Were Cinderella's Slippers Glass or Gold?

Instructor Introduction

Julia’s Were Cinderella’s Slippers Glass or Gold? is a well-executed multimodal project that is concise in expression, compelling in argumentation, and creative in delivery. Julia originally submitted the project as a comparative reading assignment, offering an evidence-based, thesis-driven, and cross-cultural analysis of how two versions of the Cinderella story reflect the broader social and cultural structures of their time. She later revised her project for the multimodal presentation assignment, transforming her textual analysis into a board game that allows participants to engage with her case study in a dynamic and immersive way. Bridging academic rigor with creative engagement, her work exemplifies the multidimensional nature of writing.

— Berkay Uluc

Were Cinderella’s Slippers Glass or Gold?

Magical slippers and pumpkins have dominated childhoods for generations, but many are surprised to learn that the tale of a victorious daughter has been a staple of folklore for centuries longer. In fact, Cinderella was originated by the Greeks in the 6th century BCE, and the oral traditional story has been growing roots throughout the Eurasian supercontinent ever since (“History of Cinderella”). Today’s most popular retelling is the 1950 Disney movie, which transforms a shabby housemaid into a shimmering princess until the clock strikes twelve. However, the animated Cinderella’s classic story was not written by Walt Disney. It is actually an adaptation of Charles Perrault’s Cendrillon, which was written in 1697 and popularly translated into English by Andrew Lang in 1891. Cendrillon is a French fairy tale encouraging kindness through Cinderella’s quick forgiveness of her stepsisters. A century later in 1812, Germany’s version of the Cinderella story was published under the title of Aschenputtel — “ash-digger” in English. It was recorded by the famed Brothers Grimm and translated into English by Jack Zipes in 2014. This Cinderella is a wicked folk tale promoting self-reliance in a family embodying the battle between good and evil. These variations of the Cinderella story are products of their culture, and reading them together will reveal their unique relationships with the times and places of their creation.

Despite the differences between Cendrillon and Aschenputtel, the “Cinderella story” has had a standardized framework since the Greeks: a deserving daughter is mistreated by family members, but eventually triumphs thanks to her innate virtue. However, this ‘innate virtue’ can range from cleverness and luck, to kindness and beauty. These attributes are critical to Cinderella’s characterization, as they depict her as either a quick thinker or a pretty face. In the words of gender culture journalist Constance Grady, Cinderella is either an “active author of her own fate [or] a passive, voiceless doll.” And by deciding which ‘innate virtue’ becomes the moral of the story, authors decide which attribute readers — often young girls — should emulate.

In the case of Cendrillon, Cinderella is introduced with “unparalleled goodness and sweetness of temper,” along with a show-stopping beauty that literally interrupts the ball (Perrault). But despite her immaculate appearance, her leading quality is her generosity. She always had excellent ideas and good advice, which she proposed to her stepsisters when they needed help (Perrault). Cinderella even offered to fix her stepsisters’ hair, and anyone else “would have fixed their hair awry, but she was very good, and dressed them perfectly well” (Perrault). Cendrillon firmly sets Cinderella as the protagonist of the story, who is so kind that she willingly helps her adversaries. She initiates all of these interactions, from offering to do her stepsisters’ hair to asking them questions about the ball. However, Aschenputtel’s Cinderella lacks this authority, and instead the stepsisters order her to do their hair and tell her about the ball without prompting.

In this sense, the protagonist leads the plot of Cendrillon while the antagonists drive the narrative of Aschenputtel. The antagonists in question are Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters, who are described as having “beautiful features” but “proud, nasty, and wicked hearts” (Grimm). This contrasts Cendrillon’s stepfamily, which is ugly on the inside and outside; in fact, their external attractiveness in Aschenputtel makes their unattractive characteristics even more compelling. They did “everything imaginable to cause her grief and make her look ridiculous” (Grimm). This included pouring peas and lentils into the hearth for Cinderella to sort for the entire day, and when Cinderella had done so, they were angry because “they would have liked to have scolded her” (Grimm). The stepsisters are jealous, resentful, and selfish. They treated Cinderella worse than a housemaid and took pleasure in her misery. Even when Cinderella was disguised, the stepsisters “were annoyed that some other young lady was more beautiful than they” and acted envious and morose for the rest of the story (Grimm). Aschenputtel’s characterization of the antagonists is a polarization of good and evil, in which the evil stepfamily has no empathy toward others and are jealous of all things good. Even in Cendrillon, the evil stepsisters were simply awed and inspired by the beauty of the unknown stranger, and not jealous at all.

