literary analysis essay of cinderella

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[Ashliman provides an immense and comprehensive collection of online folklore and mythological texts. The website is divided into three main sections: 1. Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts, 2. Folk and Fairy Tale Links, and 3. Germanic Myths, Legends, and Sagas. In the first section, Ashliman has divided the stories by Aarne-Thompson tale types and lists them in alphabetical order. Each tale type, then includes a page containing several versions of the story. For example, the Cinderella page includes electronic versions of “The Cinder Maid,” “Cinderella; or, the Little Glass Slipper,” “Cinderella” (a translation of Aschenputtle), “Katie Woodencloak,” “Fair, Brown, and Trembling,” “Rashin-Coatie,” “Cinderella” (an Italian version), “Conkiajgharuna, the Little Rag Girl,” “Pepelyouga,” “The Wonderful Birch,” “The Baba Yaga,” and “The Wicked Stepmother.” The second section contains a list of fairy tale and research resources, and the third section offers more information on geography, monuments, Norse gods, Vikings, Germanic myth. It also provides more information for those studying mythology.] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[This website offers 49 annotated fairy tales classified heavily by use of the Brother’s Grimm titles for a particular tale type. For example, Frog Prince style stories are labeled the Frog King, or Iron Henry similar to the Grimm story, but the Catskin tales are found under Donkeyskin. The author and editor has gathered several collections of tales for wider publication such as Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and other folklore, and many tales may also be read on the site. The site also contains links to other retellings, but they are not annotated. Of particular interest to Cinderella scholars should be Heiner’s web coding of Cinderella: Three Hundred and Forty-Five Variants by Marian Roalfe Cox and edited by Andrew Lang. The tales and summaries that Cox provides are publically accessible and easy to use.] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[Studies the debilitating effect of the myth on women who live in expectation of being saved by some prince who will come and lend meaning to their lives. Explores ways in which women, especially in midlife, might assume a healthy independence of the Cinderella complex.]

[ Dust jacket: The great granddaughter of William Rockefeller (John D.’s brother and partner), Belle Elmer grew up in a family whose immense power became its own insidious bondage. To the softspoken and commanding men and women who dwelt in the vast Rockefeller mansions and dominated the financial world and society pages, love and affection were alien and suspect emotions. The closest they could come was a stifling control — that guaranteed that the next generation would be similarly bound. Belle’s story … is about a woman surprisingly untouched by power and riches … CINDERELLA ROCKEFELLER is the most intimate look we have had at being brought up a Rockefeller, and it shows us an unnerving thread of tragedy which weaves itself constantly, from generation to generation, among the threads of gold. Belle … experiences the despair and disconnection of a soul bereft of any spiritual values. Today, [she] is a busy housewife, grandmother, and the Director of Social Services for a Christian community on Cape Cod. How she got there, and what she learned on the way make a fascinating and inspiriting story.]

[Biography of the Irish American James J. Braddock, born Jun 7, 1906, in MYC, without assistance, to Elizabeth O'Toole Braddock, her fifth child, weighing 17 pounds at birth. Hague, a sports writer, traces Braddock's life through street fights, school dropout, amateur boxing managed by his older brother, to his hooking up with manager Joe Gould to become a professional boxer with a powerful right hand. He went 38 fights without a loss before losing a decision to Joe Monte, whom he had beaten a few months before. His pro-record was at that time 27-0, with 16 knockouts, many in the first round. But he broke his right hand in that fight, and his career began to skid. He continued fighting, repeatedly breaking his hand. When the depression hit, his savings were wiped out. He was married to a very dedicated wife Mae, and they had three children, but he rebroke his hand repeatedly, and with his record at 42-23, he could not get fights that paid much. He broke his hand severely one last time and had to retire. Broke, with his children taken from him, he tried to work at the docks, but could only uise his left hand for heavy lifting. In the meantime his right healed, his left became very strong, and in September 1934, Gould managed to get him a match with Corn Griffin, a much talked about boxer, who had heavyweight aspiration, and who, when an opponent did not show up, agreed to fight Braddock as a means of keeping in shape. The purse was $250.00. Griffin thought he had nothing to lose--except the fight. Braddock surprised everyone with his powerful left hand as well as his right. He was given then given a match with John Henry Lewis, who had defeated him earlier. Though a 5-1 underdog, Braddock won again. Having defeated in quick succession two top-ranked contenders he managed to get scheduled into a heavyweight elimination tournament that would lead to the heavyweight championship. He next beat Arthur Lasky, winning a purs of $4,100. He immediately paid back the money he'd been given on welfare, his children moved back home with him and Mae, and the sports writer Damon Runyon gave him a knickname that stuck--"The Cinderella Man." He was to have been scheduled next to fight Max Schmeling, but Schmeling wanted to fight Max Baer after Baer had won championship and declined the match with Braddock. So Braddock was moved up to the championship fight with Baer as a 10-1 underdog. Jim worked hard in training camp, while Baer looked ahead to scheduling a fight with Joe Louis, who had lost to Schmelling. The fight went fifteen rounds, but Baer was soundly beaten. Braddock was heavyweight champ of the world. Hague includes a congratulatory telegram from FDR, who praised Braddock as "a role model for so many others who struggled through our Great Depression" (p. 138). Braddock defended his title six times in exhibitions fights with Jack McCarthy, then fought Joe Louis (June 22, 1937), to whom he lost. But Gould had gotten him a great contract--a sizeable purse, and a percentage of Louis's winnings for the next decade. It was a good fight, but Braddock was knocked out in the eighth round--the only knockout that he suffered in his long up-and-down-and-up career. He fought one more time, Tommy Farr in 1938, and won, though he was hurt in the fight and knew it was time to retire. He died November 29, 1974, age 68. In 2001 he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. See also Michael C. DeLisa's biography of him (2005), and the Russell Crowe movie, also 2005.]

[This New York Times Bestseller recounts the up-by-the-bootstraps career of Bill Murray, his love of the game as caddy, performer, gossip, daffy dude, humorest, and movie star in Caddyshack (in which he plays grounds keeper Carl Spackler). The Washington Post observes of the book: “Murray plays the funny daffy guy with all the verve he gives to that role in his movies. If he’s had a staid moment in his golfing life, it isn’t told here.” “No one has ever provided a sport with more comic relief than Bill Murray does gold” — Christian Science Monitor . “A book infused with gentle humor and even poetic insight. The style is breezy, anecdotal and deadpan … like one of Murray’s comic routines” — Denver Post (as cited on the rear cover of the paperback edition of the book).]

[A progress report on a tough life on the road, living with a double identity, one as a highly-publicized “personality,” another trying to make “a modicum of sense in a particularly bewildering period of history” (p. ll). Having fought his way from the slums of New York’s East Side to become one of America’s topflight jazz musicians and composers, “he was also fighting to find out more about Artie Shaw the man” (dust jacket). 12 photo illustrations.]

[An autobiographical journey of Tertis, from his youth as a Jewish child in England and his beginning studies of violin and viola, to his recognition that the viola is not a second-class violin but one that is worthy of a significant repertoire of its own. He tells of retuning the instrument to play an Elgar piece, much to Elgar’s delight; then of his successful career as a solist and ensemble player — a great, hobnobbing with all the greats. He tells of a splendid Montagnana viola that he was fortunate to find and then recounts how, when writing a booklet called Beauty of Tone for String Players, he designed the Tertis Model viola, which altered the history, perception, and reception of the instrument. As Thomas Beecham put it, “this Cinderella branch of the orchestra,” formerly considered to be “one of the necessary and unavoidable evils which had to be endured” was miraculously redeemed; “the fact that the whole balance of the modern orchestra was rectified was due from A to Z to Tertis. He had heard the long and justified praise bestowed on him as a virtuoso; but when the history of music here and abroad came to be written, this saving of the orchestra’s ‘distressed area’ would be recognized as his greatest achievement” (p. 98).]

[Tales classified according to Animal Tales (Wild Animals, Wild Animals and Domestic Animals, Man and Wild Animals, Domestic Animals, Birds, Fish, Other Animals and Objects); Ordinary Folk-Tales (Tales of Magic: Supernatural Adversaries, Supernatural or Enchanted Husband Wife or other Relatives, Supernatural Tasks, Supernatural Helpers, Magic Objects, Supernatural Power or Knowledge, Other Tales of the Supernatural; Religious Tales; Romantic Tales; Tales of the Stupid Ogre); Jokes and Anecdotes (Numbskull Stories, Stories about Married Couples, Stories about a Woman/Girl, Stories about a Man/Boy, The Clever Man, Lucky Accidents, The Stupid Man, Jokes about Parsons and Religious Orders, Anecdotes about Other Groups of People, Tales of Lying); Formula Tales (Cumulative Tales, Catch Tales, Other Formula Tales); Unclassified Tales . Types most frequently in Cinderella stories are 510 : Cinderella and Cap o’ Rushes , which includes such functions as the persecuted heroine, magic help, meeting the prince, overstaying at the ball, proof of identity such as the slipper test, a ring, or unique abilities such as that of plucking the gold apple, marriage to the prince, and the value of salt. 510A : Cinderella , the stepsisters, the missing mother who helps by means of animals. 510B : The Dress of Gold, of Silver, and of the Stars , where the father would marry his daughter; three-fold visit to the church, identifying footwear. 511 : One-Eye, Two-Eyes, Three-Eyes , with child abused by mother, but assisted by wise-woman; magical tree. 511A : The Little Red Ox , with cruel stepmother and stepsisters; Ox as helper; spying on the Ox, flight, a Magic Horn.]

[Introduction (pp. 1-29). Sixteen Tales of Wonder from the Great Ocean of Story, with introduction; twenty-eight Stories to Discuss and Even Argue About, with introduction; thirty-three Tales of Trickster and Other Ridiculous Creatures, with introduction; two Tales of Praise of Great Doings, with introduction; fifteen tales on Making a Way Through Life, with introduction. Bibliography (pp. 343-346). See the entry under Modern Children’s Editions: African American, African .]

[A mine of information on nineteenth-century manuals of etiquette on the ball as an avenue to acceptable behavior in America and Europe.]

[Cites G. Grenz on Cinderella as example of Prince, following his unspoiled instinct, to find the right Arian girl whereby the blood lines are kept pure. The voice in his blood tells him she is the right one.]

[Considers functions of spindles at the fireside in folktales.]

[Psychoanalytic approach to the semiotics of Cinderella themes and figures.]

[Considers the resurgence of fairytale motifs in French-Canadian drama. There are three fundamental configurations in the Cinderella plot that dramatists draw upon: 1) an unpromising hero or heroine who is often a societal outcast; 2) supernatural assistance of some kind, often in the form of a magnificent costume; 3) reversal of fortune and transformation of the hero/heroine to a superior existence (p. 105). Discusses the feminist production Si Cendrillon pouvait mourir , Jean Barbeau’s Citrouille , and Michael Tremblay’s Hosanna . All three plays denounce sexual stereotypes and stress the importance of waking up and a transition toward a new self.]

[ Ch. 1: Daughter and Mother: Learning the Roles , considers traditional socialization of women, role requirements, mothers as role models, alternate models, martyr mothers and dutiful daughters, mothers and daughters as friends, and role reversals. Ch. 2: Mothers a Teachers: We learn to be Women , considers sex role stereotyping for girls, lessons in motherhood, men, marriage, “women’s work,” childcare, bodies and sexuality, education and jobs, lying to ourselves and family, truth-telling. Ch. 3: Touching: Affection and Violence , considers pregnancy, childbirth and nursing, sexuality and physical gratification, menstruation, menarche, and menopause, toughing stops, the technology of beauty, hitting little girls, beatings, maternal power, and daughters’ rebellion. Ch. 4: Competition: Some Data and Definition , looks at the performance of womanly tasks, cleverness and social power, attention and affection, sex and beauty, daughters’ fear of repeating their mothers’ lives, fathers as objects and competitors, sister-brother rivalry, sister-sister rivalry, nuclear family as source of competition. Ch. 5: Fathers: The Men in Our Lives , notes the cultural history of fatherhood and patriarchy, social definitions of father-daughter relationships, daughters devoted to fathers, the model for heterosexual relations, sexuality between father and daughter, incest-rape, mother-daughter bond excluding fathers, mothers abandoning daughters for father, fathers interrupting the mother/daughter relations. Ch. 6: Leaving: The Pain of Separation , on crises and cycles in families, going away to school, entrance into the “real world,” getting married, desires for independence, and parental responses to daughters leaving, mothers’ deaths and metaphoric matricide. Ch. 7: Daughters Become Mothers — More Often Than Not , on maternal instinct, socialization toward motherhood, decision to have a baby, choosing not to reproduce, having babies to please our mothers or to prove womanhood, preferences of sex of children, pressure on women to bear sons, impact of women’s movement.]

[An attempt to identify the social implications of family under the ancient regime by a demographic historian who moves back into a more distant past to discover the limits of original characteristics of the modern family. The argument is divided into three parts: 1) The idea of childhood, from early ages-of-life theories to discovery of childhood, its dress, games and pastimes, and conflicting concepts of childhood as innocence and animality; 2) Scholastic life, which examines developments in the education of children along with ideas of college, a school class, day schools and boarding schools, “little schools,” and the duration of childhood; and 3) The Family, from the medieval to the modern family and its concepts of sociability.]

[The guide follows the numbering of types in Aarne-Thompson. It provides a format that is easier to move around in than its source.]

[Asper is a Jungian analyst. She divides the Cinderella narrative into segments to study the emotional crises of abandonment and recovery. She looks upon all “characters” in the Cinderella story as aspects of an individual going through the processes of loss — Cinderella herself is the figure of abandonment and abuse in her search of self-worth; the stepsisters reflect her effort to gain self-esteem by putting down others and putting on clothes, jewelry, etc. to gain attention and to cover the emptiness, all of which can end up in unhappy self-mutilation; the stepmother, the recurrent doubts of self-worth and the repressive, driving of hope through self-hatred into the ashes; the father, a kind of repression of honest feeling under the fears of unacceptable public behavior. See Once Upon a Loss , under Movies , where Asper is the Jungian analyst in a documentary film about grief.]

[On Peter Baldwin’s affection for shoebox theater. N.b., his book Toy Theaters of the World (Antique Collectors’ Club, 1992). $39.95. His first miniature theater was designed for a performance of Cinderella. He discusses the sophistication of drama possible in such a forum. Oscar Wilde made such theaters for his friends. So too were Charles Dickens, Jack Yeats, Paul Klee, and Ingmar Bergman devotees. Marty Jacobs, theater curator of the Museum of the City of New York, has collected several of them. Wooden Victorian-period theaters go now for about $1,000.00. Pollack’s Toy Theatre Shop of Covent Garden, London, is a good place to look for toy theaters with fairytale scripts, along with prints of 19th-century theatre. The essay is well illustrated.]

[“What vampires are in any given generation is part of what I am and what my times have become. This book is a history of Anglo-American culture through its mutating vampires.” Auerbach considers vampires to be our subversive confederates who in their timelessness leech our anxieties. Beginning with the early 19th century (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and John Polidori’s Vampyre as responses to Byron’s imaginative dabbling), Auerbach acknowledges the stock in trade of vampires in folklore, especially female vampires such as the baobhan sith, Irish banshees, and lamias. Bram Stoker’s Dracula owes much to the fate of Oscar Wilde: “The Wilde trials, and the new taboos that made them possible, drained the generosity from vampires, forcing them … to expend their energies on becoming someone else.” The shift made vampires a part of the exploration of shape-shifting and animal natures inherent in the raw material of folk tales. In the 20th century vampires have had a resurgence in America during the depression years where, with their foreignness, formality, and outlandish, aberrant nature, they “buttress Americans’ commitment to the devils they knew.” More recently the 1960’s horror films produced by England’s Hammer Studios represent a postwar rebellion against the reimposition of patriarchal authority, while in the 70s and 80s vampires become a vehicle for the feminist movement’s reconstructions of a new, sensitized man. Likewise they become a vehicle to explore such diverse problems as the politics of White House conspiracies, the unsettling resurgence of cult activities, and the terrifying shadows of AIDS. Auerbach’s approach is sociopolitical readings, rather than psychoanalytical, a refreshing complement to the Freudian and Jungian readings that have been prominent earlier in the century. Auerbach prophesies that the next wave of vampires will cruise the Internet, cloaked in virtual reality, leeching our minds rather than our blood.]

[Victorian tales of imagination exhibit “a zest for punishment and a strain of savage cruelty quite beyond anything now permitted in children’s books” (p. 7). Avery considers Victorian ideas of improving the child through purposeful fairy tales and evangelistic fiction; ways of amusing the child and notions of pleasure, innocence, and the child’s “world”; and adult attitudes toward children as affected by class, education and upbringing, and morbidity.]

[Includes a retrospective on “My Life” and selections from An Essay on Ancient Mortuary Symbolism (including discussion of the three mystery eggs, sanctum and sacrum, the lamp in the myth of Amor and Psyche, and symbol and myth), selections from Mother Right , the introduction to The Myth of Tanaquil , and a select bibliography of Bachofen’s writings.]

[Discusses folktales as a means of coming to terms with the world as it is. Considers types, functions, and thematic structures of folk tales. Cinderella is of the displaced person type as she is relegated to the ashes. Paradoxically, keeping the hearth was “a prestigious occupation.” The Cinderella story combines two contradictory notions of child development: the degradation imagined by the displaced child and the warmth of feeling aroused by the coziness of home. In Cinderella is a reminder that children like dirt and that there is nothing wrong with getting dirty (p. 17).]

[In the introduction to this issue of Western Folklore , Bacchilega seeks to reexamine the genre of the “Innocent Persecuted Heroine,” such as Rapunzel and Cinderella. For Bacchilega, the women in these stories have to suffer in order to resolve the narrative, thereby making the tale about male desire instead of female response. She, then, extends her argument to show how the frequency of this narrative theme has lead to a perception of these stories and their heroines as a sub-genre of fairytales in which the lack of feminine agency is not questioned. The essays in this volume posses four basic goals: 1. to locate and question narrative assumptions of gender within the stories, 2. to determine what ideas outside of the text help to produce these constructs, 3. to examine how the heroines are persecuted to further study active and passive behaviors, and 4 to dismantle the idea of the “Innocent Persecuted Heroine.” While concluding the article, Bacchilega acknowledges the work of feminist fairy tale scholars who have examined how the stories prepare women for notions of gender and how the debates of the last few decades have led to an ability to study fairy tales from a variety of angles. For other articles in this volume, see also Steven Swann Jones’s “The Innocent Persecuted Heroine Genre: An Analysis of Its Structure and Themes,” Jack Zipes’s “Spinning with Fate: Rumpelstiltskin and the Decline of Female Productivity,” W. F. H. Nicolaisen’s “Why Tell Stories about Innocent, Persecuted Heroines?”, Daniela Perco’s “Female Initiation in Northern Italian Versions of ‘Cinderella,’” and Elisabeth Panttaja’s “Going Up in the World: Class in Cinderella.”] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[Considers history of laughter, language of the marketplace, cultural functions of the festival and banquet, grotesquery, and images of the material bodily lower stratum.]

[A landmark study of French fairytales.]

[In the Twayne literary biography series.]

[See especially pp. 144-152.]

[Expands upon Bayley’s interpretation of Cinderella in Lost Language of Symbolism . “Cinderella personifies both the exiled human soul, cut off from Paradise and her Mother and Father in heaven, and also the ‘light’ of the Holy Spirit of Wisdom which is hidden within the soul, unsought and unrecognized until events are set in motion by the appeal to her ‘God’-mother” (p. 52). In this role she is like Sophia and Persephone; like the Bride in Song of Songs she undergoes trials in darkness prior to her royal marriage. Solomon, like the Prince in the story, once he sees her is consumed with love for her and seeks her until he finds her. Midnight marks the interface “between the dimensions of eternity and time …. To stay at the ball beyond midnight is to forget human values and human relationships, losing touch with physical reality and everyday life” (p. 61). This essay is based on material used in Jules Cashford and Anne Baring, The Myth of the Goddess: The Evolution of an Image (Viking Arkana, 1991).]

[Combines rigors of structuralist analysis, tracing five codes through a tale broken down into 561 lexias , with speculative excursuses on narrative and its reading. Breaks away from a rigid notion of structure to a more fluid and dynamic notion of structuration with the text seen as a texture, a weaving of codes which the reader sorts out only in provisional ways through a déjà-lu process, as if the reader had already read and written the writer’s text. Plot, function, sequence — the intertextual interlockings — belong to the reader’s literary competence and training as a reader.]

[The object of this inquiry is the structural analysis of women’s clothing as currently described by Fashion magazines — an exercise in semiology. In the Woman of Fashion, a kind of monster, “we recognize the permanent compromise which marks the relation between mass culture and its consummers: the Woman of Fashion is simultaneously what the reader is and what she dreams of being; her psychological profile is nearly that of all the stars ‘told’ about every day by mass culture, so true is it that Fashion, by its rhetorical signified, participates profoundly in this culture” (pp. 260-261). “Like logic, Fashion seeks equivalences, validities, not truths; and like logic, Fashion is stripped of content, but not of meaning. A kind of machine for maintaining meaning without ever fixing it, it is forever a disappointed meaning,” a double system of ethical ambiguity (p. 288).]

[Functions include the defining of projective systems, the validating of culture, pedagogical intentions, and the applying of social pressure and exercising of social control, all for the purpose of maintaining cultural stability.]

[Anthropological study, with retellings of African Cinderella stories. Considers question of indigenous tales influenced by European intrusion. For synopsis of “The Maiden, the Frog & the Chief’s Son,” see Bascom under Modern Children’s Editions: African .]

[Discusses Samber’s translations from Perrault (1729) and the critiques against them in England. Locke encouraged the use of children’s books, but not for pure amusement. Perrault’s morals appended are more for adults than the children. But the climate of opinion was against Perrault for his use of magic and the supernatural. Parents and educators rail against this “dangerous” form of literature. The first “true literature” entertains “without the help of fairies.” Thomas Boreman’s Gigantick Histories (1740-42), for example, is fine because it is entertaining, but dismisses all fairy tales. Later in the century the attack becomes quite confident: a 1783 review states: “the notion that seemed formerly to have prevailed, that the minds of children could only be amused with the idle tales of giants, fairies, etc., is happily exploded. It is the peculiar praise of the present generation to have substituted rational information in the place of all that nonsensical trifling” (p. 3). Sarah Trimmer’s attacks in her periodical The Guardian of Education (1802-1805) typify the arguments against fairy. Early in the century D’Aulnoy fared somewhat better in England than Perrault, partly because she directed herself more to adults. But the stories had to be moralized, turned into instruments of learning--scientific learning. Though some fantastical literature succeeded in the earlier part of the century, in the latter part, as Lamb observed, “science has succeeded to imagination no less in the little walks of children than with men” (p. 8). Rousseau, who wanted no books for children, inspired his English disciples to write “improving conversations” and domestic walks for children rather than harmful imaginative nonsense.]

[Symbolic and spiritual interpretations of fairy tales in general, with some emphasis on Cinderella.]

[Sees the Cinderella story as an allegory of the soul’s transformation of light out of darkness, akin to Gnostic, Egyptian, and Sumerian mythology. Oppressed by stepmother bondage, Cinderella, with her configuration of symbols of light hidden in darkness, moves toward her Prince (Divinity) through trials and disguise. Her name Cin comes from Sin, the Babylonian moon god, father of Ishtar; El , the light element in the Babylonian sun god Bel, and surviving in the Hebrew Elohim . See also ella , which means giver of light. Ele is the root of Eleleus, one of the surnames of Apollo, and also is present in Helios and Selene (p. 192). These components define Cinderella, “the bright and shining one, who sits among the cinders and keeps the fire alight,” and show her to be the “personification of the Holy Spirit dwelling unhonoured amid the smouldering ashes of the Soul’s latent, never totally extinct, Divinity” (pp. 194-195).]

[Explores psychological aspects of cognition in children.]

[Eight essays on the resurgence of interest in folklore in America in the later twentieth century, including Jane A. Becker, “Revealing Traditions: The Politics of Culture and Community in America, 1888-1988” (pp. 19-60); and Jackson Lears, “Packaging the Folk: Tradition and Amnesia in American Advertising, 1880-1940” (pp. 103-140).]

[Includes excerpt from Stith Thompson, “Universality of the Folktale” (pp. 469-473); Perrault, “Cinderella” (pp. 474-479); Grimms’ “Ashputtle” (pp. 479-484); Tanith Lee, “When the Clock Strikes” (pp. 485-498); Waley’s translation of Tuan Cheng-Shih’s “A Chinese Cinderella” (498-500); an excerpt from Bascom’s version of “The Maiden, the Frog, and the Chief’s Son: An African Cinderella” (pp. 500-505); an excerpt from Indries Shah’s “The Algonquin Cinderella,” that is, “Oochigeaskw — The Rough-Faced Girl: A Native American Cinderella” (pp. 505-507), Campbell Grant’s adaptation for A Little Golden Book of the Disney movie “Cinderella” (1949) (pp. 507-510); Anne Sexton, “Cinderella” (pp. 510-513); excerpt from Bettelheim chapter on “Cinderella, Sibling Rivalry, and Oedipal Conflicts,” from The Uses of Enchantment (pp. 513-522), excerpt from Madonna Kolbenschlag, Kiss Sleeping Beauty Good-Bye , presented as “A Feminist’s View” (pp. 522-528); and Habe Tikebm’s “America’s Cinderella” (pp. 528-536), along with “Synthesis Activities,” which includes summary of Cap o’ Rushes, and Research Activities (pp. 536-540).]

[Eleven essays on concepts of genre in folklore scholarship, including Francis Utley on “Oral Genres as a Bridge to Written Literature,” Max Luthi on “Aspects of the Marchen and the Legend,” David Bynum on “The Generic Nature of Oral Epic Poetry,” Harry Oster on “The Blues as a Genre,” Charles Scott’s “On Defining the Riddle: The Problem of a Structural Unit,” Linda Dégh and Andrew Vázsonyi on “Legend and Belief,” Peter Seitel on “Proverbs: A Social Use of Metaphor,” Barre Toelken on “The ‘Pretty Languages’ of Yellowman: Genre, Mode, and Texture in Navaho Coyote Narratives,” V. Hrdlicková on “Japanese Professional Storytellers,” Roger Abrahams on “The Complex Relations of Simple Forms,” and Dan Ben-Amos on “Analytical Categories and Ethnic Genres.”]

[American Indian use of Cinderella as metaphor for parent-child relations.]

[In the essay “Unpacking My Library” Benjamin speaks of his delight in the illustrated Grimm and the reading of Bachofen. In “The Storyteller” (pp. 83-109) he suggests: “If peasants and seamen were past masters of storytelling, the artisan class was its university. In it was combined the lore of faraway places, such as a much-traveled man brings home, with the lore of the past, as it best reveals itself to natives of a place” (p. 85); also a strong practical interest. Considers the decline of storytelling in modern times. The storyteller takes from his own or reported experience and “makes it the experience of those who are listening to his tale. The novelist has isolated himself” (p. 87). The first story teller of the Greeks was Herodotus. A story does not expend itself; “it preserves and concentrates its strength and is capable of releasing it even after a long time” (p. 90). It thrives in a milieu of work. “Death is the sanction of everything that the storyteller can tell” (p. 94). “The cardinal point for the unaffected listener is to assure himself of the possibility of reproducing the story. Memory is the epic faculty par excellence ” (p. 97). “The story teller is the man who could let the wick of his life be consumed completely by the gentle flame of his story. This is the basis of the incomparable aura about the storyteller …. The storyteller is the figure in which the righteous man encounters himself” (pp. 108-109).]

[For the child reading is active, creative, unique, and participatory and thus co-operative. See also Michael Benton, et al., Young Readers Responding to Poems , London: Routledge, 1989.]

[Ch. 3 theorizes “looking” relations. Useful for Cinderella, Donkey-skin, Beauty and the Beast, and other transformation narratives.]

[Berland brings Freud’s theories of a pleasure principle, Narcissism, Thanatose, id, ego and superego to bear upon the “personali-ties” of Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and Goofy, then discusses the psychodynamics of various other movies. He finds Disney’s Cinderella to be “a passive heroine of the fairy godmother” who can do nothing for herself. Berland attempts to link Disney’s sanitizing efforts to his abused childhood. “By and large Disney Productions attempted, as an artistic policy, to be asexual” and thus “made safe for public consumption. Like Perrault, Disney was an entrepreneur who gave his public what it wanted to see” (p. 103).]

[Berne uses Perrault’s Cinderella as primary example of how fairytale scripting works in transactional analysis. Cinderella is the heroine, experiencing happiness early in life, then tragedy. She accepts time restrictions imposed by the Fairy Godmother and plays a version of “Hide and Go Seek” known in transitional analysis as “Try and Catch Me” with the Prince. After the ball she wears an “I’ve Got a Secret” facial expression, and, after the Prince finds her, communicates a “Now She Tells Us” transaction. The father, with the death of his first wife, marries an imposing, frigid woman and takes the Fairy Godmother as mistress. The Stepmother, through seduction, arranges a good marriage for herself, and then shows her negative intentions once she is secure. The Stepsisters imitate their mother and try to get everything first; once caught out they apologize and get rewarded with Lords as husbands. The Godmother tells Cinderella that her magic will fade at midnight, thus assuring that everyone will be out of the house until then so that she can spend time alone with Cinderella’s father. The Prince is a bit of a wimp, who can’t, even after two evenings, find out who she is, and, in a footrace, can’t catch her even though she is limping with only one shoe. The Prince’s Gentleman completes his work assignments with integrity; he might have appropriated Cinderella were he not ethical. The Two Lords who marry the Stepsisters transact marriages that doom them into a prescribed life style.]

[The chapter on Cinderella (pp. 18-38) is “a story about women alone together and they are each other’s enemies. This is more powerful as a lesson than the ball, the Prince or the glass slipper” (p. 18). Bernikow responds first to the Perrault/Disney tale, then to Grimm. In both the women vie for prettiness and mutilate themselves to achieve it — women who learn from women the power of aloneness, magic as a female art, the danger of midnight (the witching hour), and the control of men. Grimm’s version offers a less passive heroine, a virginal hearth child oppressed not just by the stepmother but by the father as well. In some early Cinderella stories the antagonist was the sexually predatory male. But Grimm’s tale ends with the mutilation of women by women. Cinderella going to the ball and wining fellowship might have been a happy ending. But the ball is more like Emma Bovary’s deadly fantasy.]

[Retrospective of The Uses of Enchantment .]

[Fairy tales take us to the edge of the abyss, then serenely rescue us. Reads Hansel and Gretel in terms of weaning trauma and Jack and the Beanstalk in terms of adjustments to life’s real problems, particularly as the child deals with replacement mothers who are demanding and frustrating, as in Cinderella. The beauty of fairy tales lies in their confrontation of such deeply troubling problems which are then resolved to the protagonist’s satisfaction.]

