Cinderella
This is a story of a young woman named Cinderella. More specifically, it's about Cinderella's stepmother. Cinderella had the purest heart in the land, whereas her stepmother was wicked to the core. Her stepmother grew up in a poor household and became selfish in her suffering. Cinderella maintained her character, even when tragedy befell her family. At a young age, her mother passed away, and Cinderella wept beside her grave every day. The only piece of her mother Cinderella had left was a locket. Her father, a strong and thoughtful man, let himself be swayed by a greedy woman in his grief and remarried soon after Cinderella's mother died. Even though Cinderella felt swept under the rug by her father's hasty decision, Cinderella never complained.
The evil stepmother took over the house, as Cinderella's father frequently travelled for work. She began to embezzle money from her new husband and used her newfound wealth to clothe herself and her own daughters in the finest jewelry. She gave Cinderella the scraps of filthy garments to make into rags for clothes and forced her to do all the cooking and housework.
"Go, befriend the animals. They're the only ones who want you around here!" the stepmother would say. And so Cinderella did. Because she spent so much time in nature, Cinderella became attached to the outdoors and its creatures. There was one particular tree that Cinderella liked; she would sit under it for shade, and the animals would make their homes in it.
One day, the stepmother came home from shopping with an even more prideful and greedy expression than usual.
"My daughters, gather round! I have an announcement that will change our lives forever. The prince is requesting girls to come to his palace for a ball tonight. He wants to choose a wife, and if I have anything to do with it, he'll choose one of my girls!"
"Oh, friends," Cinderella said with a sigh to her animal company, "I wish to go to this ball to meet the prince. But my stepmother will never let me. And I have nothing to wear to such a fancy event. I wish there was something I could do!"
The animals, hearing her sorrow, longed to help. They began to hatch a plan. Cinderella, after begging her stepmother, resigned herself to work.
The stepsisters and stepmother spent hours preparing for the ball and left Cinderella alone with her chores. After they departed in a horse-drawn carriage, Cinderella ran outside, began to cry and threw herself under her favorite tree. As tears fell down her face, they collected at her mother's locket. A gold light began to shine from the locket, and the tree beside her came alive. From the scraps of clothes the animals collected (and a little magic touch) came a gold sparkling ballgown with crystal-clear heels.
Cinderella excitedly changed into her magical outfit and ran to meet Prince Charming. The belle of the ball, Cinderella was unrecognizable to her stepmother and stepsisters, who had only seen her in dirty scraps of clothing. After dancing with the prince all night, Cinderella hurried back home in order to make it back before her stepfamily. In her rush, one of her heels fell off of her foot, and the prince picked it up.
The next morning, the prince went to every maiden's house to have every girl try on the shoe. When the stepmother heard this news, she began to prepare. There was no way she would let this opportunity pass by when she had worked so hard to get her family to this point. Ushering over her daughters, the stepmother began to lecture them.
"My daughters, you know that I have given you everything you needed to be successful here. I've clawed my way up from the bottom of the social ladder to put you two in this position. While I was never able to be royalty myself..." the stepmother trailed off, thinking back to her own childhood. "I have given my all for you two to have the chances I never had. That's why I ask you to sacrifice your comfort now for the reward of the future. There's no way one of you won't end up as princess of this town."
Brandishing a knife, the stepmother sliced off the heel of one daughter and the pinky toe of the other. "That way, you'll fit in the slipper and become royalty!"
When the prince came to Cinderella's house, he noticed the blood-soaked stockings of the stepsisters and turned to leave. Right before exiting the house, he caught sight of Cinderella.
"Have you tried on this shoe?" he asked her, noticing her dirty clothes and worn expression.
"Oh, she didn't even go to the ball!" the stepmother interrupted. "There's no need!"
Cinderella, in a moment of boldness, walked up to the prince anyway and tried on the crystal shoe. As her foot slipped effortlessly into the shoe, the stepmother gasped.
"That's not possible...she's not fit to be royalty!" the stepmother exclaimed.
Immediately, the prince whisked Cinderella away and brought her to the castle. At the wedding, Cinderella's stepmother decided to attend to get on the good side of royalty. Cinderella's pure heart allowed her to forgive her father for being absent during her abuse.
On the other hand, the stepmother and her daughters were not apologetic for their actions, and their motives were impure. In the middle of the ceremony, a vulture swooped in from a nearby tree and pecked out an eye from each sister and the tongue of the stepmother. The vulture pecked out the sisters' eyes because they turned a blind eye toward their mother's treatment of Cinderella (and contributed to her mistreatment), and the vulture pecked out the mother's tongue because of her vile words. Cinderella's father left the evil stepmother and moved into a room in the castle.
While the stepmother and stepsisters lived mute and half-blind respectively, Cinderella and the prince lived happily ever after.
Author's Note: For this version of Cinderella, I wanted to incorporate the Grimm version and the Disney version that we hear about today. Here's a quick summary of the details in the Grimm version:
In the original story, Cinderella's father brings home jewels and expensive things to the stepmother's daughters as gifts, but Cinderella asks for a twig. In Grimm fairytales, nature is very symbolic of danger, refuge, and empowerment (nature-wilderness-symbol), so I wanted to portray that by making the tree Cinderella's "happy place" and the place she ran to for comfort. Cinderella plants this twig by her mother's grave and waters it with her tears, and it becomes a tree. This tree has a white bird visit it that grants Cinderella wishes. Cinderella's stepmother also makes Cinderella collect a bowl of lentils in exchange for attending the ball (the animals help), but then the stepmother leaves without holding up her end of the deal. In the story, Cinderella wishes for an outfit for the ball and the white bird throws down clothes for her; I decided to just use the tree in my version and add in the mother's locket instead of the bird. Cinderella also uses the tree in the Grimm story to climb away from the prince and elude him. Prince Charming also put down pitch to catch Cinderella's shoe, but the original story had multiple days of dancing for the ball, and I didn't feel like I had enough space for that. Pigeons also notice the stepsisters' bloody feet in the Grimm version.
For this story, I wanted to write about the character of Cinderella, but I also wanted to put an emphasis on the villain of the story: the stepmother. I tried to do that especially near the end of the story. I also had to omit some details to keep the story fairly concise, yet have it flow the way I wanted it to. I tried to keep the narration relatively similar to either the Grimm or Disney version of Cinderella (and I didn't add too many twists and turns because I felt that the twists in the Grimm version are shocking enough). So, I decided to just have one day of dancing. I added in the part about the vulture taking the mother's tongue because I thought it was a proper punishment for her rude words. I put in the tree giving Cinderella the outfit because I wanted to tie into the importance of nature within Grimm stories. I also added in the reasoning behind the bird's pecking to make it more specific than just being a punishment. I added in the father staying with Cinderella and her forgiving him as well.
- Here's the link for the Grimm version of Cinderella by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: grimmversion
- Image information: wikipedia.org/wiki. Image of Cinderella and the stepmother/stepsisters as the prince puts the heel on her foot. 1865
- Banner image information: wikipedia.org/. Image of Cinderella and the prince by Elena Ringo (1999). I chose this image for the banner because it was horizontal and showed Cinderella in the golden gown of the Grimm tales, rather than the blue one of the more modern version.