However, these representations of good and evil aren’t decided by how the story teaches morals, but how it approaches families. Most variants of “the Cinderella story” include a version of a blended family, in which Cinderella’s father remarries after her mother’s death. These relatable depictions of combining families is one of the reasons that Cinderella became so popular. In pre-20th-century Europe, it was common for mothers to die in childbirth — and in the 20th century, divorce is more prevalent than ever (Grady). The transition into a blended family, whether from death or divorce, is unique to each household, and Grady believes that “the Cinderella story is something that we rely on.” By being a literary archetype of a blended family, Cinderella became a lens to look at historical and present realities in an accessible and successful narrative.

For example, the reason that Cendrillon’s stepmother “could not bear the good qualities of this pretty girl” was because Cinderella “made her own daughters appear the more odious” (Perrault). This jealousy is the driving factor behind Cinderella’s housework, in which a stepmother prioritizes her daughters over her stepdaughter. However, she and her daughters later begged for forgiveness after discovering that she was the beautiful stranger and now the prince’s bride (Perrault). Cendrillon’s emphasis on goodness and forgiveness reflects the standards of 18th-century French society. Only three years before Cendrillon’s publication, the harsh winters and crop failures of the “Little Ice Age” led to France losing six percent of its population (Rafferty). Many more French families lost loved ones to high maternal mortality rates, but Cendrillon is an example of the society’s optimism. It would have been easier for Cinderella to resent her stepfamily and leave them behind, but her generosity towards the unkind reflected French standards: it is upon yourself to make the most of your life. Essentially, the morals of 18th-century French society and literature were optimistic, and they taught that no matter what bad comes your way, you must remain good.

Germany’s Aschenputtel approaches Cinderella’s family differently. In Cendrillon, the only reference to Cinderella’s mother is a description “as the best creature in the world” (Perrault). On the other hand, Aschenputtel uses her mother’s illness and death as the introduction, and her dying wish of a tree planted on her grave was what Cinderella could shake to wish for help (Grimm). Upon her father remarrying, her stepmother immediately sends her to the kitchen to be their maid, and her stepsisters even take away her clothes (Grimm). There is no jealousy evident, only genuine dislike of her presence. Her stepmother’s first reaction to her was calling her a “terrible and useless thing” (Grimm). In fact, their reaction to Cinderella fitting the slipper was simply horror. They could not believe that Cinderella was better than them, and did not apologize for their actions. Aschenputtel’s resistance to Cinderella's stepfamily reflects 19th-century Germany’s fight against “evil,” or the dominance of “good.” In the case of blended families, German society valued blood family above all, as exemplified by Cinderella’s magical mother and opposing stepfamily. However, blood family and stepfamily became an analogy for German nationalism under French rule. During the 19th-century Napoleonic wars, French invaders took over German territory, creating a common cause throughout German society to regain control (Hamerow). This shared nationalism under French dominance is reflected in Aschenputtel, in which counteracting bad is more important than producing good.

Another historical lens is the story’s genre: a folk tale or fairy tale. The latter originated in 1690s French salons, which became sanctuaries for women to congregate and tell stories (Zipes, "Subversions"). These narratives “displayed a certain resistance toward male rational precepts and patriarchal realms” by creating worlds in which powerful female fairies had the final say (Zipes, "Subversions"). Essentially, they were the only stories of the time where women had ultimate power. Cendrillon is one of these stories. In order for Cinderella to attend the ball, her fairy godmother transformed everyday objects and animals into magical bejeweled clothes, carriages, and footmen (Perrault). Cendrillon’s fairy godmother — and Disney’s adaptation — is an example of how a female fairy has the final say in a narrative: whether or not Cinderella can go to the ball and find her prince. Even Cinderella herself was an inspiring example of how a young girl could withstand abuse and become a princess thanks to her own integrity. On the other hand, Aschenputtel has magic but lacks a fairy, and therefore is not a fairy tale. Magic aids Cinderella in the form of two pigeons and her mother’s legacy. The pigeons help do her chores, watch the ball, and make her wish, but the magic originates from the tree planted on her mothers grave (Grimm). It achieves the same outcome of clothes, carriages, and footmen, but it still isn’t fairy magic — no “bibbidi-bobbidi-boo” required.