[See esp. pp. 236-277 on Cinderella. Bettelheim offers an extended Freudian analysis of Perrault’s Cinderella, Grimm’s Aschenputtel, and other versions like the Scottish Rashin Coatie, as symbolic vehicles for a young girl’s maturation. He considers ashes as a trope in German folklore (Martin Luther’s discussion of Abel as Cain’s ash-brother, or Jacob as Esau’s ash-brother), the insecurities and aggressions surrounding sibling rivalry, a child’s pervasive feeling of worthlessness and masochistic desires to be treated like Cinderella, and a child’s Oedipal/Electral anxieties (kindly father, wicked stepmother, etc.) as she takes steps in personality development required to reach self-fulfillment and a readiness for courtship and marriage. Bettelheim examines this growth in terms of Erikson’s model of the human life-cycle beginning in basic trust, then proceeding to autonomy, initiative, industry, and finally identity. In the course of his analysis he gives some attention to Basile’s Cat Cinderella and versions of Cinderella involving incest (pp. 243-248). The hearth is symbol for mother, service there akin to Vestal Virgin duties. Her going to the ball several times before giving herself to the prince reflects her ambivalence toward committing herself personally and sexually. The slipper is a symbol of the vagina; her running away an effort to protect her virginity. The mutilation of the stepsisters’ feet involves forms of castration complexes. But the story does not deal with success in love, only the adolescent’s growth to a readiness for love.]

[Highlights motion pictures with fairy tale themes in anticipation of the release of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast . Movies are a kind of rite-of-passage for youth, the first place where they can get away from their parents. All Westerns stem from Jack and the Beanstalk ; all thrillers, from Bluebeard ; all slasher movies, from Little Red Riding Hood .]

[Considers folktales to be the most difficult kinds of marchen but the most useful in the instruction of older children because of their reach into a culture’s superstitions, beliefs, customs, and folksayings. Uses Stith Thompson to identify characteristic elements of a Cinderella story, and discusses, with synopses, twelve variants: Ashputtel, Turkey Girl, Little Burnt-Face, Abedeja, Maria and the Golden Slipper, Beauty and Pock Face, Banizara and Kakazara, The Three Sisters, Little Saddleslut, Mjadveig, and Mette Wooden-hood.]

[Thirteen essays, each followed by a “Try This” cluster of suggestions for exercises. Part I: Bringing Folklore and Children Together in School: A Beginning. Part II: Understanding the Folklore Process Introduction; Part III: Making Connections Between Folklore and Other Forms of Literature.]

[A version from a Scottish informant in Australia, accompanied by a detailed solar mythological interpretation based largely on a golden, shining shoe (Dundes, 1982, p. 309)].

[The book is part of a post-Freudian psychiatrist’s search for a cohesive theory of emotional “illness” and a growing sense of the role of violence in its causation. Discusses children’s fear of their parents killing them, fantasies of abandonment, problems of gender definition, feelings of “worthlessness” and the “noble parent,” the need for a distorted parental image, a girl’s obsession with marrying her father, the fear, fantasy and hope of being loved, and the persistence of childhood fantasies in an adult.]

[Review of The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim.]

[Bly uses Grimms’ Iron Hans as the basis for his argument on male development in the later 20th century. For a synopsis of Grimms’ story see Basic European Texts . Addressing what he sees as a crisis in American institutions caused primarily by remote fathers who fail to provide definitive processes within the rituals of masculine maturation, Bly analyses the Wild Man in the story as a surrogate father who guides the youth through eight stages of male growth that lead the child toward a vigorous masculinity that is both protective and emotionally responsible. The stages are: 1) The Key and the Pillow; 2) When One Hair Turns Gold; 3) The Road of Ashes, Descent, and Grief; 4) The Hunger for the King in a Time with No Father; 5) The Meeting with the God-Woman in the Garden; 6) To Bring the Interior Warriors Back to Life; 7) Riding the Red, the White, and the Black Horses; 8) The Wound by the King’s Men. The Epilogue is on The Wild Man in Ancient Religion, Literature, and Folk Life.]

[A pseudo-Freudian parody of Cinderella psychoanalytical criticism. “Cindy gained enough ego strength from her regression under the auspices of the ego to enable her to return to the genital level and marry the Prince” (p. 59). Both undertake psychoanalysis, Cindy to deal with her splitting compulsion, regression, turning anger against herself, withdrawal, reality denial, oral, anal, and phallic fixations, her masochism, paranoia, homosexual tendencies, and atypical ego development; the Prince to work through his fetishism, homosexuality, passivity, panic states, castration anxiety, difficulty in forming object relations, and compulsive symptomatology.]

[Considers avoidance, abandonment, and discarding of the daughter in several Cinderella variants, problems powerful enough to necessitate manipulation by the narratives “to shift the textual focus away from the latent father-daughter material and deflect it into a mother-daughter conflict” (p. 31). Considers the “Many Furs” tale along with “Myths of Daughter sacrifice” (pp. 41-42).]

[Both anorexia nervosa and bulimia stem from sexual role conflicts usually stemming from a lack of sense of owning their body and its sensations and a hang up on good looks that will make boys go crazy or secure a job. Mothers and their frustrations and ambitions are often factors in the child’s illness along with the child’s fear of rejection. Boskind-Lodahl discusses the psychodynamics of the binge and purge. Most of the author’s patients had never experienced a satisfying love relationship. One factor seems to be the conditions of a male-dominated society where the bulimarexic gives men the power to reject her. Like Cinderella’s stepsisters, who mutilate themselves for a love that can never be, the bulimarexic feels powerless in the hands of traditions and her mother. The psychoanalyst needs to provide positive role models sufficient to counteract the negative experiences in relationships with their dissatisfied mother, thereby helping to alleviate the low self-esteem that is at the root of their problems.]

[Discussion of Grimms’ (especially Jacob’s) reaction to a version of Cinderella sent to them ca. 1823 by Serbian folklore collector Vuk Karadizić (Dundes, 1982, p. 309).]

[A manual of interactive materials in art, music, drama, storytelling, puppetry, and creative writing for teachers.]

[Practices of abandonment are common in the ancient and medieval world and range from exposure of the baby and the giving over of the child to others to raise to the giving of the child through some contract (e.g., marriage, oblation [giving a child to monastery]) at an early age. Rousseau deposed all five of his children in a foundling home shortly after they born “solely out of regard for their mother.” In the Introduction, Boswell studies practices and attitudes from ancient times through the late Middle Ages, with some attention to eighteenth-century practices.]

[Using vocabulary analysis, Bottigheimer examines the work ethic in the spinning tales and the faint cries of distress and fatigue from the spinning room in the centuries preceding the Grimms’ work. In Boccaccio’s tales, work does not intrude upon the lives of his women. But by the seventeenth century women are hard at it. Two voices are heard, one dissatisfied with archetypically female employment, and the other extolling spinning.]

[The volume explores the function of fairy tales in society and the way they are used by or appear to their tellers, their listeners or readers, or society at large. “Walt Disney’s American versions of some of the best-known fairy tales provide an illusion of good and evil which in no way corresponds to the far more subtle surfacing of malevolence in society. He and his animators sketched an equally illusory set of feminine qualities which corresponded to widely held post-World War II notions about femininity” (p. xi). Nineteen essays, including Kay Stone, “Oral Narration in Contemporary North America”; Jerome Clinton, “Madness and Cure in the Thousand and One Nights”; Karen Rowe, “To Spin a Yarn: The Female Voice in Folk-lore and Fairy Tale”; Rudolf Schenda, “Telling Tales — Spreading Tales: Change in the Communicative Forms of a Popular Genre”; Maria Tatar, “Born Yesterday: Heroes in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales”; Ruth Bottigheimer, “Silenced Women in the Grimms’ Tales: The ‘Fit’ Between Fairy Tales and Society in Their Historical Context”; James Fernandez, “Folklorists as Agents of Nationalism: Asturian Legends and the Problem of Identity”; Torborg Lundell, “Gender-Related Biases in the Type and Motif Indexes of Aarne and Thompson”; Steven Jones, “The Structure of Snow White”; Hans-Jorg Uther, “The Encyclopedia of the Folktale”; Anna Tavis, “Fairy Tales from a Semiotic Perspective”; Simon Grolnick, “Fairy Tales and Psychotherapy”; Gerhard Mueller, “The Criminological Significance of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales”; Kay Stone, “Feminist Approaches to the Interpretation of Fairy Tales”; Jack Zipes, “Marxists and the Illumination of Folk and Fairy Tales”; Ranier Wehse, “Past and Present Follkloristic Narrator Research”; Alan Dundes, “Fairy Tales from a Folkloristic Perspective”; Jack Zipes, “The Grimms and the German Obsession with Fairy Tales”; and Heinz Rolleke, “The ùtterly Hessian’ Fairy Tales by ‘Old Marie’: The End of a Myth.”]

[In Dundes, Cinderella: A Casebook , pp. 98-109. In search of historical origin of the Cinderella narrative, Bourboulis attempts to document imperial bride-shows in Byzantium, Russia, and China, where an emperor, king, or powerful official orders eligible young women to be assembled and displayed so that the “prince” might choose a bride. Bourboulis discusses Chinese practices of binding women’s feet along with the displaying of such beauty. Another implication of the display might be mythic where the “months” are exhibited at Carnival festivals.]

[Discusses story “Gal Young Un” as a feminist revision of the classic fairytale “Cinderella,” with its strong Oedipal forces. “Rawlings emancipates her Cinderella, Elly, from the traditional fairytale, or Oedipal, narrative by allowing her to return to the pre-Oedipal mother bond Freud says women must abandon” (p. 2). Mattie is at first the evil step-mother, but here the bad and good are found in the same person. Elly in her blue pumps causes jealousy, but gradually Elly turns toward Mattie and accomplishes the most difficult task of all, powerful female bonding, as both women defect from Trax, the princely/unprincely male. The patriarchal foundation cracks, and the women move toward a new conclusion. Instead of mutilating their own feet they mutilate the prince’s “foot.” Though Elly is battered and bruised, Mattie comforts and nurtures her by the fire and feeds her starving body. Rather than abandoning the mother bond à la Freud, they reclaim it.]

[Summary of a convention at University of California, Berkeley, designed to explore “clues to the neurological basis of taste.” Although the methods of New Criticism that claimed to have a handle on valid criteria in the assessment of art and the beautiful have been “rigorously critiqued … and in some cases abandoned, the aesthetic preferences it engendered continue to flourish” (p. 305.]

[Uses Propp’s methods to identify three primary functions (rather than Propp’s thirty one) of French Fairy Tales: 1) the movement from deterioration to improvement; 2) from merit to reward, and 3) from unworthiness to punishment. In most functions the characters are both acting and being acted upon. Examines twenty-seven tales, including Cinderella types, which exemplify and reveal the complexities of the threefold pattern.]

[Review article on Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment ; Propp, Morphology of The Folktale ; Ann Wilson, Traditional Romance and Tale ; and Luthi, Once Upon a Time . Noting the tendency of people to reject modern work on fairy tales as too primitive, weak in subject matter, and feeble in manner of proceeding, Brewer makes a case for the power of symbolic structures within the stories. He uses the Cinderella over several hundred years in three versions, along with Beauty and the Beast, to define the richness of such literature. Male protagonists offer different patterns of maturation, witness Puss in Boots. The family drama which is the basis of fairy tale is at the center of many traditional tales, as in the Oedipus story, the story of David and Saul, or the Arthurian stories. Brewer considers Shakespeare’s use of fairy tale materials, particularly King Lear .]

[Brewer’s Introduction considers the inner currents of successful narrative — the parable within — as the teller introduces localizations to make myth more vivid to a current audience. Interest lies in a story’s relatedness, the configuration between its parts and its audience. Considers gendered patterns for protagonists within particular societies, using Cinderella as example (p. 9). Considers rites de passage in terms of psychological and religious demands on the protagonist. Chapter one ("Fairy Tales") discusses components of various Cinderella narratives, particularly as they pertain to family structures (pp. 16-32), and uses Desdemona to illustrate unattractive components of a Cinderella myth. Considers Cinderella’s wanton dirtiness and makes distinctions between her story and what the author really means. “If we look at [Perrault’s] story of Cinderilla in a modernistic way we shall naturally come to the conclusion that she is not by any means really so good and beautiful as we are told she is. We have already been able to deduce on a good literalistic evidence that she is stupid. She must be spiteful and ugly as well, really. This may lead us to reconsider the character of the stepmother. The Narrator tells us that she was ‘the proudest and most haughty woman that ever was known’. But we have already found reason to suppose that we are not meant to take the Narrator’s word at its face-value” (p. 18). Similarly, Gawain, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , is a fool, and so too Griselda, in Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale. “Every healthy mind at every period has a need to register what it feels to be real, and equally a need to accommodate stories, our fundamental imaginative activity, to that perceived reality” (p. 20). Brewer considers ways in which the stepmother is a variant of the mother, and both, along with the stepsisters, components of Cinderella’s self-realization. “The switch of the stepsisters from allies of the mother-figure to allies of the protagonists illustrates the fluidity of images in the fairy tale, controlled as they are by the needs of the pattern” (p. 23). Considers also Hearth Cat Cinderellas, Chinese versions, Catskin, and Rashin Coatie Cinderellas. Ch. V discusses the Story of Gareth (Malory), which also involves Cinderella variations.]

[Older-sisters-should-marry-first custom.]

[Precises of hundreds of examples of Fables and Exemplary Tales and Fairy Tales (vol. I) and Jocular Tales, Novelle, and Nursery Tales (vol. II). “Folk narrative is folk fiction told for edification, delight and amusement; folk legend was once believed to be true” (p. 1).]

[Plot is the logic/syntax of a kind of discourse that develops through temporal sequence and progression, a way of negotiating problems of temporality, time-boundedness, and consciousness of existence within the limits of mortality. The book focuses on modern narrative theory. Brooks uses Grimms’ “All-Kinds-of-Fur” as a model for dissecting plot components (pp. 7-23). Ch. 10: Fictions of the Wolf Man: Freud and Narrative Understanding” (pp. 264-285) reconsiders the case of Sergei P--, to explore interconnections between culture and fiction, a man representative of aristocratic culture (or who shaped himself that way) in his madness, being analyzed by one of the great plot makers, and who at the end of his life in the 1970s writes his own biography, a plotting exercise through the temporalities of nearly a century of Europe’s most bizarre history. Brooks assesses Freud’s detective fictions and Wolfman’s aristocratic fetishes for servant girls along with the passions for origins and end points as well as mutilation (pun on SP [espe] and wespe, the wasp with its wings torn off) and the modernist yearning to organize life in terms of myth for explanatory and justificatory master plots — ailing princes, strong serving girls, and lots of yearning. The concluding chapter on Endgames and the Study of Plot considers the artificiality of closure and the trope that healthy is well-constructed, neurotic incoherent. The successfully transacted ending warrants a passing-on.]

[Discusses syncretism, man’s kinship with nature expressed through fairy tale and dance.]

[Argues that the Native American Cinderella stories are originally imported variants of “Cenicienta,” Spanish adaptations of Perrault’s “Cendrillon.” In Pre-Columbian Native American tales, the hero would be male, an Ash Boy figure. Tales of an Ash Girl (e.g. the Mapuche Cinderella or the Zuni Turkey Girl) took well to their new environment, however, and have become ingeniously localized. “Transformed to the Fourth World, she fully enters her body, her species in nature, and her community. She inhabits a historical landscape and knows the rhythms of time according to which a moon or a morning may recapitulate the world” (p. 339).]

[Examines gender social tropology in the 369 musical comedies performed in New York City between 1900-1920. The most prevalent plot is that of Cinderella, where poor girl meets rich boy and after obstacles, complications, and musical numbers, marries him in the final scene. Women rise by hard work and virtue. With the men luck is a more important factor. For both genders, modest deceit and basic honesty are simultaneously valued. The productions aim at weary businessmen to reassure them of success over ethnic threats or systematic oppression. Fear and hostility toward recent immigrants are expressed by laughter at their incompetence in the new world. The musicals mingle social reality with psychological wish-fulfillment to create a dream world in which every anxiety is allayed and every need fulfilled.]

[In addition to discussing the development of A Little Princess as a Cinderella narrative, Brown considers Burnett’s own life as itself a kind of Cinderella story.]

[Examines the predetermined sexist components of the Oedipal plot in Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast and juxtaposes them with the myth-breaking components of Angela Carter’s “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” and “Tiger’s Bride.” The Oedipal traditions which read experience only through masculine desire “must be subverted, those stories must be retold.”]

[First published in 1931. Stresses reversal of fortune as key component of Cinderella figure, the disaster usually occurring within the family, precipitating testing and maturing of the Cinderella figure, perhaps with the guidance of a godmother figure.]

[Considers the relevance of directed graph theory to analysis of mythical variants; mythical functions, threshold effects, and constraints on information processing; Lévi-Strauss’s views on history in terms of measures of selective information; the relationship of algorithms and recursive function theory to theoretical issues in the study of myth; and a mapping of structural mythology onto the theoretical grid of generative grammar.]

[Discusses sex role socialization through mass media and marketing by big toy industries, particularly Mattel, who created in 1984 She-Ra, The Princess of Power. Considers the “Superwoman Syndrome” that plagues today’s working mothers. The Superwoman Syndrome draws extensively on folklore in creating its illusions. The dolls and toys are created by adults for adult consumers. The messages from contemporary “faddish” world of manufacturers and media advertisers are often confusing as they vacillate between passive femininity and the active role of super-heroine. “Although much has been made concerning the new ‘equality’ of women, little girls continue to play in traditional roles. In many ways this fact is comforting: a balanced view of personality includes both male and female. An ‘equality’ for women has most often been envisioned in terms of male attributes. The more ‘masculine’ a woman becomes, the more likely it is that she will be ‘equal.’ In reality, sexual equality will come only when women’s strengths and attributes are valued as highly as men’s, when nurturing and assertion are shared by both sexes” (p. 191).]

[On conventions of dress and cosmetics in the 50s.]

[Considers Sue Sevel’s second grade class at Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School, where a videotape series entitled Different and the Same is used to raise sensitivity on racial issues. Actor Cedric Young plays a school librarian discussing children’s feelings of being left out of images in fairy tales like Cinderella when confronted with the arbitrary rule that “only blond, blue-eyed girls can play Cinderella” (p. 13).]

[Considers Song of the Lark as a Cinderella narrative.]

[“Taken all together, they offer, in their oft-repeated and constantly varying examinations of human vicissitudes, a general explanation of life preserved in the slow ripening of rustic consciences; these folk stories are the catalogue of the potential destinies of men and women, especially for that stage in life when destiny is formed, i.e., youth, beginning with birth, which itself often foreshadows the future; then the departure from home, and, finally, through the trials of growing up, the attainment of maturity and the proof of one’s humanity. This sketch, although summary, encompasses everything: the arbitrary division of humans, albeit in essence equal, into kings and poor people; the persecution of the innocent and their subsequent vindication, which are the terms inherent in every life; love unrecognized when first encountered and then no sooner experienced than lost; the common fare of subjection to spells, or having one’s existence predetermined by complex and unknown forces. This complexity pervades one’s entire existence and forces one to struggle to free oneself, to determine one’s own fate; at the same time we can liberate ourselves only if we liberate other people, for this is a sine qua non of one’s own liberation. There must be fidelity to a goal and purity of heart, values fundamental to salvation and triumph. There must also be beauty, a sign of grace that can be masked by the humble, ugly guise of a frog; and above all, there must be present the infinite possibilities of mutation, the unifying element in everything: men, beasts, plants, things” –pp xviii-xix.]

[Though Campbell’s subject is primarily masculine, heroic, and macrocosmic as opposed to fairy tale, domestic, and microcosmic (he makes no mention of Cinderella), various paradigms of the hero’s dreams and adventures that he traces find parallels in Cinderella stories — afflicted childhoods, the call for adventure, the crossing of thresholds, fleeting appearances in public with feats of skill, the magic flight, venturing forth from the common world into a world of wonder, alienation and obscurity, exile or struggle in the belly of the whale, encounters with the monstrous but also with animal helpers and signs of divine intervention in support of virtue, the brutal functions of mutilation, rescue from without, return to a public role despite tensions between private and public dreams, the privilege of becoming master of two worlds, revelation and the freedom to live, a happy ending as transcendence of tragedy, etc.]

[Discusses a current Australian riddle on the Cinderella theme that imposes symmetry “as guarantee of phallologocentric control” (p. 183). Ques.: “What is the perfect Cinderella?” Ans: “A shiela who fucks and sucks until midnight and then changes into a pizza and a 6-pack” (p. 185). “This labouring Cinderella not only produces a surplus which will restore the male somatic capital, she must learn absolute redundancy when midnight strikes: she must ‘change into something more comfortable’ for the pack of six. She who would eat will be eaten, she who would drink will be drunk” (p. 186). One aspect of the riddle “is the pleasure it seems to want to exhibit in combining markers of cultural difference into the one act of derision … [It] imposes formal symmetry while displaying the pleasure and anxiety of asymmetry” (p. 187).]

[Considers the conflict between traditional family structures and its prescriptions for love and contemporary patterns of limited commitments between independent individuals focused on self-development, and a third option now emerging in popular culture of enduring love combined with self-development. The book considers the history of love, feminized love and its costs, and androgynous love conducive to self-development, marriage, and families.]

[Ten essays on gender construction and various forms of social intervention in shaping attitudes toward sex and sexuality within a variety of societies.]

[A debunking of Freud’s myth that women are inherently masochistic. Chapters on “Why do you do this to yourself?” “What the ‘experts’ have said,” “Mothers,” “The Child’s Growth toward ‘Masochism’: ‘Expert” Opinion and Reality,” “Women in Relationships with Men,” “Women’s Bodies,” “Women as Victims of Violence,” “Women at Work,” “Women in Therapy,” “The Beginning.” Sixteen page bibliography.]

[Ten fairy tales using whole language approach and Bloom’s Taxonomy. Cinderella activities, pp. 52-59.]

[Reflections from Rome on living in Johnson City, near the Blue Ridge, and being a writer. Tells story of her mother, shoe size 7 and 1/2 C, forcing her feet into 9 AAA, thereby deforming the bones in her feet the way Chinese women do. She was convinced that short wide feet caused by going barefoot were a sign of poor mountain ignorants, and that to get out of Kyles Ford, Tennessee, her only hope was to change her feet. “She convinced herself that she had long narrow aristocratic feet and she bought shoes that proved it whether they fit or not” (p. 97).]

[In three parts: 1) The Mutilated Girls , a reading of Grimms’ Ashenputtel to suggest a drama between two female families in opposition, animated solely by the wills of the mothers — a story of cutting bits off women so that they will fit in. Were the stepmothers’ daughters the father’s natural daughters, which would make the speedy marriage and the stepmother’s hostility more probable? Ashputtle is driven by the dove, spirit of her mother, who pecks at her ear to make her dance; the stepmother wields the knife over her daughters — daughters subdued by “both awe and fear at the phenomenon of mother love” (p. 58) — while the dove points out the bloody wounds. The bloody shoe is a hideous receptacle: “Ashputtle’s foot, the size of the bound foot of a Chinese woman; a stump. Already an amputee, she put her foot in it.” The turtledove triumphs while the mad mother stands by impotently. Ashputtle’s foot fits the shoe like a corpse fits a coffin. “See how well I look after you, my darling!” 2) The Burned Child , a retelling of the charred, scabbed, and scarred girl, growing fat on the milk of the cow, growing breasts, wanting the man for herself, sucking the cow dry, shedding her mutilated skin, combing her hair with the cat’s claws until the cat is maimed but the child clean but stark naked, until the bird in the tree pierces its breast and spills down blood to give the child a red silk dress, and the girl goes into the kitchen, all lovely, catches the eye of the man, who leaves the stepmother behind to stir the ashes while he gives the lovely girl a house and money. “She did all right,” and the ghost of the mother sleeps okay. 3) The Traveling Costume tells of the stepmother burning the orphan’s face with a hot poker for not stirring the ashes enough, the girl weeping over her mother’s grave, the mother coming to the girl at night, giving her a red dress — “I had it when I was your age, I used it for traveling”(p. 61). The mother takes worms from her eye sockets which turn to jewels — “sell them as you need to” (p. 62) — and invites the orphan into the coffin, which turns into a coach and horses. “Now go and seek your fortune, darling.” The earliest version of this story appears in the VLS reader (1991). The story was revised and posthumously published in American Ghosts & Old World Wonders (1993).]

[A discussion of what children two to seven or eight want and enjoy and how best to satisfy their pleasure in books by selecting those which possess qualities they like.]

[Explores issues of child as reader to encourage criticism by children in such matters as point of view, style, taking sides, and the identification of tell-tale gaps.]

[Portraits of twenty-four women (first names only) who don’t fit or choose to conform to the usual cultural beauty standards. Considers racism, body shapes, the role of class and economics in shaping images of beauty, the pressures for conformity, and the role of “outlaws” in America.]

[Fifteen tales told by R. M. Ward and his kindred in the Beech Mountain section of Western North Carolina and by other descendants of Council Harmon (1803-1896) elsewhere in The Southern Mountains; with three tales from Wise County, Virginia. Appendix compiled by Herbert Halpert.]

[See Modern Children’s Editions for synopses.]

[Discusses Walker’s Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast transformations and the prominence of Ovid and metamorphoses in writings of the past decade.]

[What happens in the “ever after” when the Prince turns fifty or the Princess is widowed? Only about 2% of the 2500 fairy tales in published collections feature older protagonists. Most elder tales come from Eastern sources — Japan, India, Arabia, and Russia. Rather than follow Jung and others who usually consider the elderly as archetypes of spirit, Chinen views elderly protagonists as representatives of the ego and individuality. He analyzes the Japanese tale “Princess Moonlight,” noting the passivity typical of elder tales. Other tales exemplify the problems of self-confrontation. In elder tales the protagonist often learns to see through illusion. Emancipated maturity offers a unique state of innocence, a spiritual illumination. The protagonist requires a sturdy ego to survive ill-tempered encounters. Often it is necessary to retrace earlier psychological stages, almost going backwards. “Regression” emancipation can be rewarding, like reclaiming lost land, as the protagonist becomes proficient in interpretation of developmental symbols.]

[Includes excellent bibliography on aging, psychology of the elderly, and psychotherapy for the aged with a special focus on uses of fairy and folk tales.]

[A book about what happens when the prince goes bald and the princess has a midlife crisis. Sixteen midlife tales, with commentary on the insights they contain. Juxtaposes the education of the difficult people with the Grimms’ portrayal of the stepsisters’ fate (pp. 50-51) and Cinderella’s “waiting-for-a-prince” syndrome with midlife emancipation in tales like “The Wife Who Became King” (pp. 54-73). Considers components of Oedipal conflict in Cinderella stories as key component in midlife crises for both men and women (pp. 122-126).]

[Part I: Seeing the Problem: Mothering and the Social Organization of Gender, with considerations of why women mother, the argument from nature and from role-training, and psychoanalysis and sociological inquiry into the matter. Part II: The Psychoanalytic Story, with considerations of early psychological development, natal dependence and narcissism, primary love, beginnings of self and the growth of object love, the effects of early mothering, the maternal role, gender differences in the pre-Oedipal period, mother-daughter relationships, development of notions of femininity, Oedipal relations with mother, their resolution and replay with discussion of the post-Oedipal gender personality and bias in Freud. Part III: Gender Personality and the Reproduction of Mothering, with considerations of the sexual sociology of adult life, family and economy, mothering, masculinity, and capitalism and the psychodynamics of the family — Oedipal asymmetries and heterosexual knots, gender personality, etc.]

[“A sophisticated survey of the Irish version by one of Norway’s leading comparativists” –Dundes 1982, p. 309. Christiansen considers 27 Cinderella variants, summarizing the functions of the lot. All five of the redactions of the Cinderella novel described by Anna Brigita Rooth are represented in Ireland. “There is, in other words, no standard Irish Cinderella-story, neither can Irish variants have a common source. They form a definite West-European traditional group, where, as in other groups, a probably extremely complicated network of influences is the background” (p. 101). There are some Irish Cinderellas akin to those of Spain and Italy not found in England or Scotland. And Scandinavian versions likewise appear in Ireland, versions found also in Iceland.]

[A study in the readership, economics, and influence of adolescent romance novels and teen magazines as they shape the emotional needs of girls age 10-16 in American culture and their understanding of what a woman should be. An interesting study of the rise of the New Right and the expression of white middle class gender ideology and tension within the class.]

[A booklet presenting Cinderella iconography used by papermakers in their watermarks. For description of the booklet, see the entry under Miscellaneous Cinderellas .]

[Quick was a 65-70 page weekly from Cowles Magazines, publishers of Look and Flair , in a 4” x 6” format; the magazine sold for 10 cents. The cover of this issue shows Disney accompanied by images of Cinderella in ball gown and working garb. The “quick” essay of c. 300 words places Cinderella in a context of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Snow White, including images of each along with six frames of Disney’s villainous Lucifer on the prowl. “A hundred years from now historians won’t remember the Rudolph Valentinos or the Jean Harlows of the motion picture industry. But they will remember Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse” (p. 48). And they will remember his Cinderella. “Walt has a mind exactly like a motion-picture projector. You can practically see the frames click off in his brain” (pp. 49-50).]

[Discusses the shift from “family industry” to capitalized “domestic industry” and the movement of production out of the home.]

[Explores Cinderella figures in Spanish literature.]

[Suggests that the “low tradition” in horror movies possesses positive subversive potential, a space to explore gender ambiguity and transgress traditional boundaries of masculinity and femininity.]

[Considers heroines and what defines them from Barbara Fritchie and Cleopatra to Guinevere, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Mata Hari, Belle Starr, Sarah Bernhardt,and Lydia Pinkham — as Hollywood and legend defined them.]

[Dissertation in Sociology, York University, Toronto. Cohen interviewed 50 non-white women who work as live-in domestics in Toronto. Deprivation feelings among domestics are bidimensional, contractual, and personal-maternal, and reflect the duality of their role as “family” workers. Deprivation feelings are stronger among younger, less religious, better educated and better-off domestics. Although relatively powerless, domestics are capable of acting upon and reinterpreting work situations.]

[Surveys thirty-two college women on the appeal of Cinderella to them as children and then as young adults. For the respondents, in their childhood, Cinderella’s winning of the prince’s love and her triumph over the stepsisters seems to have satisfied vicariously libidinal and aggressive needs. Cinderella is a child who gets big quickly and establishes ego-control. She is as good as she is beautiful and eventually masters her reality and gratifies her own impulses. In their adult life the respondents preferred Perrault’s version as a feminine Horatio Alger. The most admired qualities from the adult perspective were her capacity for wish-fulfillment, her mastery of self and environment, her triumph over her stepmother, and her beauty, clothes, and equipment.]

[Cinderella is a story about “the stripping away of the disguise that conceals the soul from the eyes of others” (as cited by Yolen, 1977). It is not simply a rags-to-riches story, or one of wish-fulfillment by magic, but rather a story of “trial, recognition, and judgement” (p. 105).]

[Includes an Introduction to the Hmong, remarks on the authors and illustrator, prereading activities, and reading materials on the story. Study sheets include grammar and punctuation exercises, graphic organizers, poems, proverbs and sayings, reader’s theater, math exercises, Hmong textile designs, Hmong folktales, writing assignments, exercises on the clarification of values, and bibliography on Hmong literature and Cinderella and Asian variants. For synopsis of Jouanah , see Modern Children’s Editions: Asian .]

