Research on the Cinderella Folk Tale
by Jennisen Lucas
Baring, Anne. "Cinderella: An Interpretation." Psyche's Stories: Modern Jungian Interpretations of Fairy Tales. Ed. Stein, Murray and Lionel Corbett. Wilmette, Illinois: Chiron Publications, 1991: 49-64.
Baring claims that Cinderella is a member of mystical wisdom tradition. (52) In an elaborate comparison of the Cinderella story to many ancient myths, she creates an entomology of the name Cinderella (55), linking it to light, the moon, and fire.
Bartsch, Wilhelm. "Aschenputtel and Cinderella: Brothers Grimm vs. Walt Disney." Annual of Foreign Films and Literature 2 (1996): 31-42.
This article begins with a comparison between Perrault, Grimm and Disney approaches to Cinderella. Then Bartsch focuses on the differences between the Grimm version he is familiar with from childhood and the Disney adaptation of the tale. He comments that the Grimm version offers a moral message, while Disney provides a social one. This, I believe, comes from the Perrault story on which Disney's version is based. Claiming that Disney presents "a modern fairy tale which reflects on everyday American life" (39), he points out that Cinderella never tries on the slipper the prince found. She pulls out her own slipper, declaring herself the Prince's bride by fitting her own shoe.
Chambers, Veronica. "The Myth of Cinderella." Newsweek 3 November 1997: 75-78.
Disney's new version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella tells a new version of the famous tale when they cast Brandy as a black Cinderella, Whitney Houston as her fairy godmother, and Prince Charming as Filipino Paolo Montalban, son to Whoopi Goldberg and Victor Garber (a black queen and white king). This multicultural version adds new questions about the myth of Cinderella, but it also asks questions about multiculturalism and interracial marriage. In the traditional story, Cinderella wants to be treated as a princess. In this version, Cinderella wants to be treated as a person, with respect.
Cowen, Roy C. "Cinderella As a Comedy: Christian Dietrich Grabbe'sAschenbrodel." Thematics Reconsidered. Ed. Frank Trommler. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995: 177-186. (ISBN 9051837879)
Cowen's article compares Grabbe's72 page play with other versions of Cinderella's story. Grabbe introduces a Jewish money lender to the story to emphasize the money conflict in the story. Cowen also mentions how, in many stories, Cinderella is ahistorical. She could be anyone because she is rarely supplied with a name of her own.
Cox, Marian Roalfe.Cinderella: Three Hundred and Forty-Five Variants. 1892. Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint Limited, 1967.
Perhaps the most comprehensive single volume work on Cinderella variations, this collection of information of 345 variants of the folk tale contains story outlines for each variant in addition to notes on each. Cox sorts the stories in an elaborate categorization that allows the researcher to recognize five distinct types of Cinderella story: A) Cinderella: the ill-treated heroine who is recognized by fitting the shoe, B) Cat-skin: the unnatural father who causes the heroine to flee, C) Cap O'Rushes: the King Lear/ outcast daughter variation, D) Indeterminant: containing characterizations of several of the other four categories, and E) Hero tales: usually the cinderlad stories, but also including the Russian Baba Yaga. This is an excellent resource for the serious researcher of Cinderella, but it may be too detailed for a casual researcher.
Dundes, Alan, ed. Cinderella: A Casebook. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982.
Dundes collection begins with a telling of three famous versions of the story: "The Cat Cinderella" by GiambattistaBasile, Charles Perrault's "Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper," and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's "Ash Girl (Aschenputtel)." Following these stories are several essays spanning a century of research on this folk tale. The essays cover such topics as the early theories of the tale's origin, meaning, and structure within the stories. "This volume is dedicated to all those who find in the story of Cinderella one of the time-tested facets of the human spirit." (xi) This casebook is an excellent resource for embarking upon a study of this most famous of fairy tales.
Franklin, Melinda L. "Ellen at the Ball: Ellen Foster as a Cinderella Tale." Alan Review 23 (Fall 1995): 16-17.
Melinda Franklin compares Kay Gibbons' Ellen Foster with the Charles Perrault Cinderella in a motif-by-motif comparison.
Gough, John. "Rivalry, Rejection and Recovery: Variations of the Cinderella Story." Children's Literature in Education 21 (June 1990): 99-107.
John Gough describes the heart of a Cinderella story as "loss of 'fortune,' struggle to survive, and eventual victory and restitution." (103) With this in mind, he examines several other works of children's literature as variations on Cinderella themes. Some of the works he includes are Frances Hodges Burnett's stories, Rudyard Kipling's Captains Courageous, Judy Blume'sIt's Not the End of the World, and several others.
Greene, Ellin. "Literary Uses of Traditional Themes: From 'Cinderella' to The Girl Who Sat By the Ashes and The Glass Slipper." Children's Literature Association Quarterly 11 (Fall 1986): 128-132.