Especially in modern times, magical embellishments like “bibbidi-bobbidi-boo” cater to mass media entertainment. The optimism of magic can make difficult stories, like the abuse of Cinderella, digestible for audiences of all ages, especially children. However, the Grimm Brothers never intended for Ashenputtel to become a children’s story. Rather, their 1812 collection was an educational manual, or “Erziehungsbuch,” for adults and scholars to “[recall] the basic values of the Germanic people through storytelling” (Zipes, "Grimm Brothers"). These stories reflected the experiences of local families, and the Grimm brothers believed that German morals were rooted in these oral traditions (Zipes, "Grimm Brothers”). Ultimately, the Grimms’ goal of Aschenputtel was to simply preserve German linguistic and historical culture. This resulted in a drastic difference between the social acceptability of Cendrillon and Aschenputtel’s content. In Cendrillon, Cinderella gained her name by sitting in the ashy chimney corner when she was finished with her work (Perrault). In Aschenputtel, she was forced to sleep in the ashes next to the hearth (Grimm). However, the most major difference is the conclusion: Cendrillon’s stepsisters fail to fit their feet in the slipper, while Aschenputtel’s cut off pieces of their feet to do so.

The catch is that the Grimms’ Aschenputtel eventually transformed into Perrault’s Cendrillon under societal pressure. By the time the seventh edition of the Grimms’ collection of folk tales was published in 1857, “40 or 50 tales in the first edition were deleted or drastically changed” (Flood). The Grimm Brothers had changed direction from a scholarly collection of oral traditions to a literary collection for middle-class families, edited to “resonate with a growing literary public” (Zipes, “Grimm Brothers”). They deleted stories, removed violence, and added Christian expressions and proverbs (Flood). They even removed fairies due to their association with France, who was occupying Germany (Flood). Essentially, the Grimms edited and censored all potentially offensive material to middle-class, Christian readers.

Cinderella is an example of how literature, especially folk tales, reflect the societies in which they were conceived. Their narratives’ intrinsic values correspond with their communities’ morals. Zipes describes it as natural language “[stemming] from the needs, customs, and rituals of the common people,” ultimately outlining a society’s cultural evolution (“Grimm Brothers”). Due to the narratives fluctuating throughout time and place, it is impossible to pin down one true version of an oral tradition. However, Zipes believes that it doesn’t matter if a folk tale is good or bad — they are known and loved because they are “simply [absorbed] in a habitual way” (Grimm, Aschenputtel preface). In the cases of Cendrillon and Aschenputtel, Cinderella represents differing ideals for women and families. In this sense, “the Cinderella story” has withstood time due to its archetypal rendition of being a young woman and being part of a blended family.

In answering these topics, Cendrillon and Aschenputtel teach equally important lessons. Just like how Cendrillon’s slipper is the iconic glass and Aschenputtel’s is gold, neither material is more valuable than the other. In fact, the most value may be to understand both. Cendrillon encourages goodness within yourself in the form of beauty, but most importantly, generosity. Also, everyone needs a little bit of luck in the form of a fairy godmother sometimes. Aschenputtel opposes badness inside others, depicting jealousy and selfishness as the worst traits to emulate. However, both Cinderella's succeed in the face of adversity; the ultimate moral of the Cinderella story is self-reliance. Both variants of the Cinderella story reflect the ideals of their communities, regarding young women, blended families, and life as a whole — through reading Cendrillon and Aschenputtel, readers are able to learn the unique lessons of the respective French and German societies in which they were written.

Works Cited

Flood, Alison. “Grimm Brothers’ Fairytales Have Blood and Horror Restored in New Translation.” The Guardian, 12 Nov. 2014, www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/12/grimm-brothers-fairytales-horror-new-translation.

Grady, Constance. “The Slippery Genius of the Cinderella Story.” Vox, 29 May 2019, www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/29/18524129/cinderella-grimms-perrault-basile-daulnoy-rebecca-solnit-jack-zipes-ruth-bottigheimer-fairy-tales.

Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. Aschenputtel. 1812. Translated by Jack Zipes, Princeton University Press, 2014.

Hamerow, Theodore, and William Berensten. “Period of French Hegemony in Germany.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2024, www.britannica.com/place/Germany/Period-of-French-hegemony-in-Germany.

“History of Cinderella.” City of Abilene Texas, Abilene Public Library, www.abilenetx.gov/1013/History-of-Cinderella.

Perrault, Charles. Cendrillon, Ou La Petite Pantoufle de Verre. 1697. Translated by Andrew Lang, Longmans, Green, and Co., 1891.

Rafferty, John, and Stephen Jackson. “Little Ice Age.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2024, www.britannica.com/science/Little-Ice-Age.

Zipes, Jack. “How the Grimm Brothers Saved the Fairy Tale.” National Endowment for the Humanities, Apr. 2015, www.neh.gov/humanities/2015/marchapril/feature/how-the-grimm-brothers-saved-the-fairy-tale.

Zipes, Jack. “Jack Zipes and the Many Subversions of the Fairytale.” 3:16, www.3-16am.co.uk/articles/jack-zipes-and-the-many-subversions-of-the-fairytale.