Cinderella --- German Fairy Tales (5)

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The story in a nutshell: A widower with a daughter marries again. The step-mother and the two daughters she has brought with her treat the girl like dirt and make her do the basest jobs in the household. She has to sleep by the hearth in the cinders. Because she’s always dirty, they call her Cinderella. The king organises a festival for his son during which he intends to find a bride. The two bad sisters get pretty clothes from their mother, but Cinderella is forbidden to go. She visits her mother’s grave and asks the tree growing there to send her a dress. A wonderful dress and shoes fall down and she goes to the king’s court. The prince falls for her at once and wants to know who she is. But she escapes. This happens another time but after the third night, he manages to get one of her shoes. He sets out to find the woman whose foot fits into the shoe. The bad sisters cut off parts of their big feet to trick the prince but in the end, he finds Cinderella, the rightful owner. They marry and live happily ever after. The roots of this story are very old, the first traces can be found in Ancient Egypt. It was also known in Rome, in China, in Persia to name but a few places. More than 500 variations of the fairy tale have been counted. The last words of Cinderella’s mother before her death are, “Dear child, be good and pious, and then the good God will always protect you, and I will look down on you from heaven and be near you." She follows her mother’s words willingly and doesn’t utter any complaint even when she’s treated outrageously by her stepmother and her step-sisters. One can say that the more they torment and humiliate her, the stronger she becomes. She internalises her situation, she doesn’t rebel, she doesn’t admit to herself the emotional and material deprivation she experiences. At the core of the fairy tale is a woman who runs away from herself, who waives a dignified life in order to obey her dead mother. The so-called Cinderella complex defines a woman’s fear of independence and the unconscious wish to be taken care of by others. Only when the festival is announced has she reached the maturity and does she have the inner strength to rebel against her step-mother. First, she’s hesitant and hides from the prince but she gains more and more self-confidence and in the end passes the shoe-test without ado. The shoe is an old symbol of female sexuality (the foot glides smoothly into it). Her development is complete, she’s turned from a girl into a woman. --- P.S. If you're interested in more interpretations of German fairy tales, you can click on the green bar at the top of the site.