Cinderella: The Stolen Identity

2 Dec 2002 Cinderella: The Stolen Identity
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/96814

Ask a class of students which is their favorite story, after a few minutes of hand-waving and jabbering, the consensus may be Cinderella. Universally appealing, the name appears frequently in romance novels and the perennial film industry with the boy-meets-girl happily-ever-after ending. Is that all there is?

The frosting on the cake may attract the surreptitious fingers of a passerby or five-year old, but not satisfy the appetite of a mature person without making them ill. How much of the story is actually devoted to the boy-girl meeting? Not much in comparison to the hardship and the trials that she goes through. Looking deeper, there are reasons why the reader identifies and sympathises with Cinderella and why the story is a favorite.

A brief look into the Grimm biography reveals that the boys were members of a large, but impecunious family of six children when their father died unexpectedly in 1796, leaving them with no place to live and no income for survival. The story of Cinderella opens with the deciding crisis that shapes her character and fate. Her mother calls the child to her deathbed with the exhortation:

"Dear child, be pious and good, and God will always take care of you, and I will look down upon you from heaven, and will be with you."

(Grimms' Fairy Tales, Wordsworth Edition, c 1993 ISBN 1-85326-101-7)

Certainly, the Grimm brothers knew of hardships and tests that confronted them as they struggled to assist their mother in keeping their family alive and together, as well as supporting themselves early on. Certainly, they disdained the ways ill-gotten gain and defended the spirit of German nationalism against the invading Napoleonic imperialism. The story is based clearly upon their own personal values and principles, presenting allegory that can be interpreted several ways. Central to the story is the injustice of stolen identity: an ursurped rightful social position by invasive and abusive authoritarian control. Within a short time of the mother's death, winter descends, covering the world in white. A few months later, the father took a new wife. Perfidious behaviour in a world of strict religious observations, for not even a year has passed since his wife's death.

The symbols are clear as Cinderella enters the winter of her young life. Although the daughter of a wealthy man, she lives with deprivation-- her rightful position as heiress is ursurped. A plot good for the newspaper columns of bungled murders as greedy conspirators prey on rich heiresses, but frequently get caught in the mayhem of the legal courts disposing properties of the deceased. The father, a merchant, becomes absent and negligent in his obligations to Cinderella. Turning a blind eye, he appeases the new mistress of his life.

Upon departure to a fair, he inquires of the stepsisters what gifts they desire. Their values are superficial, fine clothes and jewels that decorate the external appearance; but Cinderella requests the first twig of a tree that brushes against his hat upon his return-- which happened to be a hazel-twig.

Thanking her father for the present, Cinderella honors her mother's memory by planting it upon her grave, "weeping so bitterly that the tears fell upon it and watered it, and it flourished ..."

The negligent father and the faithful daughter are contrasted through the tree. Although hyperbole to claim a fine tree flourished from her tears, the figure is allegorical, not literal. Representing the tree of life with its branches reaching up into the heavens toward God and its roots descending into the underworld and the unknown, Cinderella seeks her reward elsewhere in a different sphere, She has no time to be concerned with the worldly things of life for they have been injustly stripped from her. This reflects the Grimm brothers themselves, suddenly deprived of the security of their father's civilian employment. Entering a hostile world of Napoleonic autoritanism, the brothers collected German folklore, engaging in intellectual pursuits to escape the harsh realities of their poverty and political oppression. Dispossessed of physical and financial wealth, the brothers became rich in enlightenment and faithful to their father's memory in caring for their extended family.

Dispossessed, Cinderella turns inward, seeking for internal liberty that comes only in spiritual enlightenment. She endures the dehumanization and debasement of her dominating step-family. We sympathise, having known the abusive boss who makes demands arbitrarily or drops excessive work unpredictably and then later boasts of his efficiency to his other colleagues. He takes the credit where there is none and deliberately shuts out any suggestion that his subordinates have toed the line and saved his neck more than a few times. A universal complaint-- of overworked nurses, covering for the absentee doctors that arrive just an hour too late after the patient has died, or the underseaman, taking the blame when the superior has clearly not checked the periscope depth before making the ultimate decision that splits a trawler in half. The sisters take

reward, hoarding it unjustly; touting a clean house while ridiculing the servant that lives in their midst. Deprived of her rightful position, Cinderella has nowhere but down to go, finding contentment in simple things that remind her of a better existence.

Yet, when we pass the beggar on the street, do we consider his existence ? Hurried, like the father, we dare not look closely, for we might find his misfortune disconcerting. So much easier to judge the person from his social position and clothes, rather than investigate the cause of penury. A famous beggar in Vienna, was once a celebrated cellist seeking asylum in the United States; but with the loss of his position and unfit for other work, he ended on the streets-- dirty, disoriented and dreaming of different times and different worlds when his life was filled with music.

Cinderella Romance Novels
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/cinder/Main.htm
by Erin McCrossan
Undergraduate Research Internship summer project 2002 at University of Rochester. includes essay regarding the Cinderella theme in popular romance novels, popular romance bibliography and cover art displaying Cinderella themes.