My second assignment was the exploratory essay. In this essay we were tasked with exploring, analyzing and researching one of the texts that we’ve read in Professor Voisard’s section: Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, or Cinderella. Our goal is to inform our audience about the text based around research that will include any of the critical essays that we have also read for class. It should also interpret, summarize, and synthesize ideas across the sources. This was my Final Draft for the Exploratory Essay.

Exploratory Essay :

Dark Side of Cinderella

As a kid, we all heard of or loved the movie Cinderella. So let’s recap on the story: A girl, Cinderella, lost both of her parents and was forced to live with her evil stepmother and stepsisters. She wants to go to the ball but isn’t granted permission. Her fairy godmother says that she can go but she needs to return at midnight. Cinderella goes to the ball and has an amazing time. She even meets her Prince Charming (I wish it was that easy to find love!). She loses track of time and leaves the ball at midnight, but as she’s leaving, she loses her glass slipper. The prince looks for her everywhere, and at the end of the film, they live happily ever after when Cinderella tries on the slipper. But do you know what happens in the original story? Just like the other Fairy tale stories the Cinderella story has some darker versions to it. That’s what I am going to talk about in this paper.

In the CCNY library source I came across a darker version of the story which was written by the Grimm brothers. The name of the book is The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm : The Complete First Edition. In this one, after her mother’s death, Cinderella’s dad marries another beautiful lady and brings her and her two daughters home. What happens next is the basis of the Disney version of the story, only this time, the father is alive and he’s spineless. After Aschenputtel (who is the Cinderella in this version) runs from the prince’s ball and leaves a slipper there, the prince goes to every house looking for her. When he reaches the protagonist’s home, the step-mother tells the elder step-daughter to cut off her toes for the shoe to fit. The prince believes she’s the one and they ride off towards the palace, but two doves from heaven tells the prince about the blood dripping from the girl’s foot. The prince goes back to the house and asks the other step-sister to try the slipper on. This one cuts off her heel and wears the slipper, while leaving, the doves warn the prince again. On his third visit, Aschenputtel’s father finally tells him they have a young kitchen-maid in the house. When she steps out, the Prince recognizes the beautiful girl from the ball and the slipper fits perfectly. Later, The two decide to get married, and on the day of the wedding, Aschenputtel walks down the aisle with her stepsisters as her bridesmaids. The biggest plot-twist here is that the doves fly down and strike the two stepsisters’ eyes, one in the left and the other in the right. That’s not all. When the ceremony is over, the killer doves strike the functioning eyes of the evil sisters again, rendering them blind.

“Cinderella,” as we know it, is experienced as a story about the agonies and hopes which form the essential content of sibling rivalry and about the degraded heroine winning out over her siblings who abused her. In Bettelheim’s Cinderella the author talks about the Grimm brothers’ interpretation of the “Cinderella” story. He says “ Brothers Grimm’s “Cinderella” as follows: an ill-treated heroine; her having to live by the hearth; the gift she asks of her father; the hazel branch she plants on her mother’s grave; the tasks demanded of the heroine; the animals which help her perform them; the mother, transformed into the tree Cinderella grew on her grave, who provides her with beautiful clothes; the meeting at the ball; and Cinderella’s threefold flight from it; her hiding first in a pigeon house and second in a pear tree, which are cut down by her father; the pitch trap and the lost shoe; the shoe test; the sisters’ mutilation of their feet and acceptance as (false) brides; the animals which reveal the deception; the happy marriage; the nemesis wreaked on the villain^.^’ My discussion of these story elements also includes some remarks on the better-known details.” Cinderella’s mistreatment as a consequence of sibling rivalry, the story’s main motif in its modern form, has already been dealt with. This is what makes the most immediate impact on the hearer and arouses his empathy. It leads him to identify with the heroine, and sets the stage for all that follows. He also mentions how dark the story gets when the step-siblings cut off pieces of their foot for the shoe to fit.

Now let’s talk about the outside interpretations and versions of the “Cinderella” story which will actually give you chills. Vietnam has one of the darkest variations of the fairytale and my god! Here the protagonist is called Tam and she’s ill-treated by her step-mother and step-sister. This one though, is a two-part revenge drama where the step-mother and step-sister stab Tam 4 times. But she comes back and boils her step-sister alive in front of her step-mother, the shock of which kills her.

Fairy tales are many people’s representation of their childhood, and they are being passed through generations. Even though these stories represent so much culture and folklore, one must take a different point of view and really look through the darker versions of the stories. Overall it is really important to learn about these interpretations of the popular tale. In one of these stories the step-mother tells the elder step-daughter to cut off her toes for the shoe to fit. The prince believes she’s the one and they ride off towards the palace, but two doves from heaven tell the prince about the blood dripping from the girl’s foot. These stories also teaches some important morals like for this one they teach us that deceiving will always come back to bite you