Cinderella as a Text of Culture

It is impossible to think of Cinderella without thinking of the 1950 Walt Disney animation film and the timeless images we’ve all grown up watching. In any case the 2015 Disney release of Cinderella proved how durable the story is. Even a director such as Kenneth Branagh couldn’t resist the appeal of this quintessential fairy tale. The live-action Disney remake of Cinderella boasts an exceptional cast starring celebrated stage and screen icons as well as and raising stars tapped from today’s best television.

Even if you have miss this last version of Cinderella, I am sure all of you would have at least once in your life watched one of the many audiovisual versions of the tale  produced for the tv and cinema.

But was Cinderella originally created for the screen?

Cinderella belongs to the literary genre of fairy tales. In such a field the autorship of the tale is likely to turn into a debatable point when you consider the rich oral traditon behind it, the issue of text and illustrations and the relationships to its many other different versions. As regards the many existent Cinderella fairy tales, three written texts particularly, are to be taken into account for the making of this well-known story: Giambattista Basile’s “La Gatta Cenerentola”, Charles Perault’s “Cendrillon ou La Petite Pantouffle de Verre” and the brothers Grimm’s “Aschenputtel”. Accordingly, the majority of the subsequent authors, who reworked the tale of Cinderella, credited the above- mentioned texts as their basis. The three texts present both affinities and differences among them but they equally include some patterns, symbols and values that ensured the fortune of such a fictional character through time and space. There are countless of children as well as adult version of the Cinderella sort of story that can be  found throughout lots of different regions, as well as in different time periods (Anklet for a princess: a Cinderella story from India, Sootface: an Ojibwa Cinderella story, Cinderella an Islamic fairytale, Gioacchino Rossini’s Cenerentola, ossia La Bontà in trionfo, Sergej Prokof’ev’s Cinderella, Roberto Innocenti’s Cinderella etc..). The fact that this fairytale has also been reworked for ballet, opera, television and cinema (Gioacchino Rossini’s Cenerentola, ossia La Bontà in trionfo, Sergej Prokof’ev’s Cinderella, Pretty Woman, Ever After: A Cinderella story, A Cinderella Story etc…) also shows the passing on of the character of Chinderella throughout different textual genres indifferently .

Where then does the appeal of the Cinderella tale really lie?

A series of key-elements can be eventually considered to give explanation for the extraordinary amount of versions, translations and rewriting of Cinderella. Lots of issues are dealt with in this particular tale; issues that in the last analysis, reveal  themselves as being at bottom of Western world culture. Class, gender, expected behavior are mixed together within the text. But it treats the issue of family as well. All these aspects make it a fundamental text, by which investigating some of the conflicts inherent within our Western world. And this is exactly the use that lots of storytellers made of Cinderella.

Briefly, Cinderella is the story of a girl, whose life changes when her widower father remarries a cruel women, who dislikes her.  The new stepmother and her daughters mistreat Cinderella, turning her into a servant in her own house soon after her father’s death. The heroine, is put through the wringer, but after some key events to the framework of the story (the ball, the loss of the slipper and the related shoe-test episode)- and due to the aid form some natural or supernatural beings (animals, plants, the fairy godmother or the death mother’s spirit), she gains back a rightful and suitable place to her character, merits and birth.

The story, as it has just been roughly drawn, contains all the issue named before. Even though details might change among the diverse Cinderellas presented, the presence of the basic motifs is recorded anyway. 

As regards the class standing, the heroine regularly moves from a higher to a lower position and vice versa, providing evidence of the importance of one’s social background, as well as showing rights and duties expected of everyone according to that: Cinderella isn’t worth to attend the snooty happening because of the situation of social inferiority she is trapped in, but disobeying her master’s order, she manages to go there and at last she gets married to a wealthy man, once her real high class status has been revealed and restored.

In connection with that subject, wealth is also broached throughout Cinderella’s stories. The heroine can’t take part in the event, not only because of her lowered class status, but also because she doesn’t own the requested goods to do so. It’s not without reason that some scholars recognized clues of capitalism within the text, owing to its stress on material goods and money as fundamental values in Western societies.

Outward appearance is another basic point dealt with in Cinderella. Beauty is actually one of the heroine’s most important characteristics, and it is often compared with her stepsisters’ ugliness. The worth of beauty is also plain within the text, since the female triumph in the desired male’s heart is due most of the time to the woman being all dressed-up and so even more attractive to the man’s gaze. The spread of dominant standards of beauty set upon females by society could be easily pointed out within the text.

This particular aspect allow to introduce the gender issue, that is unavoidably touched in the tale. In effect  Cinderella has always been seen as the prototype of femininity. Being mostly depicted as gorgeous, good-hearted and subservient, numerous interpretations have been made as to the fact that most  Cinderella tales present a male-dominated point of view on society. The housekeeping, that is constantly delegated to such a female protagonist, together with the accent that the story puts on the meaning of marriage in a girl’s life, strengthen the gender conflict. However, not all Cinderella figures have been depicted as being passive and completely subject to other people’s will. A lot of stories present a proactive sort of heroine who tries to help herself rather than remain helpless. This point paves the way to consider the contrast between vitality and inertness inherent to the Cinderella text.  

As a final point, family dynamics are a central component of the story. The traditional character of Cinderella is commonly associated with a orphan daughter, both neglected by her father and ill-treated by her new step-mother. Parent-child relationships are absolutely central to the story itself, as well as those concerning the bond of sisterhood, that in most of the texts becomes a bitter rivalry between Cinderella and her step-sisters.

The above-indicated aspects, are more or less latent within the varied Cinderellas presented, with copious changes in them according to the case.

To sum up, the contrast between the acceptance of femininity as imposed by men and its refuse by the woman who is in search of a personal definition of self becomes the focus of attention of Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman. The complex mother-daughter relationships emerge as being the dominant factor of Angela Carter’s “Ashenputtle or the mother’s ghost”, the class boundaries are an important subject matter throughout the brothers Grimm’s text. In addition, the good-behavior as quality of every aspiring lady-to be is visible in Perrault’s Cendrillon, as well as the stress on the heroine’s great beauty in Disney’s film recreation of the tale. The contrast passiveness-liveliness is a core attribute of Basile’s La Gatta Cenerentola as the pained sexuality constitutes the main topic of the various male Cinderellas in the examples of GLBTQ literature available.

All things considered, Cinderella lent herself to a number of different interpretations. It is exactly the pliability of Cinderella sort of story, her being a combination of relevant aspects that fascinated compilers, storytellers, writers, directors and composers, who met with the text, each reflecting his/her own inclinations. As a result, generations of readers/watchers have been enchanted by such a miscellany of texts.

Image Credit:

Cinderella 1950, Cinderella 2015 taken from Google Images