The many Cinderellas...

Our Thursday discussion was all about Cinderella and the many different versions that our book covers. While the tale has many different endings, versions like the one written by the Grimm Brothers show just how dark fairy tales back then were, especially the ones coming out of Germany.

The story is quite different with each version, the tale by the Grimm Brothers has Cinderella appearing somewhat weak and as though she was too accepting of her mistreatment. It left me feeling as though the moral of the story was that good things will come to people even if they don't necessarily fight for it, a message I don't really agree with. Cinderella did seem very much in touch with nature in this tale, with trees and birds that helped her overcome the many hardships she was facing, as though she was naturally deserving.

The story by Charles Perrault was a little different, it started out with the mighty king losing his wife, which cunningly talked him into a deal that would certainly insure he would never remarry again, at least in her mind. As our class presenters pointed out, this tale really is based on the cunningness of women, and the many deceptions they play on the king. Even the fairy in the tale resorted almost entirely to deception instead of magic, apart from the chest she gave Donkey skin.

I generally enjoyed the version of the Grimm brothers a little more, maybe because this is the tale I remember from when I was a child. Every version we read had its strange parts however, and left our class discussion a bit dazzled at times, as the story really does get vague with certain details. I remember it took us quite some time to figure out if Cinderella was really the child of the father in the story by the Grimm Brothers, and as we found out she wasn't.

It was exciting to revisit the tale of Cinderella, and I'm interested to see what kind of criticism the book will bring up, as I feel that the tale does sometimes leave the reader a bit confused, whether its small details in the story, or the general moral we should get from the tale. I'll finish today's blog with a picture of Cinderella the way i remember her from when I was little. This was the cover to the original version by the Grimm brothers "Aschenputtel," I recognized the picture right away, German google image search to thank here...