Cinderella: Biography of an archetype

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By

Imagine, if you will, the elements of the fairy tale: a glass slipper, a pumpkin that turns into an elegant carriage, a beneficent fairy godmother and, at its center, a destitute girl who triumphs over her wicked stepfamily when she is carried off by a gallant prince.

Cinderella, the world's best-known and most beloved fairy tale, sounds like the purest fantasy. But if it represents nothing but random invention and fantasy, why has the tale emerged so often over so many centuries in so many languages and mediums and cultural traditions?

The Washington Ballet presents choreographer Septime Webre's new interpretation of Cinderella tonight at the Kennedy Center, but the rendition Americans probably know best is Walt Disney's full-length animated movie, "Cinderella," which met with wide acclaim when released in 1950.

However, the story had been around -- in many different tongues, in many different variants -- long before Hollywood got its mitts on it. In fact, at least 350 tellings of the tale exist, starting with the one recorded by Tuan Ch'eng-shih of China in the middle of the ninth century. Long before he recorded the tale in writing, the people of his day probably knew oral tellings of it.

In Ch'eng-shih's version, Yeh-shen, the heroine of the Chinese story, doesn't have a fairy godmother. Instead, she has a magical fish as a helper. The shoe by which the prince identifies her is golden, not glass.

Around 1697, French author Charles Perrault wrote another famous rendition of the rags-to-riches story. Because Perrault's book "Tales of Mother Goose," which contains "Cinderella, or the Glass Slipper," was translated into English before other versions, this is the telling that was destined to be assimilated into American culture. Perrault's "Cinderella" includes the now-familiar fairy godmother, pumpkin carriage and animal servants. Most Western renditions, however, have omitted Perrault's ending, in which Cinderella finds husbands for her stepsisters.

During the 1800s, the Grimm brothers, whose grandfather and great grandfather were ministers in the German Reformed Church, put their own spin on the folk legend, called "Aschenputtel" or "Ash Girl." Changing many of the elements, they wove spiritual principles into the plot, says Father Ronald Murphy, professor of German at Georgetown University.

When the mother dies, for instance, the father forgets his dead wife almost immediately, whereas the daughter loyally goes to the mother's grave three times a day and cries. While at the grave, she plants a tree, which could be interpreted as a cross. The tree becomes the source of her magical help when it is visited by a white dove, the Christian symbol for the Holy Spirit.

While the father and the stepfamily overlook the beauty in the heroine, the prince, who serves as a Christ figure, sees beyond the surface of her external appearance. She is the only one with whom he wants to dance. Also, in an act of divine retribution, the stepsisters have their eyes pecked by birds from the tree at the dead mother's grave.