[Suggests a solar interpretation of several Indo-European catskin/donkeyskin tales. Tale of Catskin mentioned in Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield , Coote thinks, is indicative of an original and native version. Identifies Irish and English versions, which he summarizes. Though different in detail, both have the same motive, which Coote relates to similar tales in the Himalayas, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Russia, Lithuania, Greece, and Albania, which he summarizes. Sometimes the girl flees in a bear skin, skins of many animals, pigskin, or coat of wood, rushes or gourd skin, but always taking other dresses with her. Coote reconstructs a tale of Aryan prehistory in which the gowns are the dresses of Aurora--luminous states of the heavens where the moon, stars, and rising sun are seen. The abusive cook is akin to Vedic monsters of the night, types of its dangers and inflictions. The removal of the deforming disguise is “the full apparition of the lovely dawn of the south, when all darkness has disappeared” (p. 23).]

[“Often despised as silly or grotesque, fairy tale is the Cinderella among literary forms, going so much further than its humble origins seemed to promise and providint us with many sharply outlined archetypes and clichéd metaphors (like the Cinderella analogy in this very sentence)” (p. 612).]

[“A discussion of “shoes” (customs and beliefs) in India, taking as a point of departure Andrew Lang’s remark that Cinderella could not have originated in a shoeless country. Cosquin, a comparativist committed to the idea that many European fairytales originated in India, demonstrates the existence of shoes in India but has difficulty in citing a complete Cinderella text (as opposed to individual motifs or traits) from that area” — Dundes, Cinderella: A Casebook , p. 310.]

[Discusses “Le conte turc de Constantinople” as a male Cinderella narrative, with puns in the hero’s surname on poverty and cinders, the isolating death of the parent, his having two older brothers, his demeaning labors, his leaping into action, his trials at a place remote from which he must make some sort of deliverance. Cosquin lays out comparable components in narratives from Hungry, Ireland, Russia (the Baba Yaga encounter, etc.), and compares typology of the male Cinderella with female typology. The hero may be a strong man, though not necessarily one who must endure restraint. The influence of the paternal tomb is likely to be a factor, comparable to the tomb of the mother in the female narratives, along with reincarnations of the parental influence in supportive animal forms, as in versions from Indo-China, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and Russia.]

[Discusses help Cinderella receives from her dead mother, noting parallels with Grimms’ Frau Holle tale and kind and unkind girl analogues.]

[Further discussion of interconnections between Cinderella and Frau Holle.]

[A princess marries the prince who saved her from a giant. She loses her shoe in a pond. A king finds the shoe and would marry its mistress. He kills the prince through magic and abducts the princess. A brother appears, breaks the magic, restores the prince to life and frees the princess (p. 48).]

[Semiotic analysis of linguistic variations in French versions of Cinderella.]

[Analysis of sixteen French versions of Cinderella “demonstrating how oppositional patterning through mediation makes the tale a model of marriage relations” — Dundes, Cinderella: A Casebook , p. 310.]

[A collection of essays about pleasure-things women enjoy, things women are said to enjoy, and things women are meant to enjoy and don’t. In five parts: The Look (considering such things as feeling good and looking great, being fashionable, having the body beautiful, pouts and scowls, and ideal homes); The Mouth (considering such things as being a sweetheart, kissing, food pornography, eating together, and the organ itself); The Voice (considering such things as what’s between us, talking things through, song, and mass media);\ The Story (such as soap operas like “The Royals,” the true story of how I became my own person, the story of overwhelming desire, and women’s as opposed to men’s fantasies); and The Instinct (with reflections on the sex-life of stick insects, affairs of the heart, men’s bodies, the wrapping of sex in cultural meanings, prescriptions and constraints); with an epilogue on desire, mainly a collection of observations about what women are.]

[The classic study of its kind, including source and concise sketch of each variant. A monumental work. Anna Brigitta Rooth, The Cinderella Cycle , below, brings the count of variants to about seven hundred.]

[Synopses of some twenty more variants, mostly from Scandinavia, with bibliographical information on others appearing since her initial monograph. Includes King Ingevall’s Daughter, The Girl who got meat and clothes in the Mound, The Girl and the Cow, Mette Wooden-hood, Shaggy-cloak, The Crowbill-cloak, Two versions of The bride by chance, Fur-cloak, Little Mary in the Wooden-gown, A Danish saga of an orphan lady trapped by circumstance, The buried Princess, The Crow-cloak, The stepdaughter and the right daughter, Thousand-cloak, Crow-cloak, Pelsarubb (Fur-robe), Crowbill-cloak, The two Princesses, Tale of a little kitchen wench. The bibliography focuses on German and Scandinavian scholars working on Cinderella ca. 1890-1905.]

[Considers parental reading to children as founded in a “helping mode,” a “child-centered,” empathetic stance normally set within ideal circumstances. In such situations the child interacts with literature “under the most favorable possible conditions, with positive feedback (adult enthusiasm for the story, etc., which elicits mediated responses from the child. Taste is embedded in a context of relationship and performance, but it may be independent of the parent as the child listener reaches a developmental stage where he or she is able to make a secure self/other distinction and re-enact complementary roles within the story and the event, paired opposites, and so on.]

[Includes “The Poor Turkey Girl.”]

[Using twenty of Propp’s functions to develop her argument, Dan analyses seventeen texts of innocent persecuted heroines, including the AT 510 Cinderella type. “The female fairy tale tends towards the sacred legend: the marvelous helper, in almost all texts, is an agent of the sacred power such as an angel or Elijah the Prophet …. The heroine and villains work and are judged in the framework of the society’s religious and ethical value systems. The heroine is depicted as particularly virtuous: she will not be seduced, even in the most horrible of circumstances, and is charitable. The villains, in contrast, are sinners: seducers, slanderers, murderers, and misers. There are also hybrid texts that start as female fairy tales about the innocent persecuted maiden and end as pure sacred legends with the punishment of the villains/sinners by the sacred power” (p. 14).]

[Javanese women use a Cinderella narrative in women’s ceremonies to indoctrinate girls into their subsequent social roles. See Modern Children’s Editions: Asian Cinderellas .]

[See especially “Peasants Tell Tales: The Meaning of Mother Goose.”]

[Davenport has made three twenty-minute video tapes based on the From the Brothers Grimm folktale series to which this Guide is attached: Program One: Scriptwriting, Casting, Makeup; Program Two: Locations, Set Designs, Sound; Program Three: Cinematography, Editing, Directing. The Guide includes a bibliography on film making. As of January 1, 1994, Davenport has produced ten film/video re-creations based mainly on Appalachian adaptations of Grimm tales, including three Cinderella stories, The Goose Girl (18 minutes), Ashpet (45 minutes), and Mutzmag (53 minutes). (See Movies .) Also in the series are Bearskin (20 minutes), Bristlelip (19 minutes), The Frog King (27 minutes), Hansel and Gretel (16 minutes), Jack and the Dentist’s Daughter (38 minutes), Rapunzel, Rapunzel (15 minutes), and Soldier Jack (40 minutes). Davenport has written with Gary Carden From the Brothers Grimm: A Contemporary Retelling of American Folktales and Classic Stories (Fort Atkinson, WI: Highsmith Press, 1993), which is a lively retelling of the stories based on the ten films. There is also a teacher’s guide that accompanies the retelling and film series (Highsmith, 1993). This Guide includes descriptions of the From the Brothers Grimm films, discussion questions, activities, and lesson plans for grades 2-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12.]

[Discusses ways the English National Opera inspires children to create their own operas.]

[Even in the 1950’s “parents still raise their daughters with a view to marriage rather than to furthering her personal development” (p. 137). One effect is a dangerous passivity. “Woman is the Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, she who receives and submits. In song and story the young man is seen departing adventurously in search of a woman; he slays the dragon, he battles giants, she is locked in a tower, a palace, a garden, a cave, she is chained to a rock, a captive, sound asleep: she waits” (p. 271).]

[Part I is devoted to the history of the Szeklers (a semi-nomadic group for whom storytelling was/is vital), their social and economic life and resettlement procedures in the late ninteenth and early twentieth centuries. Part II considers tale occasions, tale material, and specific storytellers. An appendix provides samples of different tellers.]

[Discusses the collecting of the Marchen and their refinements from one edition to the next as the Grimms decided what would be best for children. Traces responses to the tales into the Third Reich, which ranked the Tales as preeminent in defining Nordic-German mythology and values (see Gerstl , below); then to postwar critiques of the Tales by revisionists. This essay is reprinted in Fairy Tales as Ways of Knowing , ed. Metzger & Mommsen, Bern: Peter Lang, 1981.]

[Differentiates tales from legends, discusses formal features and their appeal. “If the legend is a gloomy, alarming question, the tale is a comforting, reassuring, uplifting answer” (p. 68).]

[Based on field work in a village in post-World War II Hungary, Dégh considers the intriguing subject of Grimm’s tales influencing modern folklore, media, and popular commercial culture, such as theme parks, of which Cinderella is the second most popular in German, behind only Hansel and Gretel.]

[A detailed study of Cinderella motifs in Mike Nichol’s 1988 film Working Girl .]

[In Dundes, Cinderella: A Casebook . On the verre/vaire controversy.]

[Lists over a hundred French variants of Cendrillon. Perrault’s is the most popular, but not the only French version.]

[Reads Alice’s story as a parable suggesting the situation, predicament, and adventure of critical feminism, with language meaning more than one wants it to, with systems of rules that cannot but be obeyed if one is to communicate, yet which are pernicious to those eager to dismantle all systems of power, oppression or philosophy and to theorize instead ideas of individual, class, race, gender or group freedom.]

[Discusses uses of embellishments to impress the listener. “The more corrupt and unintelligible they are, the greater the effect’ but they serve also as resting-places for the storyteller in the recital of long, intricate tales, from which he can view swiftly the ground he has to cover. They are recited at greater speed than the narrative proper.”]

[A French/English parallel text edition, with Lukacher’s introductory essay “Mourning Becomes Telepathy.” Cinders is a good introduction to Derrida’s deconstructive philosophy/poetic where cendre , the ashes or trace, functions as the metaphor of that “something that erases itself totally, radically, while presenting itself” (p. 1). Such ash sifting epitomizes Derrida’s getting at the absent flame through metaphor, etymology, wordplay, philosophical inquest, and hidden essences. The essay is to some degree a retrospective, as Derrida reflects upon what has puzzled him, on the placement of the accent. The meditation evolves out of a decade of reflections and animadversions on the phrase “Il y a là cendre” (Cinders there are). The phrase does not say what it is, but what it was: “The sentence says what it will have been, from the moment it gives itself up to itself, giving itself as its own proper name, the consumed (and consummate) art of the secret: of knowing how to keep itself from showing” (p. 35).]

[See pp. 263-308, for one of the earliest discussions of Cinderella.]

[ Song of Songs combines myth and fairy tale, particularly the Bible stories, Rumpelstiltskin and the search for a name, and the Jack-and-the-Beanstalk story, in the presenting of ordinary people facing improbable situations which are resolved through wit, ingenuity, and the help of natural as well as supernatural forces. No specific mention is made of Cinderella, though attention is given to help from animals in fairy tales.]

[A dozen essays on Foucault’s views of sexuality and gender which demonstrate four convergences between feminism and Foucault: 1) that the body is the site of power; 2) that meaningful power is intimate and local rather than of the state; 3) that discourse at the margins is crucial in the sustaining of hegemonic power; 4) that humanism has privileged a masculine elite as it proclaims universals about truth, freedom, and human nature. All such convergences have bearing on Cinderella narratives.]

[An attack on George Cruikshank for introducing temperance issues into the fairy tale “Hop-O-My-Thumbs.” To undermine Cruikshank’s effort Dickens writes a satiric Cinderella, in which the heroine is a member of the Juvenile Bands of Hope and, after winning the prince, throws open “the right of voting, and of being elected to public offices, and of making the laws, to the whole of her sex; who thus came to be always gloriously occupied with public life and whom nobody dared to love” (p. 400). (See Cruikshank and Dickens under Modern Fiction for a synopsis of Dickens’ Cinderella and Cruikshank’s response.) Dickens presents an ardent appeal against tampering with fairy tales for ideological ends. “It would be hard to estimate the amount of gentleness and mercy that has made its way among us through these slight channels. Forbearance, courtesy, consideration for the poor and aged, kind treatment of animals, the love of nature, abhorrence of tyranny and brute force — many such good things have been first nourished in the child’s heart by this powerful aid. It has greatly helped to keep us, in some sense, ever young, by preserving through our worldly ways one slender track not overgrown with weeds, where we may walk with children, sharing their delights. In an utilitarian age … it is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected … A nation without fancy, without some romance, never did, never can, never will, hold a great place under the sun” (pp. 392-393). Dickens laments what has happened to fairy tales in the pantomimes: “The theatre, having done its worst to destroy these admirable fictions — and having in a most exemplary manner destroyed itself, its artists, and its audiences, in that perversion of its duty — it becomes doubly important that the little books themselves, nurseries of fancy as they are should be preserved … Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him” (p. 393). He accuses Cruikshank of being a “Whole Hog,” rooting up roses in the fairy flower garden, and imagines a Temperance Robinson Crusoe with rum left out, or a Peace edition with gunpowder left out, or a Vegetarian edition without goats’ flesh, or a Kentucky edition that flogs that “’tarnal old nigger Friday, twice a day,” or an Aborigines Protection Society edition that denied cannibalism and embraced amiable savages. Then, to clinch his point, he writes his Total Abstinence Cinderella.] [Frederic G. Kitton ( The Minor Writings of Charles Dickens: A Bibliography and Sketch , London: Elliot Stock, 1900, pp. 130-131) refers to Dickens’ protest against Cruikshank’s Fairy Library , and quotes a letter Dickens wrote to W. H. Wills, dated July 27, 1853: “I have thought of another article to be called ‘Frauds on the Fairies,’ à propos of George Cruikshank’s editing. Half playfully and half seriously, I mean to protest most strongly against alteration, for any purpose, of the beautiful little stories which are so tenderly and humanly useful to us in these times, when the world is too much with us, early and late; and then to re-write ‘Cinderella’ according to Total Abstinence, Peace Society, and Bloomer principles, and expressly for their propagation. I shall want his book of ‘Hop o’ my Thumb’ (Forster noticed it in the last Examiner), and the most simple and popular version of ‘Cinderella’ you can get me. I shall not be able to do it until after finishing ‘Bleak House,’ but I shall do it the more easily for having the books by me …”]

[Review essay of Ericka Beckman’s 16 mm film Cinderella (1986, 27 minutes). See synopsis under Movies . Dika contrasts Beckman’s film with the Disney version where “Cinderella transforms herself into a commodity: she is beautiful, well dressed, compliant, and is therefore marriageable, i.e., marketable. An important lesson in capitalist society, this example demonstrates one cultural function of popular narrative: to provide a structure through which questions or conflicts within a society can be answered or explained …. Disney’s Cinderella suggests to girls that in order to get their prince they must be beautifully packaged. It is precisely this ideology that Beckman’s Cinderella dramatizes, exposes, finally rejects” (p. 32). Dika discusses the clothing functions in Pretty in Pink , noting that the fairy god-motherly post-hippie punk lady in early middle age gives Andy her old prom dress. “Literally, from that cloth, a discarded dream, Andy refashions herself into the image of an ideal bourgeois with an ‘80s retro edge. She is beautiful, full of integrity, and boy can she dress — always that dress. She is an object but a spunky one — the quality that will raise her from the cinders to the upper classes” (p. 32). But it is the young men who move the narrative forward; Andy is mainly bait, her desire passive. “In Pretty in Pink the conventions of the old fairy tale are re-presented, updated, reformulated in such a way as to bolster the contemporary return to reactionary attitudes regarding feminine behavior” (p. 32). In contrast Beckman’s “Cinderella sings a stridently feminist song, essentially declaring ‘no’ to patriarchy. The intensity of its cliché distances the viewer, and it is here that the third meaning of ‘forge’ is brought into play. Although Beckman’s Cinderella is basically a story about stories, it is also a forgery, manifestly a fiction. By thus under-scoring its own artificiality, the film works to break the illusions by which all popular narrative delivers its ideological assumptions” (p. 33).]

[Discusses psychoanalytic formulation of masquerade, roughly adopting femininity and beauty with a vengeance to deconstruct cultural constructions of femininity, in relation to film’s conventional spectator positions.]

[“There is a certain naiveté assigned to women in relation to systems of signification” (p. 1). The image of the longing female spectator is deeply ingrained in 1940s Hollywood movies, one of the “obvious truths” of femininity. Lacan talks about the hysterical woman’s desire as “the desire for an unsatisfied desire,” which gets somewhat at the problem, and considers Freud’s comments on masochistic fantasy instead of sexuality as a way of exploring films where the desiring look is de-eroticized. Discusses pathos and the maternal, the love story, paranoia and the specular, and the shadow of woman’s gaze; devotes a chapter to “Female Spectatorship and Machines of Projection: Caught and Rebecca ” (pp. 155-175).]

[An attempt to consider the social-historical conditions and ideological premises which underlie fairytales, as well as the nature of the moral universe communicated by such fairytales as Cinderella” –Dundes, Cinderella: A Casebook , p. 310.]

[Includes Joseph Jacobs’ discussion of the reception of Miss Cox’s volume of variants of Cinderella , discusses comparative methodologies, and surveys theories of the myth’s origins. The incidents forming the true Cinderella arise “in Europe during the feudal times, for the essence of the story involves monogamy, both in the choice of the hero and in the conception of the heroine as a step-daughter …. The choice of a menial heroine by the high-placed prince involves … the conception of a social status quite alien to savage ideas” (p. 507).]

[Introduction to kinds of folklore and methodologies. Twenty-six essays arranged according to I: The Fields of Folklife Studies, with subsections on Oral Folklore, Social Folk Custom, Material Culture, and Folk Arts; and II: The Methods of Folklife Study, with essays on methodologies ranging from fieldwork to archival work and cultural geography.]

[137 tales from 44 countries and various continents. In the Introduction, Dorson considers problems of organizing folktales according to theme or “literary merit” thereby losing the essential flavor of oral performance. Dorson attempts to retain the tales as “spoken performance,” to provide background information on the place where the tales were located, the tale’s relationship to its audience, and the functions of the narrator and the tale’s peculiar ideophones, gestures, moral sense, etc.]

[Considers the mysteries of sisterhood, working from mythology’s sisters, especially those of Psyche and Oedipus, to explore the basis of real sistering. Psyche’s sisters are envious and cruel — but they push her in a way her soul requires …. I have come to see Psyche’s sisters as initiating us into an appreciation of how our sisterly relationships challenge and nurture us, even as we sometimes disappoint and betray one another.]

[Proposes three models of identification for stepmother to clarify and ease her interactions with stepchildren grieving the loss of their biological mother: 1) “primary” mother; 2) “other” mother, and 3) “friend.” If the mother is still psychologically alive to the child, then adopt the role of friend. If the child’s mourning is complete adopt model one of the primary mother. Model 2 has no advantages under any circumstances.]

[Analysis of the enormous rise in popularity of pulp romances and the industry that produces them — from 6 million Harlequin romances in 1965 to 218 million in 1982. Dubino traces the origin of the “heroine gets rich through love” typology from Pamela (1740) to Kathleen Woodiwiss’s The Flame and the Flower (1972), which showed capitalists how to make money. Considers what romances do for their readers. Analyzes Fay Weldon’s The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1983), a complex satiric spoof of the Cinderella fairy tale through the self-victimization of Ruth who, hooked on the romance genre, throws away her talents and stature to become like the petite romance writer Mary, whom the mythic slipper fits. “Many women find the Cinderella plot hard to resist, and like Ruth, many are also economically coerced as well as unconsciously socialized. The myth of romance is insidious not because it is an illusion … but because it ‘idealizes and eroticizes women’s powerlessness and lack of freedom’ (Rabine viii). Romances help to condition women for subservience by reproducing, structurally, the real relations between men and women. Romances combine the desire for a man with the inscription of the reader into patriarchal heterosexual ideology” (p. 116).]

[Essays on “What is Folklore,” with discussions of folklore and anthropology, literature and esoteric and exoteric factors; “The Search for Origins,” with discussions of psychoanalysis and folklore, the eclipse of solar mythology, and several analyses of The Three Pigs and Jack and the Beanstalk; “Form in Folklore,” with structural, cultural, and thematic analyses; “The Transmission of Folklore,” with considerations of reproduction of folk stories and poetry; “The Functions of Folklore, including William Bascom’s “Four Functions of Folklore”; and “Selected Studies of Folklore,” with essays on specific tales or practices.]

[Chapters include: “Who are the Folk?”; “Texture, Text, and Context”; “Projection in Folklore: A Plea for Psychoanalytic Semiotics”; “The Curious Case of the Wide-mouth Frog”; “Thinking Ahead: A Folkloristic Reflection of the Future Orientation in American Worldview”; “Seeing is Believing”; “Wet and Dry, the Evil Eye: An Essay in Indo-European and Semitic Worldview”; “The Number Three in American Culture”; “The Crowing Hen and the Easter Bunny: Male Chauvinism in American Folklore”; “A Psychoanalytical Study of the Bullroarer”; “Into the Endzone for a Touchdown: A Psychoanalytic Consideration of American Football”; “’To Love My Father All’: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Folktale Source of King Lear ”; “The Hero Pattern and the Life of Jesus.” Each chapter is given a lengthy bibliography.]

[Includes Basile’s “The Cat Cinderella,” Perrault’s “Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper” (without the two morals), Grimms’ “Ash Girl (Aschenputtel)”; and essays by W. R. S. Ralston, E. Sidney Hartland, R. D. Jameson, Photeine P. Bourboulis, Paul Delarue, Archer Taylor, Anna Brigitta Rooth, William Bascom, James Danandjaja, Margaret A. Mills, Aarland Ussher, Marie-Louise von Franz, Ben Rubenstein, Alan Dundes, David Pace, A. K. Ramanujan, Alessandro Falassi, Jane Yolen; and selected bibliography.]

[Demonstrates how crucial folklore is in establishing a sense of identity or senses of identity. Uses Cinderella and Oedipus to illustrate how identity functions within folktales and stereotypes.]

[A sampling of theoretical writings on myth. Includes William Bascom, “The Forms of Folklore: Prose Narratives”; Jan de Vries, “Theories Concerning ‘Nature Myths’”; Lauri Honko, “The Problem of Defining Myth”; G. S. Kirk, “On Defining Myths”; J. W. Rogerson, “Slippery Words: Myth”; James G. Frazer, “The Fall of Man”; Raffaele Pettazzoni, “The Truth of Myth”; Theodor H. Gaster, “Myth and Story”; Mircea Eliade, “Cosmogonic Myth and ‘Sacred History’”; Ake Hultkrantz, “An Ideological Dichotomy: Myths and Folk Beliefs Among the Shoshoni”; Anna Birgitta Rooth, “The Creation Myths of the North American Indians”; K. Numazawa, “The Cultural-Historical Background of Myths on the Separation of Sky and Earth”; Bronislaw Malinowski, “The Role of Myth in Life”; Raymond Firth, “The Plasticity of Myth: Cases from Tikopia”; Th. P. Van Baaren, “The Flexibility of Myth”; Eric Dardel, “The Mythic”; C. G. Jung, “The Psychology of the Child Archetype”; Robert A. Segal, “Joseph Campbell’sTheory of Myth”; Alan Dundes, “Earth-Diver: Creation of the Mythopoeic Male”; Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The Story of Asdiwal”; Sándor Erdész, “The World Conception of Lajos Ámi, Storyteller”; Dorothea Wender, “The Myth of Washington.” Good bibliography of suggestions for further reading in the Theory of Myth.]

[Includes “The Psychoanalytic Study of Folklore (ch. 1), originally published in Annals of Scholarship 3 (1985), 1-42, and other diverse essays, aimed at exploring the interrelationship of psychoanalytic theory and folklore. “One of the goals of social science is, or ought to be, to make the unconscious conscious. If one accepts the premise that much of the content of folklore is unconscious, then it should be perfectly obvious that psychoanalytic theory is a legitimate and necessary tool for the study of folklore” (p. xiii).]

[A review essay.]

[Siblings relationships provide opportunities to study a child’s capacity to understand and relate to other human beings, whether in terms of comforting and consoling or provoking and annoying. Dunne and Kendrick consider how children respond to sharp changes in their environment, particular in the relationship between mother and first child before and after a sibling’s birth, the reaction of the first child to events surrounding the birth of the sibling, the relationships that develop between the children, and the patterning of relationships within the family.]

[Discusses standards of female beauty as they intersect with issues of race, especially issues surrounding “whiteness.”]

[Seventy nine tales divided according to The Origin of Human, Animal, and Plant Characteristic; Luck and Good Fortune; Tales of Love; Supernatural Marriages; Persons with Magic Powers; Help from Spirits and Deities; Kindness Rewarded and Evil Punished (which includes “Cinderella”), and Cleverness and Stupidity. See Asian Cinderellas for annotation of Eberhart’s Cinderella.]

[“Contemporary popular romance narratives are among the most significant narrative modes in advanced industrial societies. They are primary sites for the ideological construction of individuals as gendered subjects, especially female ones, in male-dominated hetero-sexual couples. By producing the female subject as complemented and completed by her relation to a male partner, patriarchy naturalizes sexual identity, masking the cultural construction of the feminine, thereby continually reproducing women in a subordinate position. Only by interrogating the ideological production and circulation of gender is it possible to begin to change the social, economic, and power relations among individuals and in society” (p. 19).]

[A hero is quite different from a heroine. “The hero is central — to self, creator, and society; The heroine is subordinate to all these entities and, most particularly, to the hero” (p. 36). Jungian critics like Neumann present Psyche as the paradigm of female heroism. Edwards traces closely Neumann’s reading of Psyche as a female Hercules, etc., finding merit in much of what Neumann sees. Psyche’s triumphs are real, but they are not simply feminine. What Neumann fails to emphasize is the similarity of her problems to those of Eros as well. She reflects the trials of humanity. “What I am suggesting … is that the underlying mythic structure is significant because … its patterns are timeless and acultural” (p. 44). Much of her heroic strength lies in her marginality. Edwards finds Victor Turner’s criteria for assessing symbolic action more rich than Neumann’s in defining Psyche’s quest as “perhaps the most heroic one of all” (p. 49).]

[Forty short essays by thirty-five writers on/of children’s literature in an attempt to fit it into the whole realm of literary activity.]

[Einhorn explores the situation of women in communist Europe after the opening up to the West and capitalism. Under the communists the role of women was officially equal in the market place, though in fact it was still male-dominated. But the liberation from communism is tricky, especially for women who, under capitalism, tend to be treated more as domestic objects. The problem for Eastern European women is different from the Western women’s movement, a problem reflected in their Cinderella mythology (the Vassilisa story in particular), where women look upon themselves as functioning in dual roles, one public and of the work force, one private and domestic. The new market realities of inflation and unemployment circumscribe women’s choices both as consumers and providers. Many choices for women are being foreclosed. Einhorn speaks of the recent surge of pornography in Eastern block countries and the virgin/whore dichotomy, along with a drop in women’s self esteem. The advances of Western feminism do not easily translate to Eastern Europe. The last chapter, “Imagining Women: Literature and the Media” (pp. 216-55) examines the resurgence of Cinderella fairy-tale fantasy as opposed to the communist ideology of Superwoman wearing a hard-hat on a building site. Einhorn examines the influx of romances written by women celebrating the domestic scene, along with tales of colossus women — the state as motherland celebrating Soviet victory over Germany and propagandist Cinderella mythology of mother Russia, or, later, of stepmother Russia. The Vassilisa story and its variants such as Fenist the Falcon are different from the glass slipper Cinderella. Vassilisa, the Eastern European working woman, is clever, capable of dealing with her father’s evil spell and capable of dealing with the Baba Yaga. The Baba Yaga is the wise woman of the woods as well as the dark side of female sexuality (pp. 224-26). These myths emphasize the dualistic capabilities of women, in contrast to the simplistic model of the domestic wife with her magic circle of protection against harms that lurk outside, the good woman at home who “inures men against cut-throat individualism in the marketplace” (p. 226). This nineteenth century Western European model seems to have a dangerous new appeal to Eastern European women. Einhorn discusses the Cinderella split in several recent novels as well as in nineteenth century Russian literature, and also the Worker-Mother as a Cinderella socialist realist heroine in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. She comments on Cinderella speaking for herself — female voices seeking a hearing (pp. 236-42) and the voiceless Cinderella in the Echo Chamber of the new market rules (pp. 242-44). The new struggles toward cornering the market are having a complex effect on women’s imagining themselves in depressed times of transition.]

[Part One considers the sociogenesis of “civilization” and “culture.” Part Two explores the developing concept of civilité in the Middle Ages, discussing behavior at table, attitudes toward natural functions, bedroom behavior, and changes in attitudes toward male aggression.]

[Part One deals with Feudalization and State Formation, with a survey of courtly society, the sociogenesis of minnesang and courtly forms of conduct, and the sociogenesis of the state; Part II: Towards a Theory of Civilizing Processes.]

[In four parts: I: Childhood and the Modalities of Social Life, with case histories and a theory of infantile sexuality; II: Childhood in Two American Indian Tribes, considerations of childhood in a Sioux hunter tribe and a Yurok fishing tribe; III: The Growth of the Ego, with consideration of toys, play, work, growth, and the beginnings of identity within different milieus, including black identity; IV: Youth and the Evolution of Identity, with reflections on American Identity, “Mom,” the legend of Hitler’s childhood, and the legend of Maxim Gorky’s youth.]

[Chapter on Vasilisa the Wise (pp. 74-114); a Jungian approach. In her telling of the story she ends the tale with Vasilisa’s return with the fire, thus creating a more romantic and liberating view than the Russian version offers with Vasilisa’s move to the city to win the attention of the prince through her weaving of a fine cloth. In Estés there is no return to domestic skills or the winning of the prince by means of the marvelous cloth.]

[A grandmother tries to tell her tale but is repeatedly corrected the children, who embellish and tell the story their way. Falassi documents the story-telling session and discusses coded messages in the telling and retelling — what the slipper means, the losing of it, the tests, the giving back of the slipper, the union — both in terms of the story and in “real life” for the audience and teller. Reprinted in Dundes, Cinderella: A Casebook , pp. 275-293.]

[See especially chapters entitled “Dressing Dolls: The Fashion Backlash” and “Beauty and the Backlash.”]

[Discussess the body’s relationship to capitalism, with special consideration of beauty.]

[Two dialogues on what constitutes beauty and how to portray it. “Often one reads in the eyes what is written in the heart” (p. 26). “The loveliness in a woman will be a noble air, chaste, virtuous, reverent, admiring” (p. 38). “When a woman is tall, well-shaped, carries herself well, sits with grandeur, speaks with gravity, laughs with modesty, and … exudes the aura of a queen … she has majesty” (p. 42). “The hair … should be fine and blonde, sometimes similar to gold, sometimes to honey, sometimes like the bright rays of a clear sun, wavy, thick, abundant, long” (p. 47). “The body … is somewhere between lean and fat, plump and juicy, of the right proportions, one in which we find agility and dexterity, together with a something that suggests the aura of a queen” (p. 50).]

[“If a tale consisted purely of wish fulfillment there would be no conflict and no development, and it would end as soon as it began” (p. 239).]

