She makes no decisions of her own – all the important parts of the plot are the results of other characters’ actions – she doesn’t develop as a character and doesn’t have any weaknesses that hold her back, as her refusal to stand up to her stepfamily was – at the time – seen as a sign of her inherent goodness. However, there’s not much to her as a character apart from this – her love life is so integral to her trajectory through the story that it’s impossible to describe her role in the story properly without referencing it. She’s consistently portrayed as a kind, sweet, good-hearted and obedient girl, and this remains the case through most of the story. She does what she’s told all the time, even when it isn’t in her own best interests, and has no goals, beliefs or hobbies mentioned in the original text. Cinderella is a central character, but she’s very passive even though the story revolves around her she does very little. This version of the story – rather than the more gruesome tale by the Brothers Grimm, where people chop off bits of their own feet – is the basis for most of the modern Cinderella adaptations. Let’s get started – but watch out for spoilers! I’ve chosen six variations on the Cinderella story and I’ll be seeing how each measures up to my Strong Female Characters test. Cinderella in the popular consciousness isn’t necessarily the Cinderella belonging to any one version of the story – she’s an amalgamation of thousands of different tales.īut I’m not going to look at all of them. Like Mina Harker, Cinderella has been portrayed in so many books, movies, TV shows, operas, musicals and Saturday morning cartoon shows that all the variations of the character tend to blur into one. The version that is most commonly known these days is a variation on Charles Perrault’s tale, but the story has been adapted so many times that even this may not give a truly accurate representation of her character. There’s a version from Zimbabwe where the Prince Charming character – in this case, the King of Zimbabwe – can turn into a magical talking snake, and this is how he and the heroine meet. There’s a version in Native American Algonquin folklore where the heroine’s face is burned by her two stepsisters, and her Prince Charming is a supernatural chieftain who restores her beauty. There’s a version in Chinese folklore where Ye Xian – our Cinderella character – prays to the bones of a dead fish instead of waiting for her fairy godmother. The earliest version can be traced back to the Ancient Greeks, where a courtesan winds up marrying a king when he finds her shoe. What’s really interesting about Cinderella as a story is that almost every single civilisation has had a variation on the tale. This story is a staple of literature all around the world. The prince declares he will marry the girl whose foot fits the shoe, finds Cinderella again, and they get married and live happily ever after. There, she meets and falls in love with a prince who clearly has a thing for feet, as when she leaves at the stroke of midnight and leaves behind a shoe, he decides to keep it. Good, kind, sweet Cinderella would be doomed to a life of eternal scrubbing if it were not for her fairy godmother, who whisks her away to a royal ball. For those of you that don’t know, Cinderella is the story of a beleaguered young girl forced into servitude by her stepfamily.
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