Understanding the Inner Story of Cinderella

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Understanding the Inner Story of Cinderella
Cinderella is a well-known fairy tale among children, but what few people know is that it is a story whose theme may be traced in antiquity. The Cinderella theme refers to a young woman forced to live in unfortunate circumstances. Such theme existed as early as the Ancient Greeks, but the most popular version was made by Charles Perrault who added the pumpkin, the fairy god mother and the glass slippers in the story. This was also the same version used as basis for the Walt Disney film. For this paper, however, we will explore the Cinderella story written by the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm wherein the help comes not from a fairy, but instead on a wishing tree that grows on the grave of the girl`s mother. Through this analysis, it is my aim to show that the Grimm`s Cinderella had spiritual symbolism and that it contains valuable information about man and suffering.
Summary of Grimms` Cinderella
The Grimms` Cinderella follows a pattern. Samuel A. Fohr gives light to the episodes:
* A girls` mother dies. (b) Her father remarries a woman with one or two daughters. (c) The stepmother treats the girl poorly, confining her to the hearth and giving her impossible tasks. (d) The girl asks her father to bring back a certain gift when he goes on his travels. (e) The gift, usually a twig or a tree, is planted, often on the mother`s grave. (f) The twig, watered by the girl`s tears grows into a wish fulfilling tree. (g) The girl is able to go to a prince`s ball with clothes provided by the tree. (h) The girl runaway from the ball three time, and the last time leaving a gold shoe. (i) The prince looks for the maiden who fits the shoe and finds the firl. (j) The sisters or sister and mother, are punished. ADDIN Mendeley Citation{25d0d006-310e-4788-9215-60f2db4cc1c6} CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "author" : [ { "family" : "Fohr", "given" : "Samuel D." } ], "id" : "ITEM-1", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2004" ] ] }, "publisher" : "Sophia Perennis", "publisher-place" : "Hillsdale", "title" : "Cinderella's Gold Slipper", "type" : "book" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=25d0d006-310e-4788-9215-60f2db4cc1c6" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "manualFormatting" : "(Fohr 88)", "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Fohr)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" } (Fohr 88)
Analyzing the story
Folklore and fairytales are bearers of tradition, they "fabricate a personal identity and social role for [tradition]" ADDIN Mendeley Citation{3d9a9f43-dc7e-49c2-961f-7eef1c199d7b} CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "author" : [ { "family" : "Jones", "given" : "Michael Owen" } ], "container-title" : "Western Folklore", "id" : "ITEM-1", "issue" : "2", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2000" ] ] }, "page" : "115-141", "title" : "\"Tradition\" in identity discourses and an individual's symbolic construction of self", "type" : "article-journal", "volume" : "59" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=3d9a9f43-dc7e-49c2-961f-7eef1c199d7b" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "manualFormatting" : "(Jones 116)", "previouslyFor...