[The male Cinderella is seen as existing in very nearly all the English metrical romances. “The Cinderella hero is fundamentally a popular ideal, the democratic symbol of a people who saw in this pattern the never failing romance of the commonplace” (p. 41). Usually the male Cinderella is of noble birth, but his well-earned successes are populist. In his infancy he is exposed to duress — exile, abandonment (perhaps to be fostered by animals), slavery, physical oppression — during which period he embodies the sublimated wishes of a class of submerged individuals whose ambition remains undaunted. Usually his guardian or helpmate is socially inferior, but noble in his/her/its own way. The male Cinderella then rises against overwhelming odds, often winning his armor by defeating an enemy, then moving on through feats of strength to reclaim his heritage and to marry, usually a princess of some sort for whom he performs chivalric actions which embody what Santayana called the “sense of meaning and beauty in a chaotic world” (p. 1).

[“Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment / And state of bodies would bewray what life / We have led” — Coriolanus. Flugel considers clothing as expression in its purposive and formal aspects, as a component of modesty and protection, as a feature of cultural definition (gender, fashion), and ethics. Some discussion of the evolution of garments in conjunction with cultural rationalization, from primitive to modern times.]

[“A brief discussion of Cinderella’s name and an erroneous account of the verre-vair translation concluding that the English version is unique in having poor Cinderella wear slippers of glass” –Dundes 1982, p. 310.]

[A freshman writing anthology. Includes such essays pertinent to Cinderella studies as Northrop Frye, “The Keys to Dreamland”; E.M. Forster, “The Other Side of the Hedge”; Carlos Fuentes, “The Doll Queen”; Alice Walker, “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self”; C.G. Jung, “The Importance of Dreams”; Joseph Campbell, “The Keys”; Bruno Bettelheim, “Fairy Tales and the Existential Predicament”; the Brothers Grimm, “Aschenputtel”; “The Algonquin Cinderella”; Anne Sexton, “Cinderella”; Thomas Bulfinch, “Pygmalion”; John Updike, “Pygmalion”; Delmore Schwartz, “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities”; Sigmund Freud, “The Relation of the Poet to Day-dreaming”; C.G. Jung, “The Poet”; Virginia Woolf, “Professions for Women”; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Also fifty seven selections on such topics as “Discovering Ourselves in Writing,” “Discovering Ourselves in Reading, “Memories from Child-hood,” “Dreams, Myths, and Fairy Tales,” “Dreams and Fantasies as They Shape Our Conscious Intentions,” “Obsession and Transformation,” “The Double,” “Society’s Dreams,” and “Dream Vision and Prophecy.” 520 pp.]

[A history of European prison systems and their theories of punishment and rehabilitation, the psychologies of discipline, denial, and reward. With chapters on “The body of the condemned,” “The spectacle of the scaffold,” “Generalized punishment,” “The gentle way of punishment,” “Docile Bodies: The Art of Distribution; The control of activity; The organization of geneses; The composition of forces,” “The means of correct training: Hierarchial observation; Normalizing judgement; The examination,” “Panopticism,” “Complete and austere institutions,” “Illegalities and delinquency,” ‘The carceral.”]

[Responses by twenty-five women, ages 40-55, who saw themselves in a scenario advertised in local newspapers and wrote of the disappointments in their lives. Their common background goes something like this: “Once upon a time when we, the authors, were little girls, we dreamed of becoming Cinderella. Our task was to be pleasing and good, and our goal was to find Prince Charming, marry him, and live happily ever after in the glow of romance. After marriage we put aside our teaching careers and bought the feminine mystique that being a full-time wife and mother would be our fulfilllment. As wives, we often found that being a mistress in the bedroom was more difficult and less exciting than our backseat necking had led us to believe. As mothers, we never questioned Dr. Spock’s claim that our maternal dedication would produce well-adjusted, successful children. The anticipated pleasures and satisfactions of motherhood turned out to be indeed great, but, alas, temporary. Now middle-aged, we are feeling less like Cinderella and more like the stepsisters. Instead of looking forward to a fairy-tale future, we are querulous about the present... As for the future, we are ill-prepared for it. We failed to understand that a good mother puts herself out of business--and we are out of business” (p. xiii).]

[The authors discuss use of fairy tales such as “Frog Prince,” “Rumpelstiltskin,” and “The Three Spinning Fairies” as catalysts for change in dance therapy classes. In addition to selecting and adapting the tale to a particular interest the client is asked to keep a personal journal in which she/he may be asked to write as if the different characters in the tales stand for different aspects of the psyche. E.g. a client might address giants and dwarfs as parts of our less beautiful selves on grounds that “in order to live a full life we need access to them. In some situations it may be better to meet aggression with a giant or fierce dwarf than with a princess” (p. 316). In the dance/movement interventions the client works on “developmentally and psycho-dynamically-based improvisations directly related to the fairy tales” through which they engage in “kinesthetic sensing and witnessing” and “hunger journeys” (p. 316). Comforted by familiar symbols and characters the clients acquire skills and information about themselves they might otherwise find too threatening to consider.]

[Jokes and their relation to the unconscious.]

[Uses the Cinderella story and the story of Cordelia and Lear as examples of an old man’s denial of his fear of death. “Cordelia makes herself unrecognizable, inconspicuous like lead; she remains dumb, she loves and is silent. Cinderella hides so that she cannot be found. We may perhaps be allowed to equate concealment and dumbness.” They are akin to the goddess of death, herself disguised in the form of the goddess of love and beauty. “It is vain that an old man yearns for the love of a woman as he had it first from his mother; the third of the Fates alone, the silent Goddess of Death, will take him into her arms.”]

[A good story should provide for instinctual gratification.]

[In discussing his theory of modes Frye traces the origins of domestic comedy out of Renaissance conventions. “Domestic comedy is usually based on the Cinderella archetype, the kind of thing that happens when Pamela’s virtue is rewarded, the incorporation of an individual very like the reader into the society aspired to by both, a society ushered in with a happy rustle of bridal gowns and banknotes” (p. 44). Comedy is a mode for male Cinderellas as well as female, aspirants like Samuel Smiles, the Horatio Alger protagonists, and the good-hearted simpletons Charlie Chaplin portrayed.]

[The opening two sections consider functions of archetypes in literature and “Myth, Fiction, and Displacement,” wherein Frye explains how recognition is achieved through differing productions, “a point of identification, where a hidden truth about some-thing or somebody emerges into view” (p. 26). “We know, vaguely, that the story of Cinderella has been retold hundreds of thousands of times in middle-class fiction, and that nearly every thriler we see is a variant of Bluebeard. But it is seldom explained why even the greatest writers are interested in such tales: why Shakespeare put a folk-tale motif into nearly every comedy he wrote; why some of the most intellectualized fiction of our day, such as the later works of Thomas Mann, are based on them. Writers are interested in folk tales for the same reason that painters are interested in still life arrangements: because they illustrate essential principles of storytelling. The writer who uses them then has the technical problem of making them sufficiently plausible or credible to a sophisticated audience. When he succeeds, he produces, not realism, but a distortion of realism in the interest of structure. Such distortion is the literary equivalent of the tendency in painting to assimilate subject-matter to geometrical forms, which we see both in primitive painting and in the sophisticated primitivism of, say, Léger or Modigliani” (pp. 27-28). Myth is a special type of story, seldom located in history, but rather above ordinary time. Like folk-tale it provides an abstract story-pattern, but it differs from folk-tale in that it engages special categories of seriousness, as if they really happened in ritual or life. Folk-tale is more local, repetitive. Myths stick together to build larger structures (pp. 30-31).]

[The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1974-1975. Frye is concerned with principles of storytelling, particularly the telling of the “naive and sentimental romance,” stories of mysterious birth, oracular prophecies, narrow escapes, recognition of true identity of the protagonist, and eventual marriage, stories told as if they were traveling companions, and designed to meet the imaginative needs of the community. Such romances are closely connected with folktale, with two main folktale characteristics: 1) They stick together; and 2) They are rooted in a specific culture. “It is one of their functions to tell that culture what it is and how it came to be, in their own mythical terms. Frye considers the cultural contexts of romance, and outlines structural patterns of descent and return along with themes of those pathways for heroes and heroines as they proceed to recover the central myths of the psyche, its journey, and its goal. “The heroine who is saved from rape or sacrifice, even if she merely avoids Mr. Wrong and marries Mr. Right, is reenacting the ancient ritual which in Greek religion is called the anabasis of Kore, the rising of a maiden, Psyche or Cinderella or Richardson’s Pamela or Aristophanes’ Peace, from a lower to a higher world” (p. 163)]

[Anthology on Hollywood, especially costumes, make-up, and commodification.]

[Comments on Communist revision of fairy tales: “Most changes were simply of interest to children. But when the prince wished to marry Cinderella, a poor girl, the king disclaimed him, saying that he was a working class child whom he had adopted. The prince, delighted to hear this, said it explained why he had never felt affection for his ‘father’ and he could marry Cinderella as an equal.”]

[Explores Carter’s celebration of the marginal and the balances between the historical and fantasy, fairy tale and realism, desire and love. Considerable attention is given to sadism in Carter’s stories and novel. One chapter is devoted to The Bloody Chamber (pp. 130-141). The chapter “Flying the Patriarchial Coop” also discusses the title story of The Bloody Chamber (pp. 153-156).]

[Compares English and French translations of Grimms’ Cinderella.]

[Texts with some commentary and a discursive comparative note by W. W. Newell (pp. 272-80).]

[In three parts: I) Four essays on Feminists on Freud; II) Five essays on Rereading Patriarchal Texts; III) Seven essays on Women Rewriting Woman.]

[Of Bell’s glorious illustrated books for his children only one was published, The True Story of Cinderella , Faber and Faber, 1957. The book was badly printed; Bell reworked the illustrations, but those that were redone “lack their original zest” (p. 21). Garnett reprints four of the original illustrations in full color and two drawings, along with a color picture of the book cover. Written in 1956 as a Christmas present for his nieces, the story itself is amusingly quixotic and witty with various comic twists. Set in Rosenburg, the capital of a ficticious principality in the late 1880’s, the story makes its way without magic, but plenty of the unexpected. Cinderella is the daughter of a mild-mannered professor of cosmology by his second wife, an enchantingly pretty housemaid who died shortly after Cinderella was born. The professor’s first wife was the nineteenth daughter of the Hochwolgeborne Freiherr Count Schnapps von und zu Zehenswurdigkeitens-Zinlossrundfahrt, who left him two ugly daughters, Aggie and Addie, who give their new stepsister a bad time. When she is seventeen her father loses all his money, and Cinderella is forced to become the servant. Aggie, filled with hatred and meanness, contrives a means of giving Cinderella a glimpse of the Prince who has returned to Rosenburg, knowing that she will fall madly in love with him so that she can torment her all the more. Cinderella has to do all the chores in preparation for the ball, but stays home to wash up in a kitchen filled with spiders. Madame Lafolette, a dress-maker with a disreputable past, turns out to be the fairy godmother, transforming Cinderella into something special with her brilliant clothes. At the ball Addie is a wallflower, but the cunning Aggie has managed to extract a written proposal of marriage from the tipsy Lieutenant Dummkopf, who is dumbfounded when she is unmasked and he learns what he’s stuck with. Cinderella flees the ball after the prince has fallen for her, leaving one of her slippers. Aggie finds the other slipper the next day, ditches the lieutenant, and goes to claim her rights as possessor of the slipper. She manages to squeeze her foot into the Prince’s slipper and presents the other. But she is exposed and would be executed after having confessed, but the Prince is so taken by Cinderella that he marries her and sends Aggie to live with the Sisters of St. Rosa, for whom there now can be no happy ending.]

[Fifteen chapters: Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture; The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man; The Growth of Culture and the Evolution of Mind; Religion as a Cultural System; Ethos, World View, and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols; Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example; “Internal Conversion” in Contemporary Bali; Ideology as a Cultural System; After the Revolution: The Fate of Nationalism in the New States; The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States; The Politics of Meaning; Politics Past, Politics Present: Some Notes on the Uses of Anthropology in Understanding the New States; The Cerebral Savage: On the Work of Claude Lévi-Strauss; Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali; Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.]

[The unrelenting and ruthless goal-orientation of heroes and villains in the Grimm collection added to the collection’s popularity among educators in Nazi Germany. The tales communicate Nordic-German mythology, serve as a mirror of ancient pagan values, and offer examples fit for children to comprehend the political measures of the party. There is no better intellectual food for German school children than the Marchen “because they increase German self-consciousness and stimulate the fighting spirit, the will of victory, which, luckily, is reborn with every German youth and every German girl again and again” (p. 40, Linda Dégh’s translation — see Grimm’s Household Tales ). Nazi educators presented Red Riding Hood as symbol of poor German folk plagued by the wolf (Jews); the rescuing huntsman is Hitler. Cinderella and the prince get together because of their blood purity. The Jew in the Hawthorn Hedge demonstrates why the righteous German spirit must defy intruding, inferior aliens.]

[Discusses five Filipino versions of the tale.]

[Discusses Dennis Potter’s censored play Almost Cinderella (pp. 146-149). The play was contracted on 22 August 1966 for the BBC; it was to be a fairy tale, 75 minutes long, and it was to be aired as a Christmas show either the Wednesday before or the Wednesday after the holiday. Potter delivered the play in October but it was condemned for its satire being heavy handed and the humor sniggering. Gilbert provides transcripts of several exchanges between Gilbert and the BBC. See Almost Cinderella , under Modern Drama .]

[Gilligan challenges Erikson’s notion that the child forms self identity first and then moves on to acquire an ability for intimacy with others. For women identity formation is inextricably tied to interpersonal relationships. “Since the adolescent heroines awake from their sleep, not to conquer the world, but to marry the prince, their identity is inwardly and personally defined” (p. 13). Separation from the home is usually in a context of a male relationship, be it Prince or Beast, and the female virtues most celebrated are the prosocial abilities of grace, charm, caring for others, and passivity.]

[In this study of the place of the Witches’ Sabbath in Western culture Ginzburg hypothesizes a middle term between dream and fable: the shamanistic ecstasy, which he identifies in European and Asian cultures in the Cinderella story with its abused stepdaughter, the prohibitions by the stepmother, the gifts of magical instruments from an assistant, her defiance of the prohibitions, her accomplishing of difficult tasks leading to recognition, the vain efforts of the false hero or heroine to usurp her attainments, her unmasking of the antagonists, and marriage to the prince. She bears the identifying marks on her body, her “monosandalism” being “a distinguishing sign of those who have visited the realm of the dead (the prince’s palace)” (p. 243). In many versions of the story the assistants are plants or animals whom the heroine tends. The animal is killed by the stepmother but before dying entrusts its bones to the heroine. She uses the bones for guidance, planting them, caring for them, learning from them. Shamanistic rituals in which bones wrapped in skins are used to obtain the resurrection of slaughtered animals come from the same geographical areas as the Cinderella stories (see map, pp. 244-245). Cinderella can be thought of “as a reincarnation of the ‘mistress of the animals’” (p. 247). N.b. the Donkey Skin stories, with Cinderella making her way wrapped in the animal skin. The exaltation of the female foot’s daintiness in many versions of the story is akin to the shamanism in Oedipus narratives. “The absence from continental Africa of such common and intimately linked cultural traits cannot be accidental. We propose to relate it to the absence in the same area of shamanistic phenomena analogous to those found in Eurasia and, in more diluted forms, in North America. In fact, in continental Africa we find phenomena of possession: not the ecstasy followed by the journey of the shaman’s soul into the beyond. The shaman rules the spirits; the possessed person is at the mercy of the spirits and is ruled by them. Behind this sharp contrast we perceive a presumably very ancient cultural differentiation” (p. 249).]

[Discusses economic aspects of domestic relations and marriage in fairy tales.]

[Anthropological commentary on Cinderella.]

[Adlerian psychology applied to French and Turkish versions of Cinderella, with focus on feelings of inadequacy and inferiority.]

[“Once upon a time Chattanooga was called the dirtiest city in America. Then … it discovered the concept of sustainable development. And not only did it clean itself up, but the Tennessee manufacturing center became a model for a growing movement” (p. 42). The essay details the city’s recovery of an ecologically clean environment (free electric transit system, etc.), while still protecting its economic development — so clean that from Lookout Mountain one can once again see seven states — “It’s exhilarating” (p. 46).]

[Describes cases of “three adopted girls, age 9 and 10, who falsely alleged that their adoptive mothers dressed them in rags, made them do all the chores, and favored their stepsiblings. Underlying these false accusations of abuse was a history that included 1) actual abuse of the child in a previous placement, 2) early loss of a mothering figure, and 3) emotional abuse in the adoptive home. Professionals involved in child protection need to recognize this syndrome because intensive family therapy and temporary placement of the child outside the home are required in all cases. The child’s false accusation of abuse is a cry for help and should not be dismissed as a manipulative fabrication” (p. 1223).]

[Beginning with the once-upon-a-time Ella story Goodman fast forwards to 1990s Japan and the Chrysanthemum throne to discuss the marriage of Masako Owada (Harvard- and Oxford-educated working girl who spent years dreaming of breaking the glass ceiling, not the slipper) to Prince Naruhito of Japan. He chose her for her intelligence, humor, worldliness, and petiteness. But she said no. Then, after further thought, she said yes, but not without misgivings. “What a difference a few centuries do make. The search for a prince who would Take Ella Away From All That has been replaced by the search for a woman who would Give All That Up for a prince. Goodman speaks of the Princess Di story and its disastrous latter phases. Women feel uncertain about such decisions. One highly visible woman automatically becomes a surrogate for others.]

[Compares eight Assamese tales to European Cinderellas. In all wicked stepmothers are prominent. The point seems to be that “man has to pass through ordeals and it is meet that he should at least wish to come out victorious and vindicated. The hapless girls who is victimised by her stepmother is just the symbol of suffering man and her ultimate vindication is but man’s desire to see justice done” (p. 319).]

[Discusses Burnett’s Secret Garden , Little Lord Fauntleroy , and A Little Princess as Cinderella stories along with Kipling’s Captain Courageous (1897), Edith Nesbit’s Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899) and The Railway Children (1906). More recent versions are Russell Hoban’s Mouse and His Child (1967), Ruth M. Arthur’s The Whistling Boy (1969), Judy Blume’s It’s Not the End of the World (1979), Christobel Mattingley’s New Patches of Old (1978) and Southerly Buster (1983), Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover (1984) and The Catalogue of the Universe (1985).]

[Deals with the mentally ill and their civil rights in London under the National Health Service.]

[Marilyn Butler’s consideration of Evelina as a Cinderella figure is superficially valid but a second plot counters the fairy tale simplifications of the Cinderella story and directs attention to the plot’s violent and vicious social realities. “It is the experience of Evelina’s mother and of most married people to awake one morning to find themselves married to a monster. The double plot suggests that the appropriate myth is not Cinderella but Bluebeard” (p. 96).]

[Surveys great books of earlier times for young people, noting who was innovative in what ways and what adult agendas were being perpetrated for children.]

[Explores uses of fairy tale, particularly Aarne/Thompson 510A, and folk narrative by Padraic Colum in his Girl Who Sat by the Ashes and Eleanor Farjeon in her The Glass Slipper . See Male Cinderellas for Greene’s edition of Billy Beg and the Bull .]

[Nine essays: Gayle Greene and Coppélia Kahn, “Feminist Scholarship and the Social Construction of Woman”; Sydney Janet Kaplan, “Varieties of Feminist Criticism”; Nelly Furman, “The Politics of Language: Beyond the Gender Principle?”; Ann Rosalind Jones, “Inscribing Femininity: French Theories of the Feminine”; Judith Kegan Gardiner, “Mind Mother: Psychoanalysis and Feminism”; Cora Kaplan, “Pandora’s Box: Subjectivity, Class and Sexuality in Socialist Feminist Criticism”; Bonnie Zimmerman, “What has Never Been: An Overview of Lesbian Feminist Criticism”; Susan Willis, “Black Women Writers: Taking a Critical Perspective”; Adrienne Munich, “Notorious Signs, Feminist Criticism and Literary Tradition.”]

[A brief survey of Cinderellas around the world that are currently in the lime-light — Yeh-Shen from China, Tam and Cam from Indonesia, the movies Cindy Eller and Ashpet .]

[Working from Propp’s analysis of functions and the spirit of Lévy-Strauss, Greimas reformulates the seven dramatis personae, which he calls actants, into a matrix structure, a set of symmetrical oppositions which defines a kind of force field, a taxonomy whose inherent tensions generate the production of narrative. The Subject seeks Object, the Sender ( Destinateur ) seeks the Receiver ( Destinataire ). The Subject is hedged by Helpers and Opposers. The semiotics of plot is an exercise in grammar and syntax.]

[Uses orthography of symbolic logic to analyze structure and role in the French Cinderella.]

[Grimms’ The Good Bargain was required reading in the Kyrene Elementary School District in Arizona. A Jewish parent objected to the anti-semitism of the tale, particularly the farmer’s observation that “Jews always tell lies. There’s not a word of truth that comes out of his [Yid’s] mouth.” The parent and school employees committee has sided with the parent, recommending that the book be banned from the required reading list, but not be banned from the library. The editor feels that such “censorship flies in the face of the freedoms we hold dear.” Children should know the classics even though they contain the prejudice, fear, and biases of the people who wrote them.]

[All twelve of the most popular American children’s novels are orphan narratives in which the hero or heroine moves through three stages of development: 1) First Life: Exposure. The story of an orphan whose life begins with the vanishing of a happy time and a subsequent journey through poverty and neglect, who in reality is some sort of dispossessed royalty or the victim of parents’ violation of some marriage prohibition. 2) Second Life: Social Problems. The hero or heroine moves toward the Big House or the Great Outdoors, to be adopted by a second family, surrogate parents of a different social rank. The youth struggles against same-sex antagonists, is helped by friends of the opposite sex or outsiders, and emerges as a savior. 3) Third Life: Return. Issues of identity are resolved with recognition ceremonies and an accommodation of the two lives. Griswold divides the twelve novels into four categories: Oedipal stories: The Wizard of Oz , The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm ; Manuals of Republicanism: Little Lord Fauntleroy , Tarzan of the Apes , and The Prince and the Pauper ; Theater of Feelings: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , Little Women , and Toby Tyler ; and The Gospel of Optimism: Hans Brinker , The Secret Garden , and Pollyanna . All twelve show preoccupation with health, the power of positive thinking, redemption through naiveté, nostalgia, a fascination with the future, and progress through recapitulation. The focal point is the child as public figure, along with concern over child-raising practices and institutional welfare.]

[In his introduction Haase comments of the complexity of what Grimms’ fairy tales mean in twentieth-century cultures, given the fact that they reappear in so many reincarnated forms. Everyone knows Grimms’ fairy tales, though few have read them as specific writings by the Grimm brothers. The tales have been put to many different uses. The volume includes: Siegfried Neumann, “The Brothers Grimm as Collectors and Editors of German Folktales”; Ines Kohler-Zulch, “Heinrich Prohle: A Successor to the Brothers Grimm”; Brian Alderson, “The Spoken and the Read: German Popular Stories and English Popular Diction”; Ruth B. Bottigheimer, “The Publishing History of Grimms’ Tales: Reception at the Cash Register”; Shawn Jarvis, “Trivial Pursuit? Women Deconstructing the Grimmian Model in the Kaffeterkreis [a 19th-century German women’s literary group]”; Richard Perkins, “Little Brier Rose: Young Nietzsche’s Sleeping Beauty Poem as Legend and Swan Song”; Wolfgang Mieder, “Fairy-Tale Allusions in Modern German Aphorisms”; Jack Zipes, “The Struggle for the Grimms’ Throne: The Legacy of the Grimms’ Tales in the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic since 1945”; Maria Tatar, “Wilhelm Grimm/Maurice Sendak: Dear Mili and the Literary Culture of Childhood”; Donald Haase, “Response and Responsibility in Reading Grimms’ Fairy Tales”; Kay F. Stone, “Once Upon a Time Today: Grimm Tales for Contemporary Performers”; Jacques Barchilon, “Personal Reflections on the Scholarly Reception of Grimms’ Tales in France”; Margaret Atwood, “Grimms’ Remembered”; Trina Schart Hyman, “’Cut It Down, and You Will Find Something at the Roots’”; and Angela Carter, “Ashputtle: or, The Mother’s Ghost.”]

[Speculates on possible early Christian legend in which the name Aschengruttel (Cinderella?) occurs.]

[A historical study of adolescence in London in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with discussion of the material environment, the social and spiritual network, the fragile years of childhood, child-rearing, training, and education, orphans and their upbringing, life on the threshold of adolescence, the entering into apprenticeship and relationships between masters and apprentices, the formation of service contracts and consideration of who became servants, their living ar-rangements and differences of expected relationships between master and servant and the realities of such situations.]

[A political travelogue through South-West Africa, a Cinderella Nobody, which, though poor, was being much wooed by Europeans as a territory of great potential wealth.]

[Considers Algerian women’s relationship to Western make-up and clothing, juxtaposed with traditional Algerian garb, as a means of political resistance.]

[Chapters on The Studio, 1938; The Script(s), which considers the contributions of all ten of the writers; The Brains, The Heart, The Nerve, and the Music; Casting, discussing the 120 stars and featured players--Ingenues, Characters, Comedians, Comediennes, Juveniles, and Leads; The Directors--Richard Thorpe, George Cukor, Victor Fleming, and King Vidor; The Stars and the Stand-Ins; The Munchkins; Below the Line, discussing the 1000 costumes, the creation of Emerald City and 60 other sets by Cedric Gibbons; Special Effects, especially the melting of a witch and the stirring up of a tornado; Accidents; and After Oz. Appendices on the Auction of the Ruby Slippers, L. Frank Baum, and the Credits.]

[Mostly a general discussion of taletelling in eastern Samar, with comparative remarks on versions of Cinderella in the Phillipines.]

[In Dundes, Cinderella: A Casebook . Considers origins of various incidents in Cinderella stories.]

[A selection of essays, criticism, and statements of trends in the world of children’s books intended for those concerned with the creation, distribution, and reading of children’s books: Ten items from the 19th century, ten on classics and “Golden Ages,” five on the reading interests and needs of children, five on writers and writing, five on illustrators and illustration, eight on folk literature and fantasy, three on children’s poetry, four on fiction and realism, five on creative use of history and other facts, nine on the international scene, four on criticism and reviewing, and a section on awards for children’s books.]

[I: The Evolution of American Housing (Housing and American Life, From Ideal City to Dream House, and Awakening from the Dream); II: Rethinking Private Life (Home, Mom, and Apple Pie; Roof, Fire, and Center; Getting and Spending); and III: Rethinking Public Life (Restructuring Domestic Space, Domesticating Urban Space, and Beyond the Architecture of Gender). Discussion moves from considerations of battered wives in “model” homes and protests various against domestic constraints against women to the idea of a non-sexist city. “Americans still have to come to terms with their current needs and their own best traditions, to go beyond the architecture of gender and build the ‘city of the faithfulest friends’” (p. 232).]

[Chapters on Male and Female Men, Anxiety and Ambivalence, The Double Mask of Mana, “I am unclean …” (notions of female dirtiness during menstruation), The Perils of Love, Men without Women, Pandora’s Box, Undone by Sex, The Carefree Amorist, God’s Eunuchs, The Devil’s Mirror, “As false as Cressid …”, Knights Without Ladies, The Female Demon, “Thou Shalt Not Suffer A Witch To Live,” The Serpent of the Nile, The Bosom Snake, “By G-d, I Will Have Her!”, The Beast with the Indolent Air, Broad-Hipped and Short-Legged Race, The Femme Fatale, The Bell-Shaped Woman, The Natural Right to Love, The Menace of Fulfillment, The Diminished Male, The Flight From the Female,” and Now and Tomorrow. “It is time the male abandoned his magical approach to the second sex. It is time he learned to accept his existential anguish; it is time he realized the menace of female lies within himself. And when he is ready to accept her as a partner in work and love, he may even begin to find out what she is like” (p. 295).]

[Good bibliography and excellent illustrations.]

[Takes off from Joan Riviere’s practice of challenging men intellectually with brilliant talks, then unconsciously reassuring them by adopting feminine behavior patterns. The article foregrounds the degree to which gender is culturally constructed.]

[Focuses on functions of fantasy between childhood and “coming of age at thirty-three,” noting the prominence of transformation metaphors, dual vision, variations on gnosticism (being with it and not with it). Paradise cannot be regained until it is first lost. Dangers must be recognized and then embraced. Hennelly’s examples of this process and its imaginative and redemptive value are taken mainly from Lewis Carroll, Tolkien, Hudson’s Green Mansions , and Luke Skywalker in Star Wars . The journey from wasteland to Eden involves a purifying process, the protagonist often learning to tend the fire. As Jung puts it, fire is a dream symbol of transformation, both the external trial and internal drive. The inner Self is “surrounded by a curtain of fire that keeps off all who approach and at the same time symbolizes the fiery longing of the hero for the forbidden goal” (p. 83). The adolescent’s continued interest in fantasies can perpetuate the dream of Alice’s Big Sister, a dream which might see harmony between the lion and the unicorn and permit happiness later on.]

[“Introduction: Cinderella or Saint Dympna” (pp. 1-4): “The Cinderella story warns little girls that it is dangerous to be left alone with a widowed father, for a widowed father must remarry, and the daughter’s fate depends upon his choice of a wife” (p. 1). Compares the incestuous tale of Many-Furs (Allerleirauh) with the martyrdom of Saint Dympna. St. Dympna’s mother dies when she is a baby. When she is older her father would marry her. She flees across the sea accompanied by a priest. The father catches up. His men murder the priest but fear touching the girl. So her father beheads her, leaving her for animals to devour. She is said to be age fifteen at the time of her death. A popular cult grew up around her legend, and she becomes patron of those mentally ill or possessed. “Like so many female martyrs, she resisted rape, forced marriage, or incest even at the cost of her life. Women who have endured centuries of sexual victimization honor Dympna for her heroism and recognize her authenticity, whether or not it is documented” (p. 3). It is appropriate that the patron saint of the mentally ill should be an incest victim. No one knows better what it means to be an orphan, driven too soon from home to live as an outsider, an exile in a normal society. “Parents may find many rewards in the raising of children, but they cannot expect their own needs for food, clothing, shelter, or sex to be fulfilled by their children. When a parent compels a child to work to support the family, that is the exploitation of child labor. When a parent compels a child to fulfill his sexual needs, that is incest” (p. 4). Sections on The Incest Secret, with discussion of its frequency, harm, blame, and the rule of the father; on Daughters’ Lives, with discussion of the incestuous father’s relationship with the whole family, the daughter’s inheritance, and seductive fathers and their families; and Breaking Secrecy, with discussion of the crisis of disclosure, the restoring of the family, criminal justice, remedies for victims, and tactics for prevention against abuse. Includes an appendix on the Incest Statutes.]

[Psychoanalytical analysis of Cinderella followed by a phenomenological approach. Focuses on Grimm’s Aschenputtel. The psycho-analytical approaches tend to ignore, deny, or belittle aesthetic or narratological issues. The phenomenological material of the story may speak more profoundly to children than the psychoanalytical.]

