Her Father wasn't awful. He was just a weak man with a new wife. If he did anything wrong, it was the fact that he forgot about his first daughter, the one who should have helped the stepmother run the house.
This is what Disney left out of the tale.
And I, too, like "The Little Ash Dove." instead of Cinderella.
There was definitely a psychic shift that took place in the nineteenth century regarding depictions of children and their relationships with adults in fiction. We have people like Dickens to thank for shedding light on the casual cruelties exacted against children at the time. I think it’s a fascinating topic. And when you think about it, the male characters in the Cinderella and many other fairy tales are not really relevant. Thank you so much for this wonderful comment and for the generous compliment concerning the naming convention I chose.
Such a good retelling! My daughters had a similar version to this when they were younger, and I always preferred it to the cutesy ones. I liked your portrayal of the father too. It's always strange in these tales that the father would allow the mistreatment of his daughter if he truly loved her. I like there to be an explanation about this, like yours, or that he was bewitched. The notes about the etymology of the name were very interesting too.
Thank you so much, Katherine. I’ve enjoyed going through Grimms’ tales and discovering just how different the original tellings are from the modern sanitized versions. Not long ago I read your essay on AI-generated content. For some reason that led me to question why it was that, even though these older versions are part of the store of “training materials” that AI can readily draw upon, when AI is prompted to generate a retelling of these fairy tales, it doesn’t seem to be capable of creating a version that is convincingly “like” those older tellings. Instead, the results tend to be a flat mishmash that complies with every modern and trendy cliché. It’s these mysterious aspects, such as brutal fathers that permit this kind of abuse, or the horrid retribution exacted on villains—e.g. the blinded stepsisters in “Cinderella” or the wicked stepmothers in “Snow White” (dies by dancing in red-hot iron shoes) and “The Juniper Tree” (crushed by a millstone—that make these literary retellings or oral tales seem to preserve echoes of things far more ancient and human. They progress with the logic of dreams and have a lot in common with things like the Gilgamesh epic, Biblical episodes, or the Greek myths.
It's very kind of you to call my angry rant an essay! And that's a really interesting point about the AI- generated versions of these tales. I'm glad you're doing this because fairy tales lose so much in our quest to make them ‘palatable’, and that's also why the ones (like The Red Shoes and Bluebeard) that can't be given the ‘nice’ treatment are rarely told anymore. Fairy tales aren't supposed to be cute - they're mostly warnings, and that's why they're brutal, because the consequences are supposed to be dire. I remember once when I told Vasilisa the Brave to my girls and I changed the ending because I thought it was too gruesome for the youngest, who was about three at the time. I said, “The red hot coal jumped out of the skull, and Vasilia’s step-mother and sisters were so frightened they ran away.” She asked me why? Why would they run away? So that taught me not to mess about - the old ways are the best!
to pluck out each speck and peck out each spot - nice. Fascinating linguistics and origination for this, Daniel. Brain racing to compare retained/dropped/modified elements in the Disney classic and to intuit reasons.
Thank you so much, Adrian. The part where the heroine flees to a dovecote on the first night and a pear tree on the second was unusual. I was looking for some documentation to see if there was some symbolic relationships between doves and pear trees, but didn’t have much luck. However, there was a claim that the partridge in a pear tree mentioned in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” was a symbol of Christ on the Cross. It made me wonder if there was some subtle allusion being made to the dove as Holy Spirit descending in the form of the dove, with the “pear tree” being some old medieval allusion to the cross itself.
Fascinating. Was getting a guardian angel vibe from the doves. Something very deep set in these tales. I know in Ireland the hazelnut tree is associated with warding off evil.
These original versions are fascinating and you do a wonderful job of breathing new life into them. There is so much in this one to think about, but the significance of the doves is really striking and something that I never really noticed from the Disney version (they seemed like generic birds). My pagan mind immediately makes me think that her close association/symbiosis with these animals are remnants of a kind of fylgja or "spirit animal" for lack of a better term. Thanks for sharing the etymology!
I always think of the sisters cutting up their feet when I think about the women who literally have toes surgically removed to better fit into designer heels. I guess no one read them the Grimm's version when they were kids!
Really appreciate the in-depth remarks to this fairy tale. Something I discovered while reading up on Cinderella is that this story makes its earliest appearance in Chinese folklore. In made me wonder if the there was originally some connection between the mutilation of the feet and the ancient practice of foot-binding. Going back and revisiting the Grimms’ telling of these stories has really been an interesting exercise. So many of them are obvious retellings of Perrault’s tales, and appear to have been transmitted through French Huguenots they were acquainted with.
No glass slipper in the original. I do like that added aspect to the Disney version, when the courtier drops it and it shatters. Cinderella just happens to have the other slipper on her. The original story doesn’t explain how the stepsisters are able to walk in the shoe without its partner.
I actually like "Little Ash Dove" as a name for her better than "Cinderella".