In this article, Greene compares Eleanor Farjeon's The Glass Slipper and Padraic Colum's The Girl Who Sat By the Ashes as two different versions of the Cinderella story. She compares each story to Cinderella using the plot and the motifs. Padraic Colum's story uses many different motifs from many of the Cinderella variations: fetching fire, the star on the forehead, Tattercoats, etc.
Jewett, Julia. "Alluleirauh (All-Kinds-of-Fur) A Tale of Father Dominace, Psychological Incest, and Female Emergence." Psyche's Stories: Modern Jungian Interpretations of Fairy Tales. Wilmette, Illinois: Chiron Publications, 1991: 17-26.
Jewett cites the Cinderella variations in which the daughter runs away from an unnatural relationship with her father as showing a positive way to overcome dealing with psychological incest. The character who runs away first denies her family, then experiences a period of "aloneness" before gradually allowing herself to be healed in a healthy heterosexual relationship.
Kelley, Karol. "A Modern Cinderella." Journal of American Culture 17 (Spring 1994): 87-92.
This article attempts to establish the movie Pretty Woman, starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, as a Cinderella adaptation by comparing it with Charles Perrault's tale and the Disney adaptation. Kelley claims that Perrault uses the story to define gender roles in a social environment. (88) Both Disney's Cinderella and Pretty Woman follow this idea by presenting situations in which men have power, station and wealth while women work hard, suffer, and endure until a man chooses to save them. In many versions of the story, Cinderella's father is present, but powerless next to his stepmother. Disney's stepmother doesn't show her true nature until after the father's death, allowing us to suppose that he still held power in the relationship. Vivian's dependence on men in Pretty Woman is enhanced by her "fairy godfather" figure, Barney.
Rockey, Denyse. "Three Faces of the Great Goddess: Shulamite, Cinderella, Black Virgin." Annual Review of Women in World Religions 1 (1991): 31-70.
Stepping back into the realm of Cinderella as mythology, Rockey suggests the well-known fairy tale may have early counterparts in Biblical stories. This article contains an interesting comparison between the Bride from The Song of Songs in the Old Testament, the Virgin in the cult of the Black Virgin, and Cinderella. All three are blackened, either with dark skin or covered with ashes, and yet, all three are radiant and transcendant of their status: "Lowly, she is black, but beautiful: redeemed, she is black and beautiful." (51). In all three cases, the woman transcends her early common stage by marriage to a higher power. Shulamite (Song of Songs) weds above her station, the Virgin Mary becomes the bride of God and the Mother of Christ, and Cinderella, too, marries a prince.
Saxby, Maurice. "Six Hundred Cinderellas." Through Folklore to Literature ed. Maurice Saxby. Sydney, Australia: IBBX Publications, 1979: 73-86.
According to Saxby, "literature .is the ordering and interpretation of universal human experience." (77) He identifies six motifs surrounding the various Cinderella variations: 1) Sibling rivalry; 2) Hearth as center of home and symbol of mother; 3) Heroine must flee unnatural love relationship with her father (in older versions); 4) The ball allows the heroine to display her true nature; 5) Stepsisters mutilate their feet attempting to fit the sexual stereotype surrounding small feet; and 6) Only in Charles Perrault variations do the stepsisters go unpunished for their behavior.
Shapiro, Laura. "When the Shoe Fits." Newsweek 3 November 1997: 77.
In an essay sparked by the new Disney version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, Shapiro comments on the All-American Girl image of the 1950s Cinderella and her association with June Cleaver. She explores the ideas of why Cinderella is still so popular in a feminist age, concluding that as a story of rescue, it will never be out of date, but Cinderella should no longer be a role model upon which women base their lives.
Trousdale, Ann M. "My Cinderella: An Autobiographical Essay." Sitting at the Feet of the Past: Retelling the North American Folk Tale for Children. Ed. Gary D. Schmidt and Donald R. Hettinga. Westport, CT: Greenwood press, 1992: 33-38.
In the Indian Cinderella, Trousdale finds a Cinderella "who lived in her isolation with what dignity she could muster and who kept her suffering to herself." She "had learned the value of truthfulness and not to compromise the truth.The rejected maiden who yet dared to hope that the great Strong Wind might find her worthy, scarred and ragged as she was." (35) A Caucasian American from the South, Trousdale recognizes the universal truth in the Native American tale and adopts it as her own story based upon these universal truths. This article is her claim to the story based upon a common humanity, if not a common culture.
Wood, Naomi. "Domesticating Dreams in Walt Disney's Cinderella." The Lion and the Unicorn 20 (June 1996): 25-49.
Like it or not, Walt Disney's popular version of Cinderella's story has become the "real" story to most children and adults in the United States. Naomi Wood takes this idea to the academic field in a criticism of Disney's adaptation. She states that "the goal of Disney's animation is 'realism'.that relates implicitly to the vision of dream 'reality' that Cinderella exemplifies." (27) She discusses the way that Disney presents these dreams, domesticity, wish-fulfillment, and purity through the use of the main story and the addition of side stories, such as the cat-and-mice relationship.