[A study of Carmen Laforet’s Nada . Andrea, 18, an unpromising heroine is sent to her relatives after her parents are killed in the Spanish Civil War. She is extremely poor, but knows her own, despite degrading work. Her recurring dream is a cruel caricature of the disastrous reality of her life, even at the party. She suffers from Dowling’s Cinderella Complex as her morale sinks. Yet she ultimately leaps from paralysis and shame to maturity and compassion. Her friend Ena’s mother serves as fairy Godmother who helps Andrea to locate herself within Catholic, patriarchial structures. “The experience of Laforet’s heroine and the extension of her dependent role at the end of Nada, as well as the novel’s haunting title, point to the possibility that Carmen Laforet, however unintentionally or unconsciously, may, in her very popular first novel, have begun the not inconsiderable process of redefining the Cinderella myth for Spanish women,” where so few have entered the work force in any roles other than domestic help at the bottom of the wage scale (p. 240).]

[A counter response to Peter Brooks’ use of Allerleirauh in his Reading for Plot . Where Brooks relegates the story’s “female plot” to a footnote, defining it as “a resistance and what we might call an endurance, a waiting and suffering until the woman’s desire can be permitted to respond to the expression of a man’s desire” (p. 165), Hirsch would see Allerleirauh as the protagonist, defining the problems perpetrated by patriarchy. She centers her attack on Brooks’ reading in Herman’s Father-Daughter Incest , which gets more effectively at the social issues of the story, issues that Brooks’ formalist reading ignores. Patriarchy encourages women toward incest, if not with their fathers then with substitutes for their father. The road from incest to exogamy leaves unchallenged the assumption of male privilege. Hirsch discusses the mother’s dying words and her absence in the subsequent narrative. “The lack of guidance forces Allerleirauh to develop the resources she will need to succeed as a woman in an androcentric world” (p. 167). Brooks’ reading accepts woman’s position as object of exchange; Herman and Hirsch’s readings call attention to this fundamental power structure and reveal quite different responses to it.]

[Analysis of “The Tale of Sir Gareth that Called was Beaumaynes” as a Cinderella story.]

[Consider how clothes in works of art have been connected with clothes in real life. “In a picture-making civilization, the ongoing pictorial conventions demonstrate what is natural in human looks; and it is only in measuring up to them that the inner eye feels satisfaction and the clothed self achieves comfort and beauty” (p. xii). The “natural” beauty of the body and of cloth have been created and exalted by art. Chapters on drapery, nudity, undress, costume, dress, and mirrors.]

[Discusses African-American women’s sexuality in conjunction with white standards of what is beautiful, desirable, and bearable.]

[Discusses children’s identifica-tion with the stories they hear and prefer — “stories full of princes, princesses, giants, wicked witches, wolves, dwarfs, and other persons not normally encountered” (p. 121).]

[Discusses the interrelationships between fantasy and reality through the case history of a nearly mute patient who had many of Cinderella’s symptoms, hoping that one day everything would be well and that she would marry her prince. Considers Helene Deutsch’s healthy adaptation of the myth in her screen play “Glass Slippers” (sic), where Cinder-Ella’s dream “is the dream of all masochists” (p. 305).]

[“Myth is a product of the collective unconscious expressed symbolically in archetypal images” (p. 181). Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious derives from the multitudinous resemblances between fantasies and dreams of contemporary people and older myths and fairytales of which they could have no direct knowledge. The unconscious is prior to the conscious and is thus more primitive. The archetypes are the contents of the unconscious; they have the power to move or disturb and must be expressed in mythological images or symbols. Myths are conglomerates of archetypes held together psychologically; they reveal the nature of the soul. There are six principal archetypal figures: the shadow, the anima-animus, the mother, the child (including the child hero), the maiden, and the wise old man, which appear repeatedly in dreams. They are bipolar, capable of helping or hurting. Christ embodies myth of the divine Primordial Man, the mystic Adam” (p. 186), Antichrist complements Christ as shadow does the ego-consciousness — a fourth to the Trinity. The dark side can be banned from the conscious but not from the unconscious mind, where it is likely to break out in disruptive fantasies or serious disorders. The shadow embodies the primitive trickster figure so important to therapy. Anima and animus can be perceived after the integration of the shadow. Anima correlates with Eros; animus with Logos. The wise old man is fatherly authority figure, a medicine man (Orpheus, Merlin, Hermes Trismegistus, Aarathustra, Chiron, Asclepius, Achilles, Jason, Philemon). The mother archetype attaches to anything that gives, sustains, or protects life (paradise, sea, ploughed field, cave, deep well, cow), but with a bipolarity that both attracts and repells Moira, Graeae, Norns, grave, devouring and entwining animals). “The child motif represents the preconscious, childhoos aspects of the collective psyche” (p. 191). The child-become-hero demonstrates progress toward psychic wholeness. “Modern man needs myth for the attainment of psychic wholeness and balance” (p. 191). With loss of sense of collective unconscious the ego-consciousness thinks it is the entire self. “In the absence of an adequate myth, the attempt to demythologize Christianity and thus make it more acceptable to modern man is altogether misguided” (p. 192). Mary adds a necessary feminine element to the masculine Trinity.]

[Discusses women’s fashion in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, with specific attention devoted to women’s use of clothing in power politics and as a site of resistance.]

[Theory of children’s literature is frequently confused because of the common assumption that fantasy is peculiarly suitable for children, not adults, or that children are primitives and thus most appropriately served by primitive literature — myths, fables, folk tales, and fairy tales. Reasons why fantasy is good for children but not adults is seldom addressed, or notions that “belief” is an essential component of literary experience.]

[Includes six examples of criticism before 1945 — Sarah Fielding (1749), Elizabeth Rigby (1844), Charles Dickens (1853), John Ruskin (1868), and Arthur Ransome (1937); four essays on children’s literature criticism (Roger Lancelyn Green’s “The Golden Age of Children’s Books” [1962], John Rowe Townsend’s “Standards of Criticism for Children’s Literature” [1971], Felicity A. Hughes’ “Children’s Literature: Theory and Practice” [1978], Aidan Chambers’ “The Reader in the Book” [1985]); two essays on specialist areas (Hugh Crago’s “The Roots of Response” [1985] and William Moebius’ “Introduction to Picturebook Codes” [1986], and two essays on new directions in criticism of children’s literature (Lissa Paul’s “Enigma Variations: What Feminist Theory Knows About Children’s Literature” [1987] and Margaret Meek’s “What Counts as Evidence in Theories of Children’s Literature” [1982]). The final chapter is a review of the contemporary critical scene, with extensive annotations on recent studies. The book includes a running commentary on the strengths and weaknesses of the theoretical assumptions of the various essayists.]

[In his translation Alderson rearranges the chapters; he also rewrites and expands the chapter on America and publishes it separately, excluding it from this volume. Hurlimann’s discussion is especially rich in providing social contexts for the history of children’s books and in its discussion of of illustrations. Twenty-eight plates and numerous other line drawings, woodcuts, and engravings included along the way to enhance discussion of particular editions.]

[Discusses the debate over violence in fairytales, particularly those of the Grimm Brothers, a concern that has focused the attention of President Clinton and Janet Reno as well as local school districts intent on censorship. The essay focuses on Golden Books’ issuing of a revised “Three Little Pigs” in which the pigs catch the wolf asleep after his huffing and puffing and build a brick house around him with bars on the windows. When he awakens he calls out: “Little pigs! Let me come out!” to which the pigs reply, “not by the hair of our snouty, snout snouts.” Golden Books plans to keep the “original” story in print as well. They point out that their “new” version is not the simple result of sanitization; rather, in trying to develop a tale with attendent sound effects, it was hard to take the sounds seriously so a lighter story was the result. The essay cites concerns of child psychologist Jerome Singer, who sees no need to confront children with death early in life: “They’ll find lots of it later on.” In opposition to that position the authors juxtapose Bruno Bettelheim’s pronouncements on the value of some violence in fairytales to assist children in maturation. Children can deal with it, particularly in fairy tale form. As Bettelheim puts it, “Each fairy tale is a magic mirror which reflects some aspects of our inner world, and of the steps required by our evolution from immaturity to maturity.” Psychologist James Garbarino, president of the Erikson Institute in Chicago, is inclined to agree. It is not until the twentieth century that fairytales move from family audiences to children almost exclusively; it’s only then that they become patronizing as they become sanitized. But “even the most carefully constructed fairytales can’t stop a bullet” or erase bigotry. “It’s easy to change the ending of a fairy tale or decide not to buy toy guns,” says Rosalie Street, executive director of Parent Action .... “It’s much harder to deal with the real social issues that cause violence.” The point is that “until grown-ups do, it will be hard for kids to live happily ever after” (p. 63).]

[In this one of a series of essays commenting on Miss Cox’s Cinderella , the intent is to contrast English and Celtic variations of the tale, ending with an attack on Andrew Lang’s alleged advocacy of independent invention (as opposed to borrowing via diffusion) to explain similar texts in different cultures. See Lang 1892 below.]

[Looking into the parties Cinderella has crashed through the centuries Laura Jacobs gives a thumbnail sketch of Cinderella’s life in western culture from China to the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock to Hollywood’s rags-to-riches fetish, and popular American culture with its Cinderella dreams, explanations, and jump-rope songs: “Cinderella, dressed in yella, / Went downtown to see her fella. / On the way her girdle busted; / How many people were disgusted?” Cinderella is in our psyches as well as on our stages.]

[Fantasy literature flourishes in times of rapid and radical social change. Jackson focuses on post-romantic fantasy — Gothic tales, fantastic realism, Victorian fantasies, Kafka and Pynchon. Taking a psychoanalytical approach, she hopes to demystify fantasy to show how such literature “may lead to real social transformation” (p. 10). Fantasy opens regions which have no name. It exists as the inside, or underside, of realism, a negative rationality that subverts and interrogates nominal unities of time, space, and character. Like the grotesque it resists closure and opens structures to dismantle notions of the real.]

[Argues the priority of the political interpretaton of literary texts. The political perspective is not an optional auxiliary to interpretation but “the absolute horizon of all reading and all interpretation” (p. 17). Discusses litera-ture as a socially symbolic act, magical narratives and the dialectical use of genre criticism (including an extended discussion of Frye’s genre analyses), realism and desire, authentic ressentiment, romance and reification, and the dialectics of Utopia and ideology.]

[In Dundes, Cinderella: A Casebook (pp. 71-97). Considers 9th century Chinese version of Sheh Hsien to be earliest of the Cinderella slipper narratives. Includes a summary of the story.]

[An essay/story of Cinderella in the midst of all the Cinderella stories and their many components (mothers, fathers, stepfamilies, animals, fairies, settings, festivals, princes), at odds with them, controlled by them, but independent of them too. In the end she and the prince sleep apart, with the garden between them. But they dream the same silent dream, as if it happened long ago.]

[Beginning with Cox’s classification of 345 variants, Jeter explores the impact of basic components in Cinderella stories in recent times, particularly in terms of Erik H. Erikson’s eight psychosocial stages of development, Eric Berne’s use of Cinderella materials in developing his transactional analysis, Kolbenschlag’s use of the Cinderella story as a role model within the economic structures of contemporary society, and the turmoils of Colette Dowling’s “Cinderella complex.” The story is a powerful means for self and social analysis. “Mindfully told fairy tales and myths and selective current stories have a well of historic information and symbolic representations for inculcating awareness of sex roles and conflicts and for modeling means to change” (p. 245).]

[Discusses psychological incest of strong bonding between father and daughter and the need for moving beyond the narrow ego perception of the father into a place where differentiation of personal uniqueness becomes possible. Just as the father cannot find the perfect replacement for the dead wife in the daughter, neither can the daughter find a perfect replacement for the father in the groom. First she must make her journey into anima and the shadows of animality. The ring, spindle, and reel all involve an essential circularity, “the rotating or gyrating movement of the female in sexual intercourse … This bodily sexual aspect of her feminine self is what was previously at risk with her father and therefore is the tender place where healing must occur” (p. 22). Until her bond with the father is broken she cannot truly be united with the masculine in a balanced way. Jewett discusses Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy,” as an example of bonding with the father that is not adequately broken and which leads to suicide. Psyche needs an initiatory step of aloneness in order to move beyond the father’s protection into a healthy sense of self, able to emerge from the scullery into healthy and joyous relationships.]

[Turns on female authorship, doubt, Mary Shelley, and Frankenstein; the unloved text.]

[Perrault’s mistaking Old French vair, meaning fur for verre, meaning glass is a mistake that worked. “And poor Cinderella has had to wear glass slippers ever since” p. 68).]

[Jones begins his article by exploring the boundaries of the “Innocent Persecuted Heroine” and other stories such as Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Sleeping Beauty that fit into a three act story structure and share common themes and narrative goals. In Act 1, the heroine encounters hostility within her family. In Act 2, the heroine finds a love interest despite outside interference; In Act 3, the heroine encounters trouble at her new home. For Jones, a story must contain at least two of the three acts, which contributes to the theme of persecution consistent across the stories in this genre. He then provides a list of stories and shows how the three part structure shapes each tale type. Jones discusses shared themes and, then, rejects the sociological approach to fairy tales before advocating the use of a structural approach to assess fairy tale themes. The stories focus on female initiation and maturation while providing space for both societal and personal voices within the narrative. The plots reinforce social expectations while also leaving room for a girl’s response to the story and its lessons. Jones also notes the frequency of violent endings in this genre as a message of protection for those who follow the social order, and he shows how the stories offer a positive message for women by demonstrating how the trials lead to the girls obtaining positions of power in addition to teaching lessons of overcoming difficulty in life. He ends his article by suggesting that scholars need to understand the genre of the “Innocent Persecuted Heroine” more fully in order to comprehend individual tale types.] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[“What do I expect after the ball is over?” A practical book on helping women make meaningful choices that will enable them to be the people they wish to be. Considers Cinderella to be one who looks for a “fella” to rescue her. Her prince is stupid, and she plays games of Kick Me , Poor Me , Why Does This Always Happen To Me? and See How Hard I Try . She becomes a coquettish teaser, switches to the Rescuer role by finding husbands for her mean sisters. Many Cinderellas have jobs but they are likely to be at the lowest level in the organization, doing other people’s dirty work. What can Cinderella do? She can stop living in the future, stop looking for rescue, stop living through others, stop marking time, stop waiting until ; she can start living now, start developing her potentials, start setting realistic goals, start going where men who like themselves and like women are likely to be, and start being her own fairy godmother. And she can start changing her own script so that she is not pushed around, knows where she wants to be in five or ten years, and considers whether she will be satisfied with her job then (pp. 41-44). On the other hand, “Beauty is a Rescuer, programmed with the delusion that all a beastly man needs is a good woman.” Her father was probably not-OK, an alcoholic who needed rescue every Friday night by her mother, etc. What can she do? Stop collecting people with problems, stop rescuing people who don’t want it or don’t respond, stop believing that no matter how bad things are they will turn out all right in the end. She can start letting others run their own lives, start thinking and solving problems rather than depending on her magical love, start getting acquainted with happy people, start expecting to enjoy relationships with men, start developing personal talents, start believing that she deserves a happy life. She can change her script by asking what three things she would really like to do for herself (pp. 44-47).]

[Sees the relationship between Beatrice and De Flores in terms of mythic confrontations of beauty and the beast, the maiden and the wildman, and the princess and the frog. In Middleton and Rowley’s version the characters are drained of idealism, however, and exist only as vehicles for brutal selfishness. “Instead of the beast being revealed as a prince, the process of this story is to reveal that the princess is in fact a beast” (165).]

[After explaining what he means by “spirit” and the ways in which spirit is self-represented through archetypes in dreams, Jung considers how the psyche tells its own story in fairytales, as in dreams. Reviews several plots in which the child-hero sets out, deals with princesses and mountainous trials, and receives guidance from the old wise man, commenting on points along the way of the journey and their significance, the functions of helpful animals, and theriomorphic spirit symbolism, four-leggedness, hunters, and musicians. “Fairytale describes the unconscious processes that compensate the conscious, Christian situation” (p. 251). “When we consider the spirit in its archetypal form as it appears to us in fairytales and dreams, it presents a picture that differs strangely from the conscious idea of spirit, which is split up into so many meanings. Spirit originally was a spirit in human or animal form, a daimonion that came upon man from without” (p. 252). All the outward tinkerings and improvements do not touch man’s inner nature, where demons still lurk to our ultimate benefit.]

[“The primitive mentality does not invent myths, it experiences them. Myths are the original revelations of the preconscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings, and anything but allegories of physical processes. Such allegories would be an idle amusement for an unscientific intellect” (p. 154). Myths are vital, the psychic life of the primitive tribe, a living religion. Archetypes are living psychic forces that “demand to be taken seriously” and “have a strange way of making sure of their effect” (p. 156). They are the bringers of protection and salvation; their violation imperils the soul. The “child” is potential future, a necessary stay for the psyche’s tendancy to succomb to rationalism, failure, or despair. The personality is still in the plural stage. “Sometimes the ‘child’ looks more like a child god , sometimes more like a young hero ” (p. 165). His birth is miraculous; he is semi-divine. He is smaller than small, bigger than big. Snake-dreams usually occur when the conscious mind is deviating from its instinctual basis. The child-hero’s main feat is to overcome monsters of darkness and their treachery. The child distinguishes itself by “deeds which point to the conquest of the dark” (p. 167). Abandonment, exposure, danger are all elaborations of the “child’s” insignificant beginnings and its mysterious and miraculous powers. The “child” emerges as a symbolic content threatened by negative attitudes of the conscious mind and the horror vacui of the unconscious which is “quite ready to swallow up all its progeny, since it produces them only in play, and destruction is an inescapable part of it play. Nothing in all the world welcomes this new birth, although it is the most precious fruit of Mother Nature herself, the most pregnant with the future, signifying a higher stage of self-realization. That is why Nature, the world of the instincts, takes the ‘child’ under its wing: it is nourished or protected by animals” (p. 168). “Child” means something evolving toward independence. It must detach itself from its origins: “abandonment is therefore a necessary condition, not just a concomitant symptom” (p. 168). The conflict-situation offers no way out; the child must be all alone in the world, learning to move through primal darkness, a state of original psychic distress against which the child is perpetually resilient, invincible. “The urge and compulsion to self-realization is a law of nature …. The figure of the thrall generally leads up to the real epiphany of the semi-divine hero” (pp. 170-71). The cosmogonic gods are bisexual; likewise the hermaphroditic child hero, that symbol of the creative union of opposites — coniunctio , a divine marriage of male and female. It is within the psychological framework of the child archetype that “the motifs of abandoment, invincibility, hermaphroditism, and beginning and end take their place as distinct categories of experience and understanding” (p. 181).]

[The autobiography of Myrtle King, an Oregon girl, teacher, and world traveller, and of her courtship and marriage to Prince David of Punaluu, Prince of Hawaii and builder occupant of grass houses, the birth of their children, etc.]

[A review of David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror . New York: W.W. Norton, 1993. Analyzing an end of the millenium culture that amuses itself with bionic killers, Silence of the Lambs , Addams Family films and TV, Nightmare on Elm Street and its numerous sequels, Terminator films, and Jurassic Park , etc., Skal “asserts that this renaissance of horror is directly related to the country’s current economic woes and fears about a failing safety net and a changing world, a mood that prevailed in the 1930’s, the decade that witnessed the birth of the modern horror film.”]

[Discusses development of “folk theory” by such writers as Walter Hoffman, Otto Schmidt, Hans Strobel, Max Hildebert Boehm, Alfred Rosenberg, Karl von Spiess, Joseph Nadler, Heinrich Kaul and Wilhelm Stapel as they create a Germanic synthesis comparable to Greek humanism. By 1935 the National Socialist Party had created about twenty peasant schools with as many agricultural colleges soon to follow.]

[Discusses cleansing and indoctrination policies of the Reichskulturkammer under Goebbels and Rosenberg, particularly the sponsoring of illustrated editions of Grimm’s Household Stories . “We know from history that our Volk can exist without cities, yet it is impossible to conceive that it could exist without the peasant!” (Adolph Hitler). The Kinder und Hausmärchen becomes the “new Bible” of the education program. “In the folktale we capture the true German nature at its very source” (Maria Fuhrer). Josef Prestel raises Aschenputtel to the level of Gundrun in the medieval epics. While appraising her innocence, patience, loyalty, and faithful devotion he points out the ideal of Germanic woman embodied in her attitudes symbolizes in the “tribal home life next to the hearth.” Her readiness to sacrifice, her altruism should be a model for German women today. He concludes: “Whom does the princess choose? … She selects the courageous young man, the good natured, loyal man, be he a hunter or a shepherd …. [Both hero and princess are] the best of the people and the best of aristocracy …. Joined in marriage they become “a symbol of racial up-grading, the ideal of a high racial quality and of longevity” (Josef Prestel, Marchen als Lebensdichtung , Munich: Max Hueber Veroag, 1938, p. 86). Ulrich Haacke demonstrates that tales thought to have been borrowed from French are in fact Nordic in origin and offer positive symbols and positive forces of life. He too stresses the folk hero’s intimate knowledge by instinct or blood (p. 175-176).]

[Considers Nazi mythos and its attitudes toward literature and education, uses of children’s literature and folk rituals, systems of censorship, reform and publishing trends. Illustrated.]

[Includes biographical background and publishing history of the folktales, discussion of the Grimms’ theory and practice of collecting material, and critical appraisals of the kinds of responses — philosophical, moral, pragmatic, anthropological, structural, psychoanalytical, archetypal, symbolic, feminist, etc. Part One: Biographical Sketch of the Brothers Grimm (childhood and youth, studies in Marburg and abroad, from libraries to diplomacy, Grimm's struggle for democracy, international scholarship, Berlin and beyond); history of the collection (collections of Arnim and Brentano, folktales for Savigny's children, publishing history of the tales) Part Two: Grimm's Theory of Practice of Folktale Collections: The Nature and Meaning of Folktales (Herder and Brothers Grimm, Naturpoesie and search for naivete, epic connection, folktales and Norse mythology); Folktale Characters (mythic and epic dimensions, characters from books and legends, humane and poetic character traits; Origin and Myths of Folktales (Indo-European and comparative theories, universal theories, art and age of storytelling, language dynamics and loyalty to tradition); Sources of the Collection (background of informants, ethnic origins, child as informant, language and games of children, printed sources); and The Methods of the Collection (recording and annotating oral sources, Jacob's questionairre, the editing process, and Grimm's folktale style.) Part Three: Critial Appraisal of the Kinder und Hausmärchen : Märchenkritik in the Context of European Romanticism (folklore in Middle Ages, Volksmärchen versus Kustmärchen , Grimm's response to the fearful, English quest for Nordic roots, plea for imagination: Taylor and Scott, the Irish connection); Didactic Approaches to Folktales and Fairy Tales (philosophical, religious, and moral, pragmatic and realistic, social and nationalistic approaches, political-ideological approaches in Nazi era); Interdisciplinary approaches to Grimms' tales (linguistics and solar mythology, anthropological, structural, psychoanalytical and archetypes, symbolic, and literary, feminist views and counter arguments, Social-historical perspectives, issues of the national character, folktale ethics). Different Versions of the Kinder und Hausmärchen (children's book editions, folktales from the Grimm archives, ironic and satirical versions); and Conclusion: Dispelling the Myths. An excellent bibliography.]

[In discussing co-dependency, Kaminer relates Cinderella and Peter Pan complexes (“smart women loving too much and making foolish choices about men who hate them” –p. 10) as forms of addictions comparable to drug and alcohol abuse. Considers Colette Dowling’s The Cinderella Complex and Dr. Joyce Brothers’s How to Get Whatever You Want Out of Life as prototypical recovery books.]

[Discussion of upward mobility in American comic strips. “Two distinct conceptions of class informed the strips … between 1925 and 1975. In the first (1925-1938), the right to be better mopolized the comic stage, producing a reality in which inhabitants exploited opportunities to raise themselves and in which they almost as readily strove to undercut similar efforts by others. The second, which by 1943 had begun to secure hegemony, featured instead the right to be equal and figured forth a world in which all experienced the same fortune” (p. 375).]

[In contrast to Neumann’s Jungian reading of the tale as a study in feminine individuation, Katz argues that the myth of Psyche is about the mediation of sexual tension, the basic conflict between male and female, a tension resolved by the ritual of marriage. It contrasts marriages for which the female has been tested or initiated and those where she has not. Psyche’s separation from Cupid is imposed upon her by circumstances and is not a matter of her own will. It demonstrates not how the woman rises above herself to individuation through love of the male, but how the female is prepared socially for marriage with the male.]

[See esp. 34-50, on “The Heroines’ Discourses,” a subsection of Kauffman’s discussion of Ovid’s Heroides . The heroine is defined by the lover she addresses, locates herself vis-à-vis the beloved, draws attention to the bond that links them, and thinks in terms of fidelity toward each other. Frustrated desire is modulated through tears; secrecy is treasured; at the same time spontaneity contributes to the pathos. The Ovidian strategies lie at the heart of subsequent romance tradition.]

[In a brief, personal discussion of the Cinderella story, Lea Kavablum offers an approach to studying the fairy tale for the lessons it offers women while avoiding traditional academic or scientific approaches that originate from “male” systems of thought. She suggests the story is a representation of every woman’s life with the search for the Prince becoming a quest for finding a true female self. She acknowledges the similarities between her views and Jung, but her argument hinges on an entirely female worldview rather than the dualities of Jung’s archetypes. Kavablum sees frustration as key to Cinderella’s identity with the ball becoming Cinderella’s first moment of self-recognition. The point is to go to the ball rather than to find the Prince, the Other. For Cinderella, the search then becomes a journey toward perceived apotheosis as her shoe serves as a glass womb, with her own foot acting as a phallus, creating a transformed maiden who completes her princely journey through an internal transformation.] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[Forty-six essays on Feminist Perspectives, Actresses, Women in American Production, Experimentalists and Independents, Women and Political Films, Polemics, and Feminist Film Theory, including Laura Mulvey on “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” and Claire Johnston on “Myths of Women in the Cinema.”]

[The documentary was first produced in 1987. Kilbourne uses over 160 ads and TV commercials to explore ways in which women are created and marketed. Includes the following sections: Does the beauty ideal still tyrannize women? / Does advertising still objectify women’s bodies? / Are the twin themes of liberation and weight control still linked? / Is sexuality still presented as women’s main concern? / Are young girls still sexualized / Are grown women infantilized? / Are images of male violence against women still used to sell products? Kilbourne, Ed.D., is a popular lecturer in high schools and colleges. She has been twice named Lecturer of the Year by the National Association of Campus Activities. She is featured in Carolyn Russell Stonewell’s documentary Once Upon a Loss (Berkeley, 1995) and is the author of Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising (1999), reissued in paperback as Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think , New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. She also writes about women and tobacco. See her earlier documentary, Slim Hopes: Advertising & the Obsession with Thinness (1995), dir. Sut Jahlly. 30 minutes.]

[On the reissuing of Jan Brett’s illustrated edition of Beauty and the Beast , Kilpatrick observes, “ Beauty and the Beast is just the right antidote to our modern obsession with looks, surface charm, and casual sex. It speaks volumes about the meaning of true love and true beauty, and about the importance of restraining our animal nature until love has had time to grow. Children will appreciate the mystery and romance of this story; adults will appreciate its depth and wisdom” (p. 31). As Beauty observes, “handsome looks may hide a false and wicked heart.”]

[Detailed account of foot and shoe symbolism.]

[Book reviews.]

[“Fairy tales are the bedtime stories of the collective consciousness …. They are shared wish fulfillment, abstract dreams that resolve conflicts and give meaning to experience” (p. 3). “ Cinderella , the best-known and probably best-liked fairy tale, is above all a success story. The rags-to-riches theme perhaps explains its equal popularity among boys as well as girls” (p. 71). The moral is the “very essence of the Protestant Ethic” (p. 72). Rather than run away or wreak Gothic sabotage on the family, Cinderella internalizes the consciousness of the victim. The tale offers a dynamic metaphor of the feminine condition, the attraction of work and achievement, and the pull both inside and outside the home. It dramatizes the bitchy, envious, and desperate, along with victim and passive responses. Chapter Three: Cinderella and Women’s Work (pp. 71-109) explores problems of women functioning (working) in the public realm in America while still maintaining confidence in the domestic sphere. Women need to learn to manage conflict in a productive way (p. 106). The primitive bifurcations of the “Midnight” syndrome must be overcome (p. 109). Concludes with Denise Levertov’s “Prayer for Revolutionary Love,” love that permits and tolerates both public and private spheres and the unknown. The crucial aspect of the Cupid and Psyche myth is Psyche’s self-actualizing creative power; Beast emerges from the human imagination as a projection of its own alienation from itself (p. 160). Beauty’s gradual discovery is that she is master of Beast’s castle, with a power that is uniquely her own. The story is “a symbolic representation of a soul in the process of exorcising patriarchal images — benevolent as well as threatening — that wield power over it (p. 161.) Chapter 5: Beauty Exorcises the Beast (pp. 157-202) argues that women’s real liberation began with the pill, through which women gained control over their bodies. Pregnancy is essentially impersonal — something that happens in a woman’s body; childbirth, “as close to dying as any other human experience” (p. 170). She considers depression and the limitations of religion as therapy for women along with the difficulty women have in taking control of their lives. “A woman has no choice but to be an atheist” (p. 184); that, or like Julian of Norwich, realize in themselves the motherhood of God (pp. 186-89). “Mary is finally the anti-myth, the one who contradicts the fairy-tale heroices ‘still dreaming through the dreams of men.’ She has tamed the Beast, she has broken the spell” (p. 202).]

[A review of “a crop of new books” that “illustrates many of the Cinderella tale’s facinating variations.“Includes Koopmans’ Cinderella , Silverman’s Raisel’s Riddle , Kickox’s The Golden Land , Climo’s The Persian Cinderella , and San Souci’s Caribbean Cinderella .]

[Cinderella in Yugoslavia.]

[According to Prague Newspaper ( Mladd Fronta ) “Our children are more progressive than we were at their age. They don’t like to hear stories about kings, princesses, dull-witted Johns and people of that kind. They much prefer tanks, aeroplanes, and combines.” We must indoctrinate the children so that they will be “imbued with the Socialist spirit and sentiments.”]

[Lang reports on the work of another folklore scholar, J. B. Andrews. Much of the article is a recording of the story “Cendreusette”: (A mother has two daughters, Catherine and Cendreusette. She rejects the latter and sends her to mind a cow and spin cotton. The girl does not know what to do, but the cow helps her, and the mother accepts Cendreusette’s work. The sister, Catherine, then tends the cow and fails to treat it well. The cow gives her cabbages instead of floss, and the mother orders the death of the cow. Cendreusette warns the animal, who advises her to eat of her flesh and keep her bones; the girl may then use the bones to wish for nice dresses. After the mother and Catherine leave Cendreusette behind when they go to mass, she uses the bones to obtain a sun-colored gown. The next day, she wears the colors of the sea before losing a slipper. The king’s son searches for her, and when he arrives at the girl’s house, she appears in her sea-colored gown, and they marry.) After summarizing the story, Lang analyzes it and compares details with variants of the Cinderella story and notes the disappearance of violence at its conclusion. He uses this particular idea to stress Perrault’s genius in creating a kind fairy godmother before rejecting the arguments of scholars connecting Cinderella and Dawn myths. He also wonders why ashes appear in numerous Cinderella variants before musing that they may represent everyday rituals. He concludes by advocating that “primitive” cultures and their rituals need more attention to test this idea.] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[Are folktale differences and likenesses to be explained by independent invention or by borrowing through diffusion? “The more I have reflected on these matters, the more has borrowing seemed to me the general and prevalent cause of the likeness in the marchen of the world” (p. 420). The essay provides a good summary of the debate on issues of diffusion by Jacobs, Cox, Bédier, Cosquin, Krohn, Sudre, Basset, McLeod, etc., discussion provoked in part by Cox’s Cinderella studies. “Cinderella probably began as an inchoate shape, and even now many variants wander a good deal from the type, as it were, of the tale” (p. 426).]