Thank you so much, David. 😊
Wow, in this version her father was awful. No wonder Disney had him die
Haha! Seriously! 😂
Her Father wasn't awful. He was just a weak man with a new wife. If he did anything wrong, it was the fact that he forgot about his first daughter, the one who should have helped the stepmother run the house.
This is what Disney left out of the tale.
And I, too, like "The Little Ash Dove." instead of Cinderella.
There was definitely a psychic shift that took place in the nineteenth century regarding depictions of children and their relationships with adults in fiction. We have people like Dickens to thank for shedding light on the casual cruelties exacted against children at the time. I think it’s a fascinating topic. And when you think about it, the male characters in the Cinderella and many other fairy tales are not really relevant. Thank you so much for this wonderful comment and for the generous compliment concerning the naming convention I chose.
Such a good retelling! My daughters had a similar version to this when they were younger, and I always preferred it to the cutesy ones. I liked your portrayal of the father too. It's always strange in these tales that the father would allow the mistreatment of his daughter if he truly loved her. I like there to be an explanation about this, like yours, or that he was bewitched. The notes about the etymology of the name were very interesting too.
Thank you so much, Katherine. I’ve enjoyed going through Grimms’ tales and discovering just how different the original tellings are from the modern sanitized versions. Not long ago I read your essay on AI-generated content. For some reason that led me to question why it was that, even though these older versions are part of the store of “training materials” that AI can readily draw upon, when AI is prompted to generate a retelling of these fairy tales, it doesn’t seem to be capable of creating a version that is convincingly “like” those older tellings. Instead, the results tend to be a flat mishmash that complies with every modern and trendy cliché. It’s these mysterious aspects, such as brutal fathers that permit this kind of abuse, or the horrid retribution exacted on villains—e.g. the blinded stepsisters in “Cinderella” or the wicked stepmothers in “Snow White” (dies by dancing in red-hot iron shoes) and “The Juniper Tree” (crushed by a millstone—that make these literary retellings or oral tales seem to preserve echoes of things far more ancient and human. They progress with the logic of dreams and have a lot in common with things like the Gilgamesh epic, Biblical episodes, or the Greek myths.
It's very kind of you to call my angry rant an essay! And that's a really interesting point about the AI- generated versions of these tales. I'm glad you're doing this because fairy tales lose so much in our quest to make them ‘palatable’, and that's also why the ones (like The Red Shoes and Bluebeard) that can't be given the ‘nice’ treatment are rarely told anymore. Fairy tales aren't supposed to be cute - they're mostly warnings, and that's why they're brutal, because the consequences are supposed to be dire. I remember once when I told Vasilisa the Brave to my girls and I changed the ending because I thought it was too gruesome for the youngest, who was about three at the time. I said, “The red hot coal jumped out of the skull, and Vasilia’s step-mother and sisters were so frightened they ran away.” She asked me why? Why would they run away? So that taught me not to mess about - the old ways are the best!
to pluck out each speck and peck out each spot - nice. Fascinating linguistics and origination for this, Daniel. Brain racing to compare retained/dropped/modified elements in the Disney classic and to intuit reasons.
Thank you so much, Adrian. The part where the heroine flees to a dovecote on the first night and a pear tree on the second was unusual. I was looking for some documentation to see if there was some symbolic relationships between doves and pear trees, but didn’t have much luck. However, there was a claim that the partridge in a pear tree mentioned in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” was a symbol of Christ on the Cross. It made me wonder if there was some subtle allusion being made to the dove as Holy Spirit descending in the form of the dove, with the “pear tree” being some old medieval allusion to the cross itself.
Fascinating. Was getting a guardian angel vibe from the doves. Something very deep set in these tales. I know in Ireland the hazelnut tree is associated with warding off evil.
I'm so glad I came across this. I enjoyed reading the story in this telling, and the discussion of the title/name is so intriguing.
Thank you so much for the lovely comment, Amber! 🙏
These original versions are fascinating and you do a wonderful job of breathing new life into them. There is so much in this one to think about, but the significance of the doves is really striking and something that I never really noticed from the Disney version (they seemed like generic birds). My pagan mind immediately makes me think that her close association/symbiosis with these animals are remnants of a kind of fylgja or "spirit animal" for lack of a better term. Thanks for sharing the etymology!
I always think of the sisters cutting up their feet when I think about the women who literally have toes surgically removed to better fit into designer heels. I guess no one read them the Grimm's version when they were kids!
Really appreciate the in-depth remarks to this fairy tale. Something I discovered while reading up on Cinderella is that this story makes its earliest appearance in Chinese folklore. In made me wonder if the there was originally some connection between the mutilation of the feet and the ancient practice of foot-binding. Going back and revisiting the Grimms’ telling of these stories has really been an interesting exercise. So many of them are obvious retellings of Perrault’s tales, and appear to have been transmitted through French Huguenots they were acquainted with.
Darn David, what, no glass slippers?
No glass slipper in the original. I do like that added aspect to the Disney version, when the courtier drops it and it shatters. Cinderella just happens to have the other slipper on her. The original story doesn’t explain how the stepsisters are able to walk in the shoe without its partner.