of this they couldn’t have a truly happy life. In the end the two sisters had their eyes pecked out by birds. Cinderella found the deeper meaning to her life by being a self-less person and the sisters did not because of

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.

She did not leave her house; therefore, she did not have many friends to she could talk to or rely on to help her. She mainly socialized with her stepmother and stepsisters. Her stepmother enforced her gender role because she would order Cinderella to cook, clean and get her daughters ready. In addition, her stepsisters constantly reminded Cinderella that beauty was everything and they demonstrated this when they got ready to go out. Same sex siblings influence the younger sibling’s choices and actions a lot (Gender & Gender Identity). If they were not same sex siblings, Cinderella would have engaged in activities that are more masculine (Gender Role Development). She developed a female gender role because she had the stereotypical role in which a woman cooks, clean, sews, sings and obeys authority. This gravely affected her because she did not know a man’s characteristics since she was never around them. If Cinderella were around men more, she would have picked up on the things they do. Since the men at that time portrayed strength and chivalry, Cinderella might have been strong enough to fight back her stepmother. Gender roles carry on as the individual get older and they do the same chores outside their home; therefore, Cinderella is likely to display the same role at her husband’s house. This might result in a problem because the Prince has his own servant and Cinderella will have to adjust to commanding other