[Lang finds the basic structure of Cinderella to be similar to Puss and Boots in that an individual in a lesser position gains a marriage with outside assistance. He classifies the stepmother and stepsister, fairy godmothers, and princes as narrative variations that differ depending on local and cultural emphasis. He then considers a current scholarly discussion of the Cinderella narrative originating in India before rejecting this idea and deciding that the story’s origin cannot be determined. He proclaims that “a naked shoeless race could not have invented Cinderella” (p. x) and then dismisses the idea that the Cinderella storyline connects to the stories of classical myth. He sees the fairy tales as stories that have progressed across human evolution to become the literary works we have today. He also responds to his personal critics when concluding the introduction by rejecting the idea that the same stories spontaneously evolve in many places around the world due to similar human needs.] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[Lang begins this introduction by providing a biography of Charles Perrault that includes his education, career, writing, and interactions with his critics. He views Perrault as a positive figure whose most important work was the creation of his now famous fairy tales: “No nation owes him so much as we of England, who, south of the Scottish, and east of the Welsh marches, have scarce any popular tales of our own save Jack the Giant Killer, and who have given the full fairy citizenship to Perrault’s Petit Poucet and La Barbe Bleue ” (xvi). Lang then studies the history of the fairy tale and how Perrault’s stories became successful at court and have come to represent France in general. He also examines Perrault’s sources and other works that influenced his writing before he produced his tales, such as his reading of Boccaccio to create Griselidis . He then compares Perrault with other contemporary fairy tale authors before discussing the writer’s use of fairies and ogres. Lang believes that the name “fairy tale” has become the typical way to describe oral folklore because of Perrault’s use of fairies within his stories, and these characters are often used in narratives that typically contained animal helpers, such as Cinderella and her fairy godmother. After recounting the historical role of fairies in myth and folklore, he reveals that ogres represent left over elements from narratives about cannibalism after the tales began to be edited for “appropriate” content. Lang, next, provides notes on several stories by Perrault and summarizes the tale, compares it to other variants, and assesses critical discussion of it. The stories discussed are “The Three Wishes,” “The Sleeping Beauty,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Blue Beard,” “Puss in Boots,” “Toads and Diamonds,” “Cinderella,” “Riquet of the Tuft,” and “Hop o’ My Thumb.” He concludes his introduction by analyzing theories of folklore transmission before rejecting both the Aryan and Indian theories without offering a strategy of his own; he suggests that similar tales can occur due to coincidence.] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[Lang begins by providing the tale of “Rashin Coatie” in dialect. (A king and queen have a daughter, but the queen dies. The dead mother bequeaths the girl a red calf that will give the girl whatever she wants. The king remarries a woman with three daughters, who is unfriendly to the girl. The stepmother and her daughters take away the girl’s belongings, change her clothes, make her work in the kitchen, and call her Rashin Coatie. They also starve her, but she ignores the harsh treatment and goes to her calf for what she needs. In response, the stepmother kills the calf, and the girl pines. The dead animal tells Rashin Coatie to place its bones under a stone and to continue making wishes. The girl does and time passes. At Christmas, the family leaves the girl behind when attending church and commands her to make dinner. The girl despairs and begs the calf to help her. It does, and she goes to church in new clothes while the food cooks magically at home. At the church, a prince sees her, but she leaves before the end of the service. The sisters return home and tell Rashin Coatie of the beautiful woman everyone noticed, and she begs to join them, but they again reject her. She again appeals to the calf and goes to the church wearing beautiful clothes while the calf prepares dinner. The prince and the people notice her presence for a second time. When she tries to depart on the third day, the prince tries to stop her by placing a guard at the back of the church. Rashin Coatie escapes but loses one of her slippers. The prince vows to marry the woman who can fit the shoe, and the three stepsisters cannot succeed because they have “ugly broad feet” (366). A henwife then mutilates her daughter’s toes and heel in an attempt to make her fit into the slipper, and the prince accepts her until a bird warns him of the deceit. The bird also tells him of Rashin Coatie, and when he finds her, the girl runs away. She returns after the calf has given her new clothes, and the slipper comes to her foot of its own accord. The prince and the maiden marry. The story is followed by “Observations Sur Le Conte Précédent” by H.G. in French before Lang presents the story “Nicht, Nought, Nothing,” an unusual Cinderella-like story, where a giant’s daughter marries a king’s son after helping him through a series of trials. (A king and queen have no children for many years. At last, the queen bears a child but does not want to baptize it until the king, who is away at war, returns. The child is called Nicht, Nought, Nothing and is a young boy before the king returns from the war. On the way back, the king comes to a river he cannot cross, and a Giant tricks him into giving him Nicht, Nought, Nothing if he wants to go home. The king does not realize what he has promised the Giant until the monarch greats the queen. The king and queen then decide to deceive the Giant and give him the hen wife’s son when he arrives at the castle. The Giant figures out the deception and kills the hen wife’s child. The king and queen then send the gardener’s son with the Giant, and the same thing happens. The Giant finally threatens to kill everyone, and the king and queen give him Nicht, Nought, Nothing. The boy and the Giant spend time together and become friends before the Giant sets the boy a challenge. He must clean an enchanted stable in one day, or the giant will eat him. The boy attempts to clean the stable but cannot complete the task; the Giant’s daughter helps him by calling for all the birds and animals to help out. The Giant then makes Nicht, Nought, Nothing drain a loch. The boy again tries but fails. The Giant’s daughter helps him by having the fish in the sea drink the water. The Giant next makes the boy bring eggs back from the top of an impossibly tall tree. In order to help the boy, the Giant’s daughter cuts off her fingers and toes, and the boy uses them to create a staircase. The girl tells him to run away and that she will join him. The Giant dies while chasing his daughter, and the boy ends up at his parents’ palace. The king and queen take him in but do not realize who he is. The Giant’s daughter follows him to the castle but hides in the gardens. She hears that the boy is about to wed the king’s daughter and goes to the boy who is sleeping and pleads for him to notice her after everything she has given him. His parents then learn who the boy is and awaken him, and he recounts his adventures and the help of the Giant’s daughter. The king and queen accept them both, and Nicht, Nought, Nothing marries the girl who helped him.) This tale is also followed by “Observations Sur Le Conte Précédent” in French by Reinhold Kœhler.] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[Lang offers an extremely brief preface where he suggests that his stories are marketed for children. He has compiled the stories in this volume from several authors including Charles Perrault and the Grimm Brothers. Stories in this volume include “The Bronze Ring,” “Prince Hyacinth and the Dear Little Princess,” “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” “The Yellow Dwarf,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood,” “Cinderella; or the Little Glass Sipper,” “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp,” “The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was,” “Rumpelstiltzkin,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Master Maid,” “Why the Sea is Salt,” “The Master Cat; or, Puss in Boots,” “Felicia and the Pot of Pinks,” “The White Cat,” “The Water-lily. The Gold-Spinners,” “The Terrible Head,” “The Story of Pretty Goldilocks,” “The History of the Whittington,” “The Wonderful Sheep,” “Little Thumb,” “The Forty Thieves,” “Hansel and Grettel,” “Snow-white and Rose-red,” “The Goose-girl,” “Toads and Diamonds,” “Prince Darling,” “Blue Beard,” “Trusty John,” “The Brave Little Tailor,” “A Voyage to Lilliput,” “The Princess on the Glass Hill,” “The Story of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Paribanou,” “The History of Jack the Giant-killer,” “The Black Bull of Norway,” and “The Red Etin.”] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[Lang states that the stories in this volume come from Africa, South America, some Native American tribes, and other parts of the world. Stories in this volume include “What the Rose Did to the Cypress,” “Ball-Carrier and the Bad One,” “How Ball-Carrier Finished His Task,” “The Bunyip,” “Father Grumbler,” “The Story of the Yara,” “The Cunning Hare,” “The Turtle and His Bride,” “How Geirald the Coward Was Punished,” “Hábogi,” “How the Little Brother Set Free His Big Brothers,” “The Sacred Milk of Koumongoé,” “The Wicked Wolverine,” “The Husband of the Rat’s Daughter,” “The Mermaid and the Boy,” “Pivi and Kabo,” “The Elf Maiden,” “How Some Wild Animals Become Tame Ones,” “Fortune and the Wood-Cutter,” “The Enchanted Head,” “The Sister of the Sun,” “The Prince and the Three Fates,” “The Fox and the Lapp,” “Kisa the Cat,” “The Lion and the Cat,” “Which Was the Foolishest?,” “Asmund and Signy,” “Rübezahl,” “Story of the King Who Would Be Stronger than Fate,” “Story of Wali Dâd the Simple-hearted;” “Tale of a Tortoise and of a Mischievous Monkey,” and “The Knights of the Fish.”] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[Lang begins the preface by reminding his audience that he merely gathers the stories and does not compose them himself. He also tells how the stories in this volume are from Eastern Europe including Russia and Romania; however, the volume also includes tales from Japan and Portugal. Stories in this volume include “Lovely Ilonka,” “Lucky Luck,” “The Hairy Man,” “To Your Good Health!,” “The Story of the Seven Simons,” “The Language of the Beasts,” “The Boy Who Could Keep a Secret,” “The Prince and the Dragon,” “Little Wildrose,” “Tiidu the Piper,” “Paperarello,” “The Gifts of the Magician,” “The Strong Prince,” “The Treasure Seeker,” “The Cottager and His Cat,” “The Prince Who Would Seek Immortality,” “The Stone-cutter,” “The Gold-bearded Man,” “Tritill, Litill, and the Birds,” “The Three Robes,” “The Six Hungry Beasts,” “How the Beggar Boy Turned into Count Piro,” “The Rogue and the Herdsman,” “Eisenkopf,” “The Death of Abu Nowas and of His Wife,” “Motikatika,” “Niels and the Giants,” “Shepherd Paul,” “How the Wicked Tanuki Was Punished,” “The Crab and the Monkey,” “The Horse Gullfaxi and the Sword Gunnföder,” “The Story of the Sham Prince, or the Ambitious Tailor,” “The Colony of Cats,” “How to Find Out a True Friend,” “Clever Maria,” and “The Magic Kettle.”] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[Lang introduces this volume with a discussion of how the tales originated and circulated. He believes that fairy tales describe a “younger” stage of human development with many of the tales becoming lost as civilization progresses. He acknowledges that a few of the stories may be for entertainment purposes alone, but he feels that most of the tales “teach goodness” (p. x). Additionally, he recognizes those people who reject fairy tales because “they are not true” (p. x), but Lang feels that children can decide which aspects of a tale are fantastic for themselves. This volume contains stories from mostly European countries; although it also possesses one story from China. Stories adapted from Madame d’Aulnoy and the Count de Caylus appear in this volume. Stories in this volume include “The Blue Bird,” “The Half-Chick,” “The Story of Caliph Stork,” “The Enchanted Watch,” “Rosanella,” “Sylvain and Jocosa,” “Fairy Gifts,” “Prince Narcissus and the Princess Potentilla,” “Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine,” “The Three Little Pigs,” “Heart of Ice,” “The Enchanted Ring,” “The Snuff-Box,” “The Golden Blackbird,” “The Little Soldier,” “The Magic Swan,” “The Dirty Shepherdess,” “The Enchanted Snake,” “The Biter Bit,” “King Kojata,” “Prince Fickle and Fair Helena,” “Puddocky,” “The Story of Hok Lee and the Dwarfs,” “The Story of the Three Bears,” “Prince Vivien and the Princess Placida,” “Little One-eye, Little Two-eyes, and Little Three-eyes,” “Jorinde and Joringel,” “Allerleirauh; or, the Many-Furred Creature,” “The Twelve Huntsmen,” “Spindle, Shuttle, and Needle,” “The Crystal Coffin,” “The Three Snake-leaves,” “The Riddle,” “Jack My Hedgehog,” “The Golden Lads,” “The White Snake,” “The Story of a Clever Tailor,” “The Golden Mermaid,” “The War of the Wolf and the Fox,” “The Story of the Fisherman and His Wife,” “The Three Musicians,” and “The Three Dogs.”] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[For this volume, Lang uses a brief preface that indicates the stories in this book originate from a variety of regions, including Lithuania, Germany, France, and parts of Africa. Stories in this volume include “Donkey Skin,” “The Goblin Pony,” “An Impossible Enchantment,” “The Story of Dschemil and Dschemila,” “Janni and the Draken,” “The Partnership of the Thief and the Liar,” “Fortunatus and his Purse,” “The Goat-faced Girl,” “What Came of Picking Flowers,” “The Story of Bensurdatu,” “The Magician’s Horse,” “The Little Gray Man,” “Herr Lazarus and the Draken,” “The Story of the Queen of the Flowery Isles,” “Udea and her Seven Brothers,” “The White Wolf,” “Mohammed with the Magic Finger,” “Bobino,” “The Dog and the Sparrow,” “The Story of the Three Sons of Hali,” “The Story of the Fair Circassians,” “The Jackal and the Spring,” “The Bear,” “The Sunchild,” “The Daughter of Buk Ettemsuch,” “Lauging Eye and Weeping Eye, or the Limping Fox,” “The Unlooked-for Prince,” “The Simpleton,” “The Street Musicians,” “The Twin Brothers,” “Cannetella,” “The Ogre,” “A Fairy’s Blunder,” “Long, Broad, and Quickeye,” and “Prunella.”] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[In this book, Lang laments people attributing authorship of the fairy tales to him. He believes that new fairy tales cannot be created except by redistributing elements from former tales. Lang admits to authoring three “fairy books,” Prince Prigio , Prince Ricardo , and Tales from a Fairy Court . The stories in this collection are from many countries including Portugal and Wales. Stories in this volume include “The Shift Lad,” “The False Prince and the True,” “The Jogi’s Punishment,” “The Heart of a Monkey,” “The Fairy Nurse,” “A Lost Paradise,” “How Brave Walter Hunted Wolves,” “The King of the Waterfalls,” “A French Puck,” “The Three Crowns,” “The Story of a Very Bad Boy,” “The Brown Bear of Norway,” “Little Lasse,” “‘Moti,’” “The Enchanted Deer,” “A Fish Story,” “The Wonderful Tree,” “The Rich Brother and the Poor Brother,” “The One-handed Girl,” “The Bones of Djulung,” “The Sea King’s Gift,” “The Raspberry Worm,” “The Stones of Plouhinec,” “The Castle of Kerglas,” “The Battle of the Birds,” “The Lady of the Fountain,” “The Four Gifts,” “The Groac’h of the Isle of Lok,” “The Escape of the Mouse,” “The Believing Husbands,” “The Hoodie-Crow,” “The Brownie of the Lake,” and “The Winning of Olwen.” From the Preface (Pp. vii-viii): “Nobody really wrote most of the stories. People told them in all parts of the world long before Egyptian hieroglyphics or Cretan signs or Cyprian syllabaries, or alphabets were invented. They are older than reading and writing, and arose like wild flowers before men had any education to quarrel over. The grannies told them to the grandchildren, and when the grandchildren became grannies they repeated the same old tales to the new generation. Homer knew the stories and made up the ‘Odyssey’ out of half a dozen of them. All the history of Greece till about 800 B.C. is a string of the fairy tales, all about Theseus and Heracles and Oedipus and Minos and Perseus is a Cabinet des Fées , a collection of fairy tales. Shakespeare took them and put bits of them into ‘King Lear’ and other plays; he could not have made them up himself, great as he was. Let ladies and gentlemen think of this when they sit down to write fairy tales, and have them nicely typed, and send them to Messrs. Longman & Co. to be published. They think that to write a new fairy tale is easy work. They are mistaken: the thing is impossible. Nobody can write a new fairy tale’ you can only mix up and dress up the old, old stories, and put the characters into new dresses, as Miss Thackeray did so well in ‘Five Old Friends.’ If any big girl of fourteen reads this preface, let her insist on being presented with ‘Five Old Friends.’”] [Annotation by Russell A. Peck and Martha Johnson-Olin]

[In this preface, Lang admits that most of the stories in the Fairy Books have been altered to lower the level of violence for an audience of children. He discusses the oral transmissions of the stories and attributes similarities across stories to the “uniformity of human fancy” (p. vii). The stories in this volume are from many Eastern countries and parts of Africa. Stories in this volume include “The Story of the Hero Makóma,” “The Magic Mirror,” “Story of the King Who Would See Paradise,” “How Isuro the Rabbit Tricked Gudi,” “Ian, the Soldier’s Son,” “The Fox and the Wolf,” “How Ian Direach Got the Blue Falcon,” “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Two Caskets,” “The Goldsmith’s Fortune,” “The Enchanted Wreath,” “The Foolish Weaver,” “The Clever Cat,” “The Story of Manus,” “Pinkel the Thief,” “The Adventures of a Jackal,” “The Adventures of the Jackal’s Eldest Son,” “The Adventures of the Younger Son of the Jackal,” “The Three Treasures of the Giants,” “The Rover of the Plain,” “The White Dove,” “The Girl-Fish,” “The Owl and the Eagle,” “The Frog and the Lion Fury,” “The Adventures of Covan the Brown-haired,” “The Princess Bella-Flor,” “The Bird of Truth,” “The Mink and the Wolf,” “Adventures of an Indian Brave,” “How the Stalos Were Tricked,” “Andras Baive,” “The White Slipper,” and “The Magic Book.”] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[In this book, Lang assesses the power of the fairy tale after having received a copy of Le Cabinet de Fées ( The Fairy Cabinet ), a multi-volume collection of folklore. He then muses on the success of Charles Perrault and how the popularity of his fairy tales subsumed the reputation of his other works. Lang traces the audience for fairy tales back to the court of Louis XIV before scholars focused on stories told by average people more. He concludes by advocating that children should be allowed to choose their own reading materials before reminding his readers that the Fairy Books are intended for children. This volume also includes stories by Ignaz Künos and M. Anatole France, and the tales are from many countries, including India. Stories in this volume include “Madschun,” “The Blue Parrot,” “Geirlaug the King’s Daughter,” “The Story of Little King Loc,” “ ’A Long-bow Story,‘” “Jackal or Tiger?,” “The Comb and the Collar,” “The Thanksgiving of the Wazir,” “Samba the Coward,” “Kupti and Imani,” “The Strange Adventures of Little Maia,” “Diamond Cut Diamond,” “The Green Knight,” “The Five Wise Words of the Guru,” “The Golden-headed Fish,” “Dorani,” “The Satin Surgeon,” “The Billy Goat and the King,” “The Story of Zoulvisia,” “Grasp All, Lose All,” “The Fate of the Turtle,” “The Snake Prince,” “The Prince and Princess in the Forest,” “The Clever Weaver,” “The Boy Who Found Fear at Last,” “He Wins Who Waits,” “The Steel Cane,” “The Punishment of the Fairy Gangana,” and “The Silent Princess.”] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[In the preface, Lang tells of how children hear fairy tales from their parents. He states that readers of his previous Fairy Books might recognize different versions of stories seen earlier in the series in addition to new stories from Japanese, Danish, and Swedish traditions. He also warns his adult readers about the story “The Princess in the Chest”; although he has softened the tale in translation, it may remain frightening. He ends his discussion by suggesting that fairy tales unite people due to their themes of kindness: “[N]o kind man, woman, or beast or bird, ever comes to anything but good in these oldest fables of the world” (p. viii). Stories in this volume include “The Cat’s Elopement,” “How the Dragon Was Tricked,” “The Goblin and the Grocer,” “The House in the Wood,” “Uraschimataro and the Turtle,” “The Slaying of the Tanuki,” “The Flying Trunk,” “The Snow Man,” “The Shirt-Collar,” “The Princess in the Chest,” “The Three Brothers,” “The Snow-queen,” “The Fir Tree,” “Hans, The Mermaid’s Son,” “Peter Bull,” “The Bird ‘Grip,’” “Snowflake,” “I Know What I Have Learned,” “The Cunning Shoemaker,” “The King Who Would Have A Beautiful Wife,” “Catherine and Her Destiny,” “How the Hermit Helped to Win The King’s Daughter,” “The Water of Life,” “The Wounded Lion,” “The Man Without a Heart,” “The Two Brothers,” “Master and Pupil,” “The Golden Lion,” “The Sprig of Rosemary,” “The White Dove,” “The Troll’s Daughter,” “Esben and the Witch,” “Princess Minon-Minette,” “Maiden Bright-eye,” “The Merry Wives,” “King Lindorm,” “The Jackal, the Dove, and the Panther,” “The Little Hare,” “The Sparrow with the Split Tongue,” “The Story of Ciccu,” and “Don Giovanni de la Fortuna.”] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[Lang begins by stating that the stories of this volume are not at the same level of the work of Charles Perrault; the editor’s goal is to explore less familiar stories from Germany and France in addition to other countries. This book also includes stories by M. Charles Marelles, and M. Henri Carnoy. Stories in this volume include “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” “The Princess Mayblossom,” “Soria Moira Castle,” “The Death of Koschei the Deathless,” “The Black Thief and Knight of the Glen,” “The Master Thief,” “Brother and Sister,” “Princess Rosette,” “The Enchanted Pig,” “The Norka,” “The Wonderful Birch,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “The Little Good Mouse,” “Graciosa and Percinet,” “The Three Princesses of Whiteland,” “The Voice of Death,” “The Six Sillies,” “Kari Woodengown,” “Drakestail,” “The Ratcatcher,” “The True History of Little Goldenhood,” “The Golden Branch,” “The Three Dwarfs,” “Dapplegrim,” “The Enchanted Canary,” “The Twelve Brothers,” “Rapunzel,” “The Nettle Spinner,” “Farmer Weatherbeard,” “Mother Holle,” “Minniken,” “Bushy Bride,” “Snowdrop,” “The Golden Goose,” “The Seven Foals,” “The Marvellous Musician,” and “The Story of Sigurd.”] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[Lang uses this preface to defend himself and Joseph Jacobs from critical remarks made by G. Laurence Gomme, the president of the Folk Lore Society. Gomme apparently criticized the men for combining literary stories with oral tales, as the literary versions are less factually and culturally accurate. Lang justifies his work by maintaining that his goal is to entertain children; he believes that children know the stories are not 100% factual and can research the stories if they wish to later in life. He concludes his discussion by recommending that everyone purchase The Rose and the Ring by Thakery. The stories in this book are from many European countries with a few Icelandic and Native American stories included as well. Stories in this volume include “The Cat and the Mouse in Partnership,” “The Six Swans,” “The Dragons of the North,” “Story of the Emperor’s New Clothes,” “The Golden Crab,” “The Iron Stove,” “The Dragon and His Grandmother,” “The Donkey Cabbage,” “The Little Green Frog,” “The Seven-headed Serpent,” “The Grateful Beasts,” “The Giants and the Herd-boy,” “The Invisible Prince,” “The Crow,” “How Six Men Travelled Through the Wide World,” “The Wizard King,” “The Nixy,” “The Glass Mountain,” “Alphege, or the Green Monkey,” “Fairer-than-a-Fairy,” “The Three Brothers,” “The Boy and the Wolves, or the Broken Promise,” “The Glass Axe,” “The Dead Wife,” “In the Land of Souls,” “The White Duck,” “The Witch and Her Servants,” “The Magic Ring,” “The Flower Queen’s Daughter,” “The Flying Ship,” “The Snow-daughter and the Fire-son,” “The Story of King Frost,” “The Death of the Sun-hero,” “The Witch,” “The Hazel-nut Child,” “The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus,” “Prince Ring,” “The Swineherd,” “How to Tell a True Princess,” “The Blue Mountains,” “The Tinder-box,” “The Witch in the Stone Boat,” “Thumbelina,” “The Nightingale,” “Hermod and Hadvor,” “The Steadfast Tin-soldier,” “Blockhead Hans,” and “A Story about a Darning-needle.”] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[Lang again reminds his audience that he does not write the stories before discussing how the stories originated in an earlier time of human development. The stories in this book are from a variety of countries, and Lang admits that he has “abridged and simplified” the stories from Africa (p. viii). Stories in this volume include “A Tale of the Tontlawald,” “The Finest Lair in the World,” “The Story of Three Wonderful Beggars,” “Schippeitaro,” “The Three Princesses and Their Beasts,” “The Goat’s Ears of the Emperor Trojan,” “The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples,” “The Lute Player,” “The Grateful Prince,” “The Child Who Came From an Egg,” “Stan Bolovan,” “The Two Frogs,” “The Story of a Gazelle,” “How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water,” “Two in a Sack,” “The Envious Neighbor,” “The Fairy of the Dawn,” “The Enchanted Knife,” “Jesper Who Herded the Hares,” “The Underground Workers,” “The History of Dwarf Long Nose,” “The Nunda, Eater of People,” “The Story of Hassebu,” “The Maiden with the Wooden Helmet,” “The Monkey and the Jelly-fish,” “The Headless Dwarfs,” “The Young Man Who Would Have His Eyes Opened,” “The Boys with the Golden Stars,” “The Frog,” “The Princess Who Was Hidden Underground,” “The Girl Who Pretended to Be a Boy,” “The Story of Halfman,” “The Prince Who Wanted to See the World,” “Virgilius the Sorcerer,” and “Mogarzea and His Son.”] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[“As Cinderella and the Prince fade into the Happily Ever After, our attention is diverted from the leftover and mangled stepsisters. However, I think of them a lot” (pp. 233-234). The familiar image of the stepsisters industriously lopping off their toes and heels so as to fit into the glass slipper (key to the somewhat enigmatic heart of the prince) — when of course it was never intended for them anyway — typifies the problems of female socialization as they objectify themselves for wrong reasons.]

[A detailed assessment of Lévi-Strauss’ structural/functionalist methodology through analysis of the Oedipus story and the creation stories of Genesis.]

[Includes Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The Story of Asdiwal”; Mary Douglas, “The Meaning of Myth, with special reference to ‘La Geste d’Asdiwal’”; Nur Yalman, “The Raw: the Cooked:: Nature: Culture’ — Observations on Le Cru et le cuit”; K. O. L. Burridge, “Lévi-Strauss and Myth”; E. Michael Mendelson, “The ùninvited Guest’: Ancilla to Lévi-Strauss on Totemism and Primitive Thought”; Peter Worsley, “Groote Eylandt Totemism and Le Totémisme aujourd’hui ”; and Robin Fox, “Totem and Taboo Reconsidered.”]

[In an effort to explain his ‘lunatic’ Anne Catherick, Wilkie Colins anticipated some of the major psychiatric theories prevalent today by embodying his insights in a mythical approach to one of Victorian England’s favorite fairy tales, Cinderella ” (p. 92).]

[ Preface: Genesis: Belles Dames sans Merci, Swan Maidens, Demon Lovers; The Swan Maiden Tale: A Summary; Woman as Other; Folk Narratives and Fantasy: Narrative as Self-expression; Quest or Search: Gender Significance in Two Story Patterns. [ Chapter 1: The Dangerous Adventure: Antithetical Stories: The Captured Fairy Bride and the Woman Abducted by a Demon Lover; The Symbolic Otherworld; Impossible Tasks: The Literary Critic as Folklorist; Problems of Folklore Methodology (Genre Criticism: Myth, Legend, Folktale; Fakelore and the Folklore Purist; Discredited Theories; Problems of Interpretation: Fieldwork and Textual Analysis; Culture Specificity versus the Universalist Approach to Folklore; Text Contamination: From Folk Narrators to Folklore Collectors; Varieties of Folktale “Translation”; Definition of the “Folk”; Women and Men: Differences in Story Choice, Narration, and Folklore Gathering); Vari-ability of Patriarchy: Degrees of Female Anatomy; Narrative Reconstruction: The Role of Folktale Variants. [ Chapter 2: Urvasi and the Swan Maidens: The Runaway Wife: Swan Maidens Who are Not Swans; The Meaning of the Swan as Signifier of the Story Type; Swan and Serpent: Odette and Odile; Gender Conflict in the Sanskrit Tale of Pururavas and Urvasi: Urvasi as Swan Maiden; Myths of Romantic Love: Realism in the Swan Maiden Tale; Swan Maidens and Valkyries: The Immortal Brides of the Icelandic Saga; Kidnap and Rape: The Capture of the Swan Maiden (How the Swan Maiden Becomes a Captive Bride; The Swan Maiden’s Domestic Life; How the Swan Maiden Regains Her Freedom); Female Bonding in the Swan Maiden Tale (The Swan Maiden’s Enforced Separation from Her Sisters; Woman as Socializer of Other Women in a Man’s World; An Example from Anthropology: The Cameroon Mermaid Rites; Whose Story Is It? The Escaped Swan Maiden and the Husband Who Wants Her Back). [ Chapter 3: The Devil’s Bride: Urvasi and the Gandharvas’ Triangular Relationships (Swan Maiden, Husband, Supernatural Spouse; Mortal Woman, Husband, Demon Lover); Conflict and Fantasy: Fidelity to the Other World; The Ballad of “The Demon Lover” [Child 243]: An Analysis); Shirley Jackson’s Demonic Seducer: James Harris; The Collapse of the Triangle: The Ordinary Husband as Demon Lover; Devils and Witches (Wildness and Civilization; Woman and Nature: Patriarchy and the Control of Woman; The Unmarried Woman: Widows, Spinsters, and Other Deviants; The Swan Maiden as Witch; Witches and Fairies; Animals as Demon Lovers); The North American Star Husband Tales. [ Chapter 4: The Animal Groom: Animal Groom Tales: Cupids and Psyches, Beauties and Beasts, Frog Princes — and Others; The Paradox of the Search for the Lost Husband: Active Heroine or Penitent Wife?; Swan Maidens in Animal Groom Tales; Cupid, Psyche, and the Realities of Wedlock; The Reluctant Bride: Exogamous Marriages; Bestiality; Bruno Bettelheim and the Animal Groom Cycle: Errors and Insights; Importance of Gender in the Tales and Their Tellers; Fathers and Mothers in Animal Groom Tales; The Lohengrin Legend: Swan Maidens, Swan Knights, and Swan Children; Civilizing the Beast: Woman’s Role in Culture; Taboo Motifs: Narrative Devices and Thematically Significant Story Elements; Defying the Taboo: Psyche’s Quest for Consciousness; The Variability of Psyche (Obedient Psyches; Willful Psyches: Taming the Shrew; Greedy Psyches; Psyche as Patient Griselda: The Prototype of the Dutiful Wife; Obedient and Disobedient Daughters; Lascivious and Perverse Psyches; Courageous Psyches); Psyche and Consciousness Raising: Sisterhood and Power; Sexual Awakening and Sexual Repression; Metamorphoses: Taming the Beast; Nature and Culture: The Price of Disenchantment; Mutual Disenchantments; Rhetoric and the Cupid and Psyche Tale. [ Chapter 5: Swan Maiden and Incubus: The Incubi as Pururavas’s Rival; Incubus as Demon Lover and Incubus as Nightmare Dream; A Transformation: From Folklore to Demonology; The Mar-Wife Story: Swan Maiden as Nightmare Demon; the Mare in Nightmare: The Gender and Sexual Significance of Horses and Riders; Secret Visits to the Otherworld: Witches’ Sabbaths, Supernatural Revels, and Other Orgies; The Fear of Woman; Inquisitions and Exorcisms: Mutilations and Executions; The Heretical Swan Maiden; From Nature Spirit to Incubus — and the Reverse; Swan Maiden and Demon Lover as Dream Figures: Theoretical Aspects; The Collective and Individual Nature of Dreams; The Danger of the Dreaming Woman: Literary and Folkloristic Examples; Fallen Angels: Genesis 6; Lilith: Liberated Woman as Demon; Natural and Unnatural Mothers: Swan Maidens, Lilith, La Llorona, Medea; The Demon Child: Changelings and Other Deviant Children in Folklore, Literature, and Film; The Devil Baby of Hull House and the Abuse of Woman. [ Chapter 6: The Animal Bride: Handsome and the Beastess: A Neglected Story Pattern; The Slaughter of the Swan Maiden; Two Different Swan Maiden Story Patterns (The Swan as Captured Fairy Bride; The Swan as Enchanted Mortal Woman); The Significance of Happy Endings: Swan Maidens Who Wish to Be Won Back; The Mysterious Housekeeper Stories: The Domestic Swan Maiden; Struggles for Power: The Master-Maid (Male Passivity; The Woman as Performer of Superhuman Tasks; The Enchanted Woman Who Must Disenchant Herself; The Disenchanted Woman: Diminished Power and Status; Jason and Medea Folktales: Medea as Swan Maiden); The Tale of the Three Oranges: Marriage and Dependency; Fair and Foul: Loathly Ladies and Black Swans; Substitute Brides: The Ideal of the Perfect Wife; Myths of Feminine Evil: The Repellent Animal Bride (The Wild Woman; The Animal in the Animal Brides; The Female Werewolf and Other Demon Animals; The Vagina Dentata Motif; The Impurity of the Menstruating Woman); Russalka and the Forcibly Domesticated Wife; Melusine and Other Serpent Brides: The Phallic Woman; Disenchantment as Mutilation; Woman and Exorcism; The Fearful Kiss and the Disappointed Animal Bride: Examples of Unbroken Enchantments; Broken Taboos and Wife Abuse in Animal Bride Tales. [ Chapter 7: Orpheus’s Quest: The Swan Maiden Tale from a Man’s Point of View; Folklore and the Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice; Fairylands and Infernos: The Romance of Sir Orfeo; Eurydice as Swan Maiden: Victim or Demon?; Orpheus’s Failure and Patriarchal Power (Models of Masculinity; Myths of Male Superiority; Ineffectual Husbands); Orpheus and the Broken Taboo; The Abused Wife: Varieties of Marital Failure; Confused Orpheuses: What Does Woman Want?; Dependent Orpheuses (Anxious Husbands; Helpless Widowers; Abandoned Spouses); Misogynistic Orpheuses; Separation from the Female Parent: Witches, Mothers, and Mothers-in-law; The Oedipal Split: Fathers, Demon Lovers, and Other Male Models; The Vulnerability of Orpheus. [ Chapter 8: Etain’s Two Husbands: The Swan Maiden’s Choice: Puruavas’s Ascent to the Gods and the Allure of the Real World; Swan Maidens Who Choose the Human World; The Demon Lover as Trickster: Outwitting the Diabolical Seducer; The Wager for the Swan Maiden: Etain, Damayanti, and the Gambling Game; The Folktale of “The Two Husbands”; Nuclear Families in Folktales: The Symbolically Integrated Personality; Choice and Fantasy: Choice as Fantasy; The Dancing Dress: Ibsen’s Nora as Swan Maiden; Nora’s Choice; Folktales and Runaway Wives. Thirty page bibliography.]

[A Laotian version with commentary comparing it with Cambodian and Vietnamese versions.]

[Pain exerts a complex of forces which realign the spatiotemporal field. The centripetal force exerted by pain reorganizes the temporal domain around a specific situation. At the same time pain radiates centrifugally. Sometimes we can only overcome one pain with another. Because of its transformative powers pain is purposefully induced in many cultures in rituals of puberty or self-flagellation. Pain is not just a particular sensation. It lies at the limit of all sensation and corporeal functioning. “Pain challenges any fantasies of pure transcendence, of a self detached from social and merial bases” (p. 262). It keeps us mindful of one’s own vulnerablity. It is proto-solipsistic, establishing “an experience of primordial aloneness, of the distance separating self from the world” (p. 263).]

[“One of the myths that is most damaging to the goals and aspirations of girls and young women is the Cinderella Myth …. Debunking the Cinderella Myth promises benefits to the larger society, which can no longer afford the economic, psychological, and sociological costs of wasted human potential resulting when girls and boys are prepared for life with this traditional, stereo-typical model of the past in mind” (pp. 328-29). The idea of living happily ever after with a husband who redeems her from abuse is the most offensive component of the myth. By 1995, 61 of every one hundred women will be part of the labor force and more than half will be single, widowed, divorced, separated, or with husbands whose incomes are marginal. Colleges and Universities must take part in the debunking process, identifying sexist curricula; “the prejudices of school personnel can have a profound impact on pupils’ lives” (p. 330). Debunking the Cinderella Myth is a legitimate educational goal. “Girls and boys who are socialized to believe in the Cinderella Myth grow into women and men who are victimized by its fallacious assumptions …. Girls … should not be trained to underachieve and underaspire because they are merely marking time until their husbands come along to take care of them” (p. 334).]

[Examines echoic illustration practices.]

[St. Uncumber, a woman saint, is represented fully clothed, hanging on the Cross but with only one shoe, a golden slipper. A destitute musician is said to have prayed before her statue for aid, and she threw him one of her gold boots. When he was found with it he was to be hanged for theft, but she threw him the other and his life was saved. Levin suggests that the legend offers “an ironic twist to the old Cinderella story, one where the woman, as opposed to Prince, is the powerful one” (p. 5).]

[“Rossini’s La Cenerentola , which was first performed in America by the Garcias in 1826, won great popularity only in 1831 when it was performed, in Michael Rophino Lacy’s translation, as Cinderella; or, the Fairy-Queen and the Glass Slipper . It played for more than fifty performances during the first season alone, remained a regular feature of American theaters for decades, and became in the judgment of one music historian ‘one of the most popular works of musical theater in the history of the American stage’” (p. 93).]

[An essay review of four books on the reading of cultural symbolism, including Anna Birgitta Rooth’s The Cinderella Cycle and Harold Bayley’s The Lost Language of Symbolism . Criticises Rooth for deficiencies in structuralist methodology, for her failure to establish a typology, and for her failure to deal adequately with Cinderella in America, especially the male varieties. The work is immensely erudite but lacking in that special intuition and subjectivity that Bayley so abuses in his work.]

[The original mode of exchange used women as objects of exchange, which ensured a social network of rights and obligations. “The prohibition of incest is less a rule prohibiting marriage with the mother, sister, or daughter than a rule obliging the mother, sister, or daughter to be given to others. It is the supreme rule of the gift” (p. 481).]

[“If the morphological study of tales has remained rudimentary, it is because it has been neglected in favor of research into origins …. A good morphological study is the basis of all scientific investigation. Moreover, ‘as long as no correct morphologi-cal study exists, there can also be no correct historical study’” (p. 118). Assesses Propp’s theory of functions and the limitations of such methodology. For Propp there is only one fairy tale which is nothing more than a narrative that puts into words a limited number of functions in a constant order of succession. For Propp tales are myths. Lévi-Strauss basically agrees, but notes, however, that almost all societies perceive the two genres as distinct. Though the tale works with minimized oppositions it “offers more possibilities of play, its permutations are comparatively freer, and they progressively acquire a certain arbitrary character” (p. 128). Propp allowed that the tale lends itself imperfectly to structural analysis. But Lévi-Strauss argues that the imperfection is less than Propp realized. “The point is not to choose between tale and myth, but to understand that they are the two poles of a field that also includes all sorts of intermediate forms and that morphological analysis must be considered in the same way, if one does not want to leave out elements belonging, like the others, to one and the same system of transformations” (p. 130). “Nothing can be more convincing of the inadequacy of formalism than its inability to reconstitute the very empirical content from which it was itself drawn” (p. 134). To his credit Propp discovered that the content of tales is permutable, but too often he treated it as if it was arbitrary. Formalism errs in believing “that the grammar can be tackled at once and the dictionary postponed. What is true for some linguistic systems is even more true for myths and tales. This is so because in this case grammar and vocabulary are not only closely linked while operating at distinct levels; they virtually adhere to each other on all surfaces and cover each other completely …. Mythemes are still words; functions — these mythemes to the second power--are denoted by words (as Propp perceives very well). And it is likely that languages exist in which an entire myth can be expressed in a single word” (p. 144).]

[Imagines an intelligence from another planet confronting a library and what problems that creature would have in discovering how to decipher written languages, musical scores, etc. He then sets up a grid of sorts which he applies to the Oedipus story, with additional two-dimensional charts. He then compares the systems of others. By using systematically this kind of structural analysis it becomes possible to organize all the known pariants of a myth as a series forming a kind of permutation group. Uses the trickster of American mythology and Native American versions of Cinderella to analyze and compare similar narratives on either side of the ocean.]

[The 1977 Massey Lectures, addressing questions of myth and structuralism, nature and the primitive, conceptual relationships between mythological thinking and history, and myth and music. In his defense of structuralism Lèvi-Strauss argues that all forms of thought are structuralist, whether scientific or mythological. Fantasy and science are less far apart than they were in the 18th- and 19th-centuries, partly because we now better understand the fictions of science. Offers an interesting universalist argument comparing myths of twins, harelips, and breach births among Canadian and South American native Americans.]

[The Myth is that of Psyche: “Love is too young to know what conscience is.”]

[Challenges Lurie’s assertion that children need at least one collection of fairytales to prepare for women’s liberation. Examines Lang’s Blue Fairy Book, noting Lang’s insistence that fairytales teach. Her concern is with what they teach — jealousy and divisiveness among girls, passivity and submission, the idea that women win the prize only if they are beautiful while boys win by being aggressive. Marriage is the fulcrum and major event in nearly every fairy tale. “Cinderella instantly captivated her prince during a ball that amounts to a beauty contest. Poor girls are chosen by princes because they have been seen by them” (p. 386). Marriage equates with wealth. Girls learn that they should be meek. Cinderella is no Horatio Alger; rather, “her name is partly synonymous with female martyrdom” (p. 390). Powerful good women are almost always fairies and remote, never human. T he Blue Fairy Book is filled with weddings, but shows little of married life. Seldom is there a whole family. Usually at least one of the parents is dead. “The classical attributes of ‘feminity’ found in these stories are in fact imprinted in children and reinforced by the stories themselves. Analyses of the influence of the most popular children’s literature may give us an insight into some of the origins of psycho-sexual identity” (p. 395).]

[A review of Marie Louise von Franz’ Introduction to the Interpretation of Fairy Tales and Problems of the Feminine in Fairy Tales . Von Franz suggests categorically that women love to be unclear, that they vegetate more easily than men, that they have more of a herd instinct, and are more interested in love and personal relationships. She assumes that they are more passive than male heroes because of the nature of feminine personality. She sees Cinderella’s tasks sorting to be the tasks of a woman. “A feminist would ask whether the tale was not intended to support a patriarchal cultural view that rebukes women for being curious.” In truth, feminists do not recognize themselves in such tales and do not believe they depict women accurately, but rather acculturate them to subservient positions. “What is lacking in Dr. Von Franz’s work is any consideration of the socializing effect that the tales have upon readers” (p. 218).]

[In Part I: Theory, Lord discusses the formula, themes, songs and song of performers of oral narratives, the qualities of their performance and training, and the relationship of writing to oral traditions. In Part II: The Application, he discusses Homer, The Odyssey , The Iliad , and medieval epic.]

[Survey of Greek versions of the tale.]

[Folklorist and psychoanalytical approaches.]

[A Greek Cinderella in ballad form.]

[Cinderella and clothes in Jessie Redmon Fauset, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple , and Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby .]

[“Most of the great works of juvenile literature are subversive in one way or another: they express ideas and emotions not generally approved of or even recognized at the time; they make fun of honored figures and piously held beliefs; and they view social pretenses with clear-eyed directness, remarking — as in Andersen’s famous tale — that the emperor has no clothes” (p. 4). Cites attacks on Cinderella by Sarah Trimmer (1806) and Lucy Sprague Mitchell’s Here and Now Story Book to exemplify what adults don’t understand about children’s literature and its subversions. In “Folktale Literation” (pp. 16-28) Lurie demonstrates how fairy tales are way ahead of Mrs. Mitchell and some feminists, for that matter, with respect to women’s liberation (p. 18). Folklore is not only a medium helping its audience to understand and control a world and allowing the release of forbidden impulses; it is also the oldest form of the arts. In “The Folklore of Childhood” (pp. 189-204) Lurie details ways in which children are still actively inventing and passing on stories and verses which have the simplicity, orginality, and profundity of great folk literature.]

[Lurie rejects the idea that fairy tales harm children. She sees the stories teaching life lessons, including the notion that unfortunate events happen. Qualities such as wealth, beauty, and wit are needed to overcome these occurances. She sees fairy tales as pro-woman and “one of the few sorts of classic children’s literature a radical feminist would approve” (p. 42). She defends this idea by examining both heroines and female villains before discussing how to choose a volume of fairy tales in order to prepare children for the future. She bases her opinions on two factors: illustrations and accuracy of the story, but she acknowledges that her second criterion is complicated by editorial control and audience expectations. Lurie then provides a list of fairy tale collections that she assesses for their strengths and weaknesses, focusing on many details including illustrations, the size and durability of the text, the quality of the moral, the accuracy of the story, the familiarity of stories within a collection, the cost, and the number of tales within a volume. She concludes her discussion by stating her dislike for Hans Christian Anderson’s stories due to their darker themes of loss and longing and their portrayal of gender roles. She recommends two editions of Anderson’s work for those who “like crying” (p. 44).] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[Lurie notes that people object to fairy tales due to the models of passivity presented in most of the well-known heroines. She responds by describing other models of female agency in lesser known fairy tales that have been lost due to Victorian editorial practices. She believes people need to remember that tales were told by women but edited by men before judging the stories, and she provides three examples of active heroines: “Clever Gretchen,” “Molly Whuppie,” and “Tomlin.”] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[Pointedly addresses issues of cultural standards of beauty as constraints on women.]

[Considers Cinderella in the chapter on “The Uses of Fairy Tales.” Cinderella is a story about sorting good from evil. “Cinderella is closely related to the realm of the dead, and she bears its mark” (p. 61). It provides a sort of initiation whereby the child learns about help from animals and trees, the love of the deceased mother, the outcast needing a means of finding hope. The cruel punishment of the stepsisters by the birds in Grimm is shocking, but it is in a way an answer to their own self-mutilation. Yet the ending is the most manipulated part of the story. “The fairy tale has no landlord” is a common expression in Greece. “Each storyteller can tell it in his own way, so long as he faithfully retains the basic structure” (p. 63).]

[An attempt to identify what makes a folktale — its one-dimensionality, depthlessness, and abstraction; and its universal interconnection, along with its sublimation of motifs, magical, mythic, numinous rites and its social functions. He concludes with a discussion of structural folklore scholarship.]

[The opening chapter, “Beauty and Its Shock Effect” (pp. 1-39) begins with an investigation of the frequency with which beau and belle are used to describe the heroine as opposed to bon in ten randomly chosen French Cinderella stories, which leads to a discussion of Greek attitudes toward beauty and its power to disrupt behavior. Luthi discusses stories where beauty is punished because of the difficulties viewers have in dealing with themselves in beauty’s presence. Luthi then discusses ugliness as well, the misshapen, the unkind. Fairy tales usually rely on juxtaposition, separating beauty and ugliness into different characters rather than presenting them combined in a single person. The plot may often move an undefined protagonist — an unpromising youth, the American ash boy , for example — from numbskull, lazybones, etc., into the position of beautiful, or the recovery of promise. Mme Leprince de Beaumont’s La Belle et la bete dramatizes this plot. It is akin to Cindrella’s movement from cinders to palace. Poor clothing functions as a sign of immaturity, rich, magnificent dress as a sign of maturity or the reaching of one’s adulthood. The tales often juxtapose soiled dress, wooden cages, animal skins, the repulsive and ugly with the beautiful. Beauty functions both as a moving force in the plot and as a goal, an absolute. But beauty as movens and absolutum is not really two separate things, but rather two perspectives on a single process.]

[Challenges the patronizing scorn of recent ideologically motivated attacks on fairy tales, usually stemming from misconceptions about the tales themselves. Considers the subject matter and audience of fairy tales. That the tales become labelled “children’s stories” is what Tolkien called “an accident of our domestic history.” The charges that fairy tales always have passive heroines are ungrounded. Discusses the many tales in which the heroine is hyperactive and dominating. And even in the “passive” instances the kinds of activities she is engaged in are often subtle and strenuous. There are many instances of role reversals, with males and females often exchanging conventional attributes. Comments on adaptations of the Cupid and Psyche story in the 19th century and sexism in the presentation of beauty and goodness in women. Usually tales which present misogyny raise questions on serious topics, thereby inviting rexamination of sore spots within the society — “a fruitful state of unease” (p. 56). Rewriting may not be necessary; rather, a selection of positive and challenging stories should go alongside the familiar ones. Oftentimes there are mutual actions taking place — e.g., Gretel outwitting the witch. We need to appreciate the rules of oral tradition and enjoy the teller’s license to embellish.]

[Thirty-eight essays on stepmothers, mothers, stepsisters, and stepgrandmothers; stepping out (essays on working mothers, working stepmothers, new relationships and old ideologies); and transforming (both within and without — essays on lesbian families, single parenting, the company of children, step-by-step parenting, and joint-custody parenting).]

[The four tales Mallet discusses are Hansel and Gretel , Little Red Riding Hood , The Boy Who Set Out to Learn Fear , and The Goose Girl . Discusses the painful growth of the reader from childhood responses to adult responses. Only the best fairy tales survive the passage of time. The cruelty in fairy tales is often the most crucial element. It opens new perspectives. Mothers simply have to throw their fledglings out of the nest. They have their point too.]

[Seventeen essays from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Home: Its Work and Influence” (1903) to Joan Landes’s “Wages For Housework — Political and Theoretical Considerations” (1975, 1980). “There will be no true liberation of women until we get rid of the assumption that it will always be women who do housework and look after children — and mostly in their own homes” (Introduction, p. 7). The collection offers a summation of the debate on housewives as unpaid menial laborers, with most essays written in the 1960s and 70s.]

[Structuralist (Lévi-Strauss) reading of kinship and marriage relations in Cinderella.]

[Seven essays on new Soviet structuralist analysis of folktales, with tests of the methodology in the second part of the volume. The essays consider structural topology of tales, problems of historical morphologies, marriage and its function and position in the structure of folktales, and problems of structural analysis of fairy tales. Some attention is given to Breton lays as well as folk- and fairy-narratives.]

[Discusses mass-produced fantasies in action-adventure stories, particularly in film and TV. Marchetti offers a thumbnail sketch of theorists of ideology and popular culture (Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno of the Frankfort school; Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams in England; and Louis Althusser in France) in their studies of the culture industry, then studies ways in which audiences currently decode films. Looks at effects of Vietnam on portrayal of villains, heroes, and buddies in recent cinema. “The individual action-adventure hero cuts a lonely figure, and he embodies that ambivalence which surrounds the myth of the American individual. If a good deal of the American mythos promises to secure the rights of the individual against the dictates of society, then, the individual must also pay the price for that freedom in loneliness, rootlessness, and homelessness. The action-adventure hero can be a rather tragic figure, ostracized from the very community that he risked his life to protect. Within the figure of the hero, there is always a dialectical play between individualism and community acceptance, freedom and social stigma” (p. 195).]

[Offers a psychoanalytical reading of Grimm and Perrault which he relates to the case history of a twenty-five year old, 85 pound anorexic woman who identified with Cinderella. “The popularity of the Cinderella theme is due to the fact that it deals with a great number of the problems confronting every little girl” (p. 83). The age of the rivals is unspecific, thus leaving Cinderella’s position in the family incidental; she is entirely blameless as wicked behavior is projected onto the sibling rivals; the good and giving mother is preserved by being dead but perpetually accessable through the faery relationship, thus permitting Cinderella her Oedipal victory. She enjoys the pleasure of returning goodness for evil and cruelty, thus further denying her sadistic impulses. Her triumph is complete as the wicked mother is completely ignored at the end. In the German version the stepsisters are mutilated by their own hand and their mother’s request, but Cinderella fits the slipper without amputation. “The little girl denies her envy of her mother’s menstrual function and her mother’s illusory phallus. Thus, through the magic of the fairy tale, she turns what she feels are her own inadequacies into assets. In effect, she says, ‘Why should I be jealous of my mother? My father prefers a woman with a small penis and one who does not menstruate’” (p. 84). The little Cinderella is a tease, forcing both her father and the prince to pursue her, thwarting them on two successive nights. In the German version the desire to be attacked sexually is reflected in the demolishing of the pigeon house and pear tree, “but the impulses are all denied and projected onto the father” (p. 85). Marcus’ patient “Nancy” placed great importance on the magical powers of the dead, pregenital mother, and associated the twig/wand with wish-granting prowess. The birds seemed to be associated with phallus/breast power. “The equation would seem to read: father’s small penis + good mother = baby = mother’s large magical phallus” (p. 85). The case history of “Nancy” was complicated by the death of her real mother and her adolescent duration with a real stepmother who was none-too-stable herself. “The major purpose for Nancy of living out the Cinderella fairy tale was the hope of undoing her fantasied murder of her mother and at the same time as she relieved her guilt, regain her good, pleasure-giving mother” (pp. 90-91). Unlike the average girl who uses the story in childhood to help solve oedipal conflicts, “Nancy” used the story as a major adult defense, to deny her disappointment in her father and guilt over her mother’s death and, especially, “to help her maintain a magical relationship to her dead mother” (p. 92).]

[A valuable reference source. Excellent Cinderella entry with synopses, commentaries, and critiques of stage, opera, pantomime, ballet, film, and TV versions, from the 18th century to the present, with generous citations from reviews of performances and productions. (I, 324-376). Also includes entries on Beauty and the Beast and King Kong as a Beauty and Beast spin-off, with synopses and introductory comments on the stage and film history of the stories (I, 154-164).]

[A book of practical advice for new marriages where both partners have families from previous marriages: 1) What is a Family, Anyway?; 2) Myths and Misconceptions: The Understudy Myth, The Instant-Love Myth, The Second-Rate Myth; 3) Dealing with Children’s Loss: Loss of the Nuclear Family, Loss of the Single-Parent Family, Loss and Guilt; 4) Writing Your Own Script: The Initial Draft, Different Strokes, Rewrites and Revisions, Not Another Family Meeting; 5) Love and Marriage: Made in Heaven? Romance and Reality, Adjusting Your Problem Threshold, Who’s in Charge? Financial Management, Family and Friends; 6) Discipline: You Can’t Tell Me What to Do; 7) Love, Care, and Affection: Do I have to Like You?, Taking It Slow, One-way Streets, Affection and Sexuality; 8) Routines, Rituals, and Traditions; 9) How Many Families Live Here?: Stepfamilies and Blending, Unholy Alliances, Trends versus Goals; 10) How Many Parents Do I Have?: Obstacles to Coparenting, Developing the Coparenting Relationship, Coparenting and Remarriage; 11) Stepmothers: The Wicked Stepmother Tradition, Cinderella Revisited, The Wicked Stepmother Scale, A Note of Optimism; 12) Stepsiblings; 13) Grandparents: The Supportive Role of Grandparents, Stepgrandparents, Help and Hindrance; 14) Yours, Mine, and Ours: More Children?, Impact of Mutual Children; 15) Rewards and Strengths; Suggested Reading.]

[“Girls who, seeking recognition and love, learn to forget or deny that they also wanted independence and agency, grow up to become women who are Gothic heroines. The ideology of romance insists that there never was any pain or renunci-ation, that the suffering they experience is really the love and recognition for which they long or at least its prelude” (pp. 3-4). Chapters include: 1. Things that Go Bump in the Night: Husbands, Horrors, and Repetition (with discussion of Trauma and Repetition Compulsion, Marital Gothic, and “The Yellow Wallpaper”); 2. “A Woman Is Being Beaten” and its Vicissitudes (with discussion of Masochism in the Service of the Ego, The Spectator’s Curious Gaze, and “A Child is Being Beaten”); 3. All You Need is Love: Training the Instincts (with discussion of The Turning Inward of Instinct, Assigned Subjectivity and the Overvalued Other, Repression and Sublimation, and Love, Pain, and Power); 4. Kissing the Rod: The Beaten and The Story of O (with discussion of The mystical Way and Criticism, The Purgative Way and the Reversal of Instincts, The Illuminative Way and the Overvalued Other, and The Unitive Way and Sublimation); 5. This Hurts Me More Than It Does You: The Beater and Rebecca (with discussion of Wallflower at the Beating Orgy: The Passive Spectator, Visual Hierarchy and Negative Exhibitionism, Looking for Answers: Vision and Knowledge, and Becoming the Beater); 6. Looking Out for Yourself: The Spectator and Jane Eyre (with discussion of The Dissociation of Love and Dominance, The Temptation of Gothic Courtship, The Danger of Gothic Engagements, Autonomy and the Refusal to Replicate Oppression); 7. Resisting the Gothic (with discussion of Aggression and Linden Hills , Subversion and Lady Oracle , and Leaving the Gothic Arena).]

[Originally entitled Scarperentola , the book documents the transformation of the pedestrian shoe into fine art. The book was published in conjunction with an exhibition organized by fashion designer Samuele Mazza, who invited preeminent artists to create shoe-inspired works of art ranging from painting and sculpture to actual footwear. Over two hundred of the best designs and creations were chosen for reproduction in this eccentric book, which is a companion volume to Mazza’s previous exhibit and catalogue entitled Brahaus, which provided an uncommon look at the common brassiere. Includes brief essays shoes by Natalia Aspesi, “Wandering Between the Stars”; Giuliano Serafini, “An Archetype Still to be Invented?”; Enzo Biffi Gentili, “Shoe/Obscure”; and Cristina Morozzi, “A Fitting Design.”]

[A self-help guide book to women in the business world. “Cinderella” equates with women who are oppressed because of self-doubt and false ideas about how to function in the marketplace. Includes chapters on “Hard Choices,” “Are You A Candidate For Change?” “What Do You Really Want?” “Were Your Career Goals Set Too Low?” “What Are Your Strengths?” “When Is It Time To Change?” “Toughing It Out: The Blue-Collar Worker,” “The Two-Career Marriage,” “For Better Or For Worse,” “The Forty-Year Itch,” “The Magical Mix: Combining Children and Career,” “The Golden Girl,” “Let Nature Take Its Course,” and “Success Coaching: You Will Be A Success When You Choose What Is Best For You.”]

[A review of Jerrell's career teaching at women's colleges and his “semifeminine mind” that wrote so sympathetically of women. His fairytale poetry demonstrates that “education was not a panacea.” He knew that “the fairy tale princess could become, as in 'Cinderella,' 'a sullen wife and a reluctant mother,' ( CP , 217),” that “unhappy endings were just as likely as happy ones, and magic kisses,” as in his revision of the story of Sleeping Beauty (a poem called “Hope”), “might in any case be refused.”]

[Introduction and essays by Lutz Rohrich, Alan Dundes, Kay Stone, Linda Dégh, Donald Ward, Heinz Rolleke, Wolfgang Mieder, Maria M. Tatar, Gonthier-Louis Fink, August Nitschke, Walter Scherf, Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Jack Zipes, and Betsy Hearne.]

[Psychoanalytical, sociological, and gynecological experts address the problems of middle age, followed by interviews with midolescent men and women. The book ends with chapters on “History, Literature, and Headlines,” “Midolescence and Homosexuality,” and “The Years Ahead.”]

[Considers the formal characteristics of the culture of childhood — childhood jokes, the power of feeling in childhood chants, etc., that go back centuries, the primacy of narrative or, especially with picture books, multiple narratives and their interactive processes. We need new questions to get at the quality and value in children’s books and the interaction of text and reader.]

[Folk tales should not be merely a vehicle for artists to display their artistry. Mellon compares the abbreviated texts of several illustrated books with the original story to demonstrate what has been lost. “Traditional folk tales have been crafted over centuries in verbal patterns and rhythms that can be remembered …. The crafting of words to retell a folk tale should be as intricate a process as the crafting of pictures to illustrate a folk tale” (p. 47). Mellon suggests that the oft-heard lament regarding lack of verbal sophistication among children these days may in part be due to the lack of sophisticated use of language in the illustrated children’s books which have displaced folk tales from their more verbally intricate forms.]

[Eight of the ten essays were presented at the 94th Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association of America in San Francisco in sessions sponsored by the MLA’s Division on Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-century German Literature. Includes: Bruno Bettelheim, “Fairy Tales as Ways of Knowing” (pp. 11-20); Linda Dégh, “Grimm’s Household Tales and Its Place in the Household: The Social Relevance of a Controversial Classic” (pp. 21-53); Linda Dégh, “The Magic Tale and its Magic” (pp. 54-74); Maria Tatar, “Folkloristic Phantasies: Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Freud’s Family Romance” (pp. 75-98); Erika A. Metzger, “Zu Beispielen von Depersonalisation im Grimmschen Marchen” (pp. 99-116); Hansjorg Schelle, “Wielands Marchendichtung zwischen Aufklarung und Romantik. Einige Bemerkungen zur Forschungslage” (pp. 117-134); Lawrence O. Frye, “Making a Marchen: The Trying Test of Romantic Art, Magic, and Imagination” (pp. 135-153); Cora Lee Nollendorfs, “The Kiss of the Supernatural: Tieck’s Treatment of a Familiar Legend” (pp. 154-167); James M. McGlathery, “E.T.A. Hoffman and the Liebesmarchen ” (pp. 168-181); Lee B. Jennings, “The Role of Alcohol in Hoffman’s Mythic Tales” (pp. 182-194).]

[The introduction considers the surge of popularity of fairy tales in recent years among adults. Adults often respond quite differently to the tales from what psychogists predict. The happy ending is more often forgotten, ignored, or negated. Some writers create anti-fairy tales as a means of dealing with current social issues such as love and hate, war and politics, marriage and divorce, responsibility and criminality, emancipation and sexual politics. The adult world for adults is simply not perfect anymore. The anthology includes 101 fairy tale poems by 78 authors of English-speaking countries. The Cinderella section deals especially with female liberation from oppression. It includes Dorothy E. Reid, “Coach into Pumpkin”; Elizabeth Madox Roberts, “Cinderella’s Song”; Eleanor Farjeon, “Coach”; Edith Weaver, “Lost Cinderella”; Randall Jarrell, “Cinderella”; Cynthia Pickard, “Cinderella”; Sylvia Plath, “Cinderella”; Sara Henderson Hay, “Interview”; Feroz Ahmed-Ud-Din, “Cinderella”; Anne Hussey, “Cinderella Liberated”; Mary Blake French, “Ella of the Cinders”; Olga Broumas, “Cinderella”; Roger Mitchell, “Cinderella”; and Aileen Fisher, “Cinderella Grass.” Also Helen Chasin’s poem “Mythics” has a section in it entitled “Cinderella.” Other sections include thirteen Frog Prince poems, seven Rapunzel poems, eight Hansel and Gretel poems, eight Little Red Riding Hood poems, twenty-three Sleeping Beauty poems, eight Snow White poems, three Rumpelstiltskin poems, and three Show White and Rose Red poems.]

[Considers ways in which modern adaptations of fairy tales such as Cinderella, Frog Prince, Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White bring into question the perfect world of the “happy ending.” “Folklorists of today have to broaden their outlook to include modern reinterpretations of traditional tales, as they appear not only in oral accounts but also in new literary versions and in presentations through television, advertisements, cartoons, posters, etc.” (p. 23). Discusses such issues and their social relevance through examples of Red Riding Hood in recent fiction, poetry, advertising, illustrations, greeting cards, and cartoons.]

[Technical discussion of motifs contained in three Maltese texts within the framework found in Rooth’s The Cinderella Cycle .]

[Pygmalion’s happy love for a Galatea brought to life by the urgency of prosopopoeia is the reversal of the more usual features of metamorphosis. The story of Pygmalion shows prosopopoeia function not to hide the absolute absence of death but to give life to the inanimate in a dream come true. For Pygmalion, the other is not really other. Pygmalion has himself made Galatea. She is the mirror image of his desire. His relation to her is not love for another, in an attachment always shadowed by the certain death of the other. It is a reciprocity in which the same loves the same” (p. 4). Miller discusses Pygmalion narrative in Henry James, Heinrich von Kleist, Herman Melville, and Maurice Blanchot.]

[In Dundes, Cinderella: A Casebook ), pp. 180-192. Exclusive women’s ceremonies which use the Cinderella narrative as means of identification and female solidarity. Sexual indiscretion punished by branding. Summarizes the Afghanistan story told as part of the ritual.]

[Cinderella “would still be scrubbing floors if it were not for her fairy godmother” (p. ). She is one of those “insipid beauties waiting passively for Prince Charming” (p. ).]

[Studies seductive subtleties of Harlequin romances, Gothic novels, and TV soap operas as they feed and play upon the needs and anxieties of women within late twentieth-century American culture. Modleski draws lucidly upon current literary and film theory as well as studies of women’s psychology to explore the relationship between feminine readers and the feminine in popular culture texts. Ch. 1: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women; Ch. 2: The Disappearing Act: Harlequin Romances; Ch. 3: The Female Uncanny: Gothic Novels for Women; Ch. 4: The Search for Tomorrow in Today’s Soap Operas. In romances and gothic novels “the transformations of brutal (or, indeed, murderous) men into tender lovers, the insistent denial of the reality of male hostility towards women, point to ideological conflicts so profound that readers must constantly return to the same text (to texts which are virtually the same) in order to be reconvinced” (p. 111). “It is useless to deplore the texts for their omissions, distortions, and conservative affirmations. It is crucial to understand them; to let their very omissions and distortions speak, informing us of the contradictions they are meant to conceal and, equally important, of the fears that lie behind them” (p. 113). Includes a 10 page bibliography.]

[Discusses codes of illustration such as position, size, perspective, framing, line and capillarity, and color.]

[Discusses Mickey’s appeal to children, his smallness, his underdog position in the face of malicious enemies — giants, apes, bulls, etc. all bent on obstructing him. Though he is “male” women identify with him even as much or more than men. He seems mainly to be of neutral sex, more involved with social issues than love matters. In the unconscious no jealousy arises. His smallness permits him to do forbidden things without being threatening. He is naive, but ingenious and creative too. “We enjoy the drastic comedy which arises when the ego frees itself from the bonds of the super-ego and allies itself for a short time with the id” (p. 31).]

[A portrait of Professor Russell A. Peck’s seminar on Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast at the University of Rochester for the National Endowment for the Humanities, summer 1993.]

[Children create stories as metaphors of their own lives. Moore retells and analyzes a story told by Lindsey, a first grader, of a princess who went out, couldn’t find her way back, but was rescued by her father. When asked about the rescue she said it was because the mother was too busy. Her story is a contingency plan that increases options. It helps her to learn how to think and feel. “ Storying is the way children create their personal myth while they are actually living it” (p. 69). Storying not only makes sense of experience it is experience for the child — symbolic action as well as play. “The most essential role for storying may be providing the child with experiences that support the development of a way of knowing without the dangers of direct experience” (p. 73).]

[A study of adaptations of “Bluebeard” (1697) by 19th and 20th century women writers: Charlote Brontë, Anne Thackeray Ritchie, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, Suniti Namjoshi, Joyce Carol Oates, and Margaret Atwood, writers who revise the odl tale by enw narrative strategies and focalization, text embedding, and inter-textuality to create new tales that enable their texts and their lives. Ch. 1: “'Gleams of Sunshine' or 'Engines of Mischeif'?: Fairy Tales and the Women Who Tell Them” (pp. 1-39). Ch. 2: “The Silent, the Gullible, and the Dead” (pp. 40-86). Ch. 3: “Wise, Clever, and Alive” (pp. 87-153). Ch. 4: “Empowered, Single, and Free” (pp. 154-98). Addendum (pp. 199-211).]

[Adapted from Toni Morrison’s commencement address at Barnard College, May, 1979. On the evils of privileged women of power and status growing up imitating cruel mothers who oppress and enslave other women. “I want not to ask you but to tell you not to participate in the oppression of your sisters.”]

[Chapter Eleven: Cinderella Tales: A Multicultural Experience (pp. 167-85) discusses uses of Cinderella tales in the teaching of multi-ethnic students, with comments on Barbara Agor’s Cinderella Units for use with limited-English-proficient children in the Rochester City School District in 1986. Also discusses use of Cinderella variants for exercise in deep reading, story-telling, the keeping of journals, and other writing exercises such as creating new Cinderella variants, research projects, and exercises in analyzing cultural differences.]

[The simplified way in which children’s books treat problems makes them magnifying glasses of society. Discusses ideological premises in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , Winnie the Pooh , Robinson Crusoe , The Little House , and Horton Hears a Who! .]

[Surveys Japanese tales with stepmothers, suggesting possible Jesuit influence.]

[Following propositions by Bettelheim that fairy tale represents the workings of the psyche, particularly the Oedipal difficulties faced by the child, Mulhern extends the analysis to three tales comprising the Japanese Cinderella cycle from about the mid-1500s to early 1600s, namely Hanayo no hime (Princess Flora), Hachikazuki (The Bowl-bearer), and Ubakawa (The Bark Gown), all of which he summarizes. The tales adhere to the basic “phase-specific psychological crises” identified by Erikson, namely: 1) Basic trust vs. mistrust; 2) Autonomy vs. shame and doubt; 3) Initiative vs. guilt; 4) Industry vs. inferiority; 5) Identity vs. identity diffusion; 6) Intimacy vs. isolation; 7) Generativity vs. stagnation; 8) Integrity vs. despair. Some discussion is also given to Tenashi Musume (“The Maiden without Hands”): “Unlike their Western counterparts, who are generally pre-teens at the onset of their ordeal, Japanese Cinderellas are in their early teens at the time of their flight or oust … All the Japanese heroines marry at twelve to fourteen, well within the age range for this coming-of-age ceremony” (p. 208), which adds to the prepubertal girl’s separation anxiety. The girls take refuge in womblike hiding places, where they are threatened with starvation. The mothers, instead of supplying food, threaten to turn cannibal and devour the child, who escapes through disguise. “Before a child can totally shed her fear of growing up, she must go through a gestation period in which the child dies and the adult awakens” — a latency period, to borrow Freud’s term (p. 212).]

[Relates Italian Cinderella type to a group of medieval Japanese tales which may have been transported to Japan by Jesuit missionaries. Tales include Christian elements veiled in Buddhist and Shinto imagery, with a focus on the significance of the “old-woman skin” and wooden hiding box, components which may bear upon the worship of Maria Kannon among the “hidden” Christians during the proscription period from 1614 to the 1870s. Translates two Cinderella tales that are closely related to the Japanese genre of “sermon Marchen.”]

[Examines unequal power relations inscribed within cinematic conventions, including the spectators’ positions vis-à-vis the camera’s vision.]

[Ch 1.: The Roots of Spiritual Stories; CH. 2: Scholars and the Religious Spirit of the Tales; Ch. 3: The Spirituality of Wilhelm Grimm; Ch. 4: Hansel and Gretel ; Ch. 5: Little Red Riding Hood ; Ch. 6: Cinderella ; Ch. 7: Snow White ; Ch. 8: Sleeping Beauty ; Ch. 9: Afterword; Appendix A: The Verses Marked by Wilhelm Grimmin his Gree New Testament; Appendix B: Little Red Riding Hood , 1st edition, 1812; Appendix C: Yggdrasil, the Cross, and the Christmas Tree. Select Bibliography and Index. Ch. 6: Cinderella (pp. 85-112) begins with Strabo who Grimm mentions repeatedly in 1812, but without evidence of direct knowledge of the Geographikon . The brothers had no direct knowledge of Yeh-Hsein. They speak of hearing “Ashenputtel” first from a womanin a poorhouse in Marburg in 1810, a story that they later combined with two other witnesses, both Hessian, one of whom included in her story a fountain of blood behind a door, and the other endorsed an episode in which one of the evil sisters attempts to replace Cinderella in a bed in which she has given birth. Some German variants use dogs instead of doves as Cinderella's friends. And, in some versions it is a church, rather than a ball, that Cinderella can't attend because of her inadequate clothing (p. 86). The hazel branch brushing the father's hat comes from a Hessian variant that the brothers used. They also acknowledge some debt to Perrault and d'Aulnoy. Murphy presents Grimm's final version of the story in his own translation (pp. 87-92). This is followed by discussion of Perrault and the popularity of that version, in part because of Disney. The last version he outlines is Basile's. The Grimm version is shaped somewhat by Wilhelm's Trinitarian Christianity and phrasing in the Apostle's Creed and the theology of Aquinas and Calvin. Various forms of communion are prominent in the story — the communion of saints, especially in the mother-daughter relationship; the communion with nature through animals and kind acts; and communion with the Trinity through such texts as the Beatitudes and the determining role of faith. The patterns of three, the substitution of doves for ants as helpmates, revelation on the third day, and allusions to the Psyche story and the goodness of Cinderella's soul, all tied in well with aspects of Trinitarian thought that interested Wilhelm. The replacement of the thoughtless father who would chop down the fruit tree and destroy the dove cote by the loving unity of the Heavenly Father and Son who look after the outcome provides the climax to the tale's spiritual journey.]

[Close reading of kinship and marriage relations in Perrault.]

[A hostile response to new directions in critical theory and its lack of regard for textual continuity. “Suppose (I thought) we were reading Grimm’s Cinderella and found on the last page that Prince Charming raped the heroine? Any reader of any time or place would be shocked, and it would have nothing to do with the values or beliefs of that man, that time, that place, or with the fact that princes more often rape servant girls than marry them” (p. 4). It is just such discontinuity that Nassar objects to in recent directions in critical theory. “The literary work of art creates as one reads a psychological state … which can be articulated in precise and sensitive criticism. This articulation is the primary aim of the critic” (p. 16).]

[Prints first H. E. Butler’s translation of the tale from Apuleius, then offers a Jungian analysis of the tale. Divides the story into five parts: 1) Introduction: the birth of Psyche and the conflict between Aphrodite and Psyche, 2) The marriage of death, 3) The act, 4) the four tasks, 5) The happy end. Neumann’s typological analysis suits well the components of oppression, alienation, tasks, and the winning of the prince that typify Cinderella’s growth from a woman’s virginal status and a kind of nonexistence to independent self-definition within marriage. “In the service of Aphrodite, Psyche becomes a feminine Heracles; her mother-in-law plays the same role as Heracles’ stepmother. In both cases the Bad Mother plays the role of destiny, and in both cases this destiny leads to heroism and ‘memorable deeds’” that are define her gender (p. 93). The four tasks pertain to her sexual maturation, a kind of reclaiming of the four elements. Her first labor of sorting out a huge mound of barley, millet, poppy seed, peas, lentils, and beans is well known from its Cinderella analogues (p. 94). The mound of seeds symbolizes a “uroboric mixture of the masculine.” Psyche counters Aphrodite’s promiscuity with an instinctual ordering principal as animals (in this instance, ants) help her with the sorting, a sign of her selectivity (pp. 94-96). The obtaining of the golden fleece through the guidance of the wind takes her beyond a castration complex; she is the opposite to Delilah, as the feminine need only to consult its instinct in order to enter into a fruitful relation with the masculine at nightfall, without destroying the male’s power (p. 101). The obtaining of water at the source of Styx is a journey to the source of life where she is aided by the eagle, a masculine principal from which she takes the living water she needs (pp. 105-106). Folktale tasks usually come in threes but Psyche undertakes a fourth, an act she must undertake without assistance, except guidance from the tower. The tower is a sign of human culture, particular the feminine which she now incorporates so that she may pass the gates of Hades (fire and death) to obtain the beauty cream of Persephone. Neumann compares her deathlike sleep after her curiosity takes her beyond the rival strictures of Aphrodite to that of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty (pp. 118-19). The death-like sleep is necessary in that it gives Eros a role which he otherwise would not have. That is, there needs to be a mutuality established for the marriage to be valuable and Eros himself to be redeemed from his prison. Ultimately, the mother-in-law also benefits from Psyche’s journey as a family is born out of the conflicts.]

[Considers the fairy tale component in modern European drama with the symbolist reaction against realism and naturalism in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Nicholson discusses Cinderella motifs in plays by Audiberti, Bergman, Gombrowicz, Hauptmann, and Sologub.]

[Compares Turandot to Sleeping Beauty as Calaf awakens love within her. Considers tragic and comic tensions within the romance plot.]

[Explores Hannele ’s use of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty motifs in the fantasies that transform Hannele’s subjective experiences of death. Nicholson sees Hauptmann’s play as a negotiation of the boundary between the wished-for fairy tale escape and the harsh reality that reasserts itself at the end.]

[Points out the sources of Triumph in folklore, and accounts for its power by describing the author’s sophisticated revisions of naive folktale qualities and motifs, especially those revisions that affiliate the play with symbolist poetics as outlined in Sologub’s programmatic essay, “The Theatre of One Will.”]

[Nicolaisen opens by considering the implications of the title question, specifically the prevalence of female heroines in fairy tales. He poses three guiding questions for the article--the type of persecution, where it occurs, and who inflicts it--and then discusses AT 510B, the “Cap o’ Rushes” subtype of Cinderella, through these three considerations. Nicolaisen argues that the heroine’s two main problems, motherlessness and an undesirable suitor, are consistent throughout the many versions of the tale. He then identifies her new name as a source of persecution, as it is bestowed on her by others and marks her fall from her proper place in the social order. However, outside her father’s home, the protagonist becomes the agent of her own restoration; Nicolaisen reads the protagonist’s ability to hide her identity until the right time as an indicator of her agency. Finally, he argues that the story maintains its widespread appeal because it demonstrates a return to social order; the heroine’s inappropriate suitor is a threat to such order, and so her happy ending reflects both a successful coming-of-age and the removal of a social threat.] [Annotation by Kara L. McShane]

[Studying such clues as clothing styles as evidence of climatic matters, Nitschke concludes that the origin of Cinderella possibly occurred in the Ice Age.]

[Discusses Cinderella and Cinderella-influenced tales that are reworked to reflect Beti values.]

[Discusses broadly the narrative function of illustration in children’s books, with some attention to Cinderella and a variety of Sleeping Beauty illustrations.]

[Suggests that the very study of folklore is a kind of Cinderella story, where, in its new clothes assembled by M. Roalfe Cox, folklore has moved from the cinderheap to fashionable clothes of golden cloth and starry sheen. Discusses Cox’s three types of Cinderella , annotating medieval versions for each — De la belle Helayne de Constantinople , the Roman de Manekine , Un Miracle de Nostre Dame ; a life of Offa II, Emare , and The Sheep’s Daughter . Notes that the “unnatural marriage incident” finds frequent recurrence in Britain.]

[A critique of the debate on derivation of folktales mainly between Newell and Jacobs. Both pin their faith on the proposition that “fairy tales are not really old, but are stuffed full of imitations of old fairy tales that have disappeared. One is reminded of the famous theory that Shakespeare’s (sic) plays were not written by Shakespeare, but by another fellow of the same name” (pp. 440-441). Nutt subscribes to the Borrowing Theory of Jacobs but with a reservation: “The moment it is admitted that tales may spring up everywhere, provided the conditions be favourable, the question of borrowing becomes a secondary one” (p. 450).]

[Anne Sexton’s “Cinderella” and Gustave Dore’s engraving of “Cinderella and Her Fairy Godmother,” with a study unit on analyzing the poem, interpreting meanings, writing about the poem, and analyzing language.]

[The Introduction provides numerous testimonials on the power of fairytales and provides a short history of the genre, with sketches of the principal fairytale writers and their illustrators. Includes twenty-four stories, with prefaces for each and ample illustrations by various authors.]

[Assessment of structuralist interpretations. “The removal of a male at the beginning of the story (through the death of the father) created an initial imbalance which could only be rectified by the introduction of a new male (the prince)” (p. 253).]

[A study of societal conditioning upon women in business. Ch. One: Someday My Prince Will Come: The Impact of Societal Conditioning. Ch. Two: Bibbidi, Bobbidi, Boo! The Success Strategy. Ch. Three: The Clock Struck Twelve: The Performance Improvement Journal. Ch. Four: Glass Slippers Get Broken: Confidence, the Catalyst of Achievement. Ch. Five: Pumpkin to Coach: The Transition. Ch. Six: At the Ball: The Key to Success in Business. Ch. Seven: And, They Lived Happily Ever After: The Process of Evolution. “There are two factors that impede successful integration of women into the corporate environment. The reluctance of society to accept women as leaders, and the woman herself. The combination of these factors creates a spiraling self-fulfilling prophecy, diminishing the woman’s belief in herself, severely restricting her opportunities to gain knowledge and experience, thereby reinforcing the negative view of women’s inability to function in a leadership capacity. This debilitating spiral cannot be corrected by legislation. Success in the business world demands knowledge, skills, and experience, accompanied by behavioral change in women themselves” (p. ix).]

[Panttaja argues that scholars have become overly reliant on psychoanalytic readings that focus on desire and not the powerful relationships between mothers and daughters seen in Cinderella. The author draws on the work of other scholars such as Maria Tatar to reveal how the mother and stepmother can be viewed as similar figures equally devoted to their daughters. She shows that critics view paternal might as the public sphere, and maternal power as the private domain, which causes a few scholars to dismiss the mother’s powerful role in the story--from commanding her daughter’s behavior, providing her gifts, sheltering her from early detection, to arranging her marriage. Panttaja also stresses the role of female competition and how material goods affect the outcome of the story. For the author, Cinderella is not about romance at first. It is, instead, that attainment of the upper class through marriage. As the society shifts focus and women’s power becomes reassessed, the fairy tale becomes filled with a contradiction resolved unsuccessfully by the role of virtue. Panttaja, like Bettelheim, ties Cinderella to the Goose Girl where in both girls lose positions of privilege only to regain similar or superior status. She also discusses a bourgeois element to the story, suggesting that Cinderella originates from a middle class family but can marry into the upper class because of her virtue that translates as her innate nobility. The stepsisters represent failed social climbers attempting to enter a world where they do not belong. With time, the heroine also comes to represent innocence and wish fulfillment as the importance of the political and economic ascendancy themes fade, and as her power changes, the role of the mother must diminish, which is seen in more contemporary Cinderella stories, including the Disney film.] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[Considers likenesses of bondage and otherness between children and women in society. Discusses plot of The Secret Garden and The Changeover as female quests.]

[Influence of Cinderella on non-Cinderella tales in Africa.]

[Tess McGill finds her liberation beyond the glass ceiling, her New Jerusalem in the sky, through hard work, disguise, a great party dress, a wedding ball, ingenuity, honesty, several elevators and escalators, and a prince who helps her make it happen, though she mostly does it herself. Katharine Parker, her boss, serves as stepsister and fairy godmother both — supplying clothes and inspiration as well as humiliating tasks and treachery. But mainly Tess is her own fairy godmother who keeps her dream and independence alive despite the humiliations. Peck sees some of director Mike Nichols’ own life as an immigrant in the Staten Island ferry scenes where, accompanied by Carly Simon’s Academy Award winning theme song “Let the River Run,” Tess’s heart aches as she is “running on the water, coming through the fog,” past the Statue of Liberty, looking toward the silver city rising in the morning light with its siren song, blazing a trail of desire to wake the nation, “Come the new Jerusalem.”]

[Discusses Oedipal child fantasies about being “big” in children under seven’s preference for a full-fledged romance in Cinderella, where the youngest child marries first.]

[Traces the convoluted publishing history of the first major collection of Basile’s European folktales from Neopolitan (1634-36) to Bolognese (1742) to Italian (1747), then translated into German by Felix Liebrecht, with an introduction by Jacob Grimm (1846). Also includes “Appendix A: The Bibliography of the Book” in Vol. 2, pp. 165-271, which offers a detailed account of the numerous editions of The Pentamerone .]

[Perco suggests reconsidering the motifs set up by Aarne and Thompson, specifically the importance given to the “Lecherous Father” motif. She traces twenty-five Italian narratives, grouping them according to Cinderella’s departure from or enclosure within her father’s house, and the titles of the tales support her reclassification; tales where Cinderella remains tied to the hearth tend to have hearth-related titles. All of the stories, to Perco’s view, demonstrate the high/low binary at work in the Cinderella tales. She reads clothing and tasks similarly; while the home-bound Cinderella is defined by her lack of clothing and captures the prince through her splendid attire, a Cinderella who functions outside the home uses clothing (often animal skins) as a disguise to protect herself. Perco concludes by noting that the tales present alternate methods of becoming an adult, though one method clearly offers the female more agency in the process.] [Annotation by Kara L. McShane]

[The first extensive study of a culture’s sociology through choices in clothing. Explores beginnings of ready-made fashion industry in France, the shift of male taste from colorful to black frock coats, while wives and daughters adorn themselves in bright colors and uncomfortable laces and petticoats to signal the status of their family. Documents the origins of consumer pastime as women spend spare hours keeping up their middle-class appearance by judicious purchases.]

[Extensively illustrated with photographs by Clive Barda of Paris Opera House, early illustrations, a number of Robert Heindel paintings, film versions and movie posters, and shots of Lloyd Webber productions, along with Webber’s libretto.]

[A spirited survey of Cinderella variants, both ancient and modern, with discussion of various scholar’s methods of classifying them. Laments the tendancy in the twentieth century Cinderella publications to reduce the story to Perrault’s version. “The decline of the indigenous popular tale in England is … a complex phenomenon, and not wholly attributable to the influence of Perrault and his followers. Growing literacy debilitated the memory and devalued oral narrative; growing ease of movement broke up the stable society, the sense of community necessary for the storyteller to retain his function; the industrial revolution created new social conditions in which the old tales came to seem irrelevant; the First World War dealt a crushing blow to the continuity of old ways, old stories, old songs and old beliefs. What is more, conditions were ripe for just such a foreign invasion. The lettered were ignorant or contemptuous of their own country’s traditions and tales, and once Perrault and his imitators appeared, the tastes of the unlettered were sapped and enervated by the inevitable move to submit to aristocratic fashion where that coincided with or overlapped with their own amusements” (p. 140).]

[A study in the destruction of self-esteem among teen women by a clinical psychologist. The presentation cites case histories of young women’s efforts to maintain a sense of themselves within families, or without mothers or fathers, through drugs and alcohol, anorexia, sex, and violence. “I’m not waving, I’m drowning.”]

[Considers novels on the victimization of women (using Jungian readings of the Daphne and Psyche myths as a central trope), women creating new space to get out of patriarchal binds, issues of double exits from self and patriarchy, with suggestions of androgyny as a way out. The book is set up in four parts: I: The Roots of Self; II: Enclosure in the Patriarchy; III: Eros as an Expression of the Self; and IV: Transformation of the Self.]

[The collections of essays attempts to rethink cultural production by placing questions of the politics of a culture at the center of literary and vernacular performance. Essays include: Alesia Garcia, “Politics and Indigenous Theory in Leslie Marmon Silko’s ‘Yellow Woman’ and Sandra Cisneros’ ‘Woman Hillering Creek’” (pp. 3-21), Danielle M. Roemer, “Graffiti as Story and Act” (pp. 22-28), Mark E. Workman, “Folklore and the Literature of Exile” (pp. 29-42), Cathy Lynn Preston, “Writing the Hybrid Body: Thomas Hardy and the Ethnographic ‘Money Shot’” (pp. 43-82), Cristina Bacchilega, “’Writing’ and ‘Voice’: The Articulations of Gender in Folklore and Literature” (pp. 83-101), Maria Herrera-Sobek, “Social Protest, Folklore, and Feminist Ideology in Chicano Prose and Poetry” (pp. 102-118), John D. Dorst, “’Sidebar Excursions to Nowhere’: The Vernacular Storytelling of Errol Morris and Spalding Gray” (pp. 119-134), Clover Williams and Jean R. freedman, “Shakespeare’s Step-Sisters: Romance Novels and the Community of Women” (pp/ 135-168), Peter Narvdez, “Chuck Berry as Postmodern Composer-Performer” (pp. 169-186), Lee Haring, “Pieces for a Shabby Hut” (pp. 187-203), Laura O’Connor, “Slave Spirituals: Allegories of the Recovery from Pain” (pp. 204-213), Michael J. Preston, “Re-presentation of (Im)moral Behavior in the Middle English Non-Cycle Play ‘Mankind’” (pp. 214-239), Eric L. Montenyohl, “Oralities (and Literacies): Comments on the Relationships of Contemporary Folkloristics and Literary Studies” (pp. 240-256). Each essay includes a bibliography.]

[“Disney’s refined, orifice-less, non-fluid emitting, airbrushed fantasy is a prophylactic against all that is repressed or erased by bourgeois ideology” (p. 32). Readers fantasize about Cinderella’s grotesqueries, in an attempt to “lift … the skirts of Cinderella’s ball gown to see what, in anything, [lies] beneath them …. Cinderella’s rags are transformed into a ball gown, thereby mapping bourgeois hegemony over that bodily and social (class and gender) topography marked as low and dirty” (p. 31-32). Preston begins her discussion of 1990s attempts to deconstruct Disney with a retelling of the story by a female undergraduate at the University of Colorado: “We all know the story about Cinderella, right? How her fairy godmother zapped a pumpkin and turned it into a coach and then zapped Cinderella’s rags and turned them into a beautiful gown. Well, just as she was getting into the coach, she felt her period come on, and so she turned to her godmother and said, ‘Damn. I’ve got another problem …. My period just started and I don’t have a tampon.’ The fairy godmother replied, ‘No problem, dear,’ and she picked up another good-size pumpkin … and zapped it. The pumpkin turned into a tampon …. Cinderella said ‘Thank you,’ got into the coach, inserted the tampon, and left for the ball. Well, she … met the Prince, and the two of them were having a great time, when all of a sudden she heard … the palace clock start to chime midnight. She sort of buckled over a bit, saying ‘Oh! Oh! I gotta go.’ But the Prince wouldn’t let go of her hand …. ‘But I don’t even know your name,’ and Cinderella, trying to pull away, turned and gasped, ‘It’s Cinderella! What’s yours?’ And the Prince said, ‘Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater.’ Cinderella heaved a great sigh of relief and said, ‘Thank God!’” (pp. 27-28). Preston discussess several interpretations of the joke by her students, and records several variant texts on the joke. E.g., “Cinderella was very happy for a while after marrying the handsome prince, but eventually she became bored. She started fooling around, and soon she was screwing everything in pants. Her fairy godmother warned her several times, to no avail. Finally, she became so upset that with a wave of her wand she turned Cindcerella’s cunt into a pumpkin. Two weeks later, the fairy godmother checked in. She was amazed to see Cinderella looking happier than ever. ‘What happened?’ the fairy godmother asked. ‘I’ve just met Peter Peter,’ Cinderella replied” (p. 41). All of the half-dozen examples Preston gathered from women talking to women.]

[Preston begins her article with a useful review of gender and genre scholarship before noting how today’s definitions of these terms have shifted. She then considers how fairy tale retellings challenge traditional readings due to these shifting boundaries. She examines how three modern uses of the fairy tale “maintain, reproduce, transgress, or shift the boundaries of gender associated with the older fairy-tale textual tradition” (p. 200). When assessing the film Ever After , she notes that the movie blends the genres of fairy tale and legend to reposition the story from a cultural myth to an private, inner-family story. This change allows the filmmaker to blend feminist critiques of fairy tales and the traditional stories, thereby making the film fit a social niche of a more active yet traditional Cinderella figure desired by society today. Preston, next, discusses the “reality TV” show Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? She suggests the show shapes perception due to its genre and combines reality and fiction to reinforce expectations of gender roles. Her final example is the website Women.com , which similarly blends reality and fantasy, but this time, the role of fantasy becomes blended with consumer action. She then argues that fairy tale motifs are broken up and reassembled based on textual and generic goals that open up new avenues of discussion as conflicting ideas are often presented simultaneously.] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[The essential morphological components of the fairy tale are function and sequence. Functions are the elements of actions performed — “an act of character, defined from the point of view of its significance for the course of the action” (p. 21). In the fairy tale: 1) The functions are stable, constant elements regardless who carries them out. 2) The number of functions is limited (thirty one in the hundred Russian tales Propp analyzes). 3) The sequence of functions is always identical, though not all are present in every tale. 4) All fairy tales are of one type structurally. Characters are agents of action, with spheres of influence — the Villain, Donor, Helper, Princess, Father, Hero, False Hero, Stepsister, etc.]

[A study of what middle-class American women want in their fantasy literature and the political implications of those desires. Romance reading and writing is “a collectively elaborated female ritual through which women explore the consequences of their common social condition as the appendages of men and attempt to imagine a more perfect state where all the needs they so intensely feel and accept as given would be adequately addressed” (p. 212).]

[In Dundes. “The first serious comparative study of Cinderella.”]

[Combines Freudian, Jungian, and structuralist approaches to analyze an Indic tale.]

[“Rand looks at the corporate marketing strategies used to create Barbie’s versatile (She’s a rapper! She’s an astronaut! She’s a bride!) but nonetheless premolded and still predominantly white image. Rand weighs the values Mattel seeks to embody in Barbie - her improbably thin waist and her heterosexual partner — against the naked, dyked out, transgendered, and trashed versions favored by many juvenile owners and adult collectors of the doll … [Rand] discusses adult testimony from both Barbie ‘survivors’ and enthusiasts and explores how memories of the doll fit into women’s lives. Finally, Rand looks at cultural reappropriations of Barbie by artists, collectors, and especially lesbians and gay men, and considers resistance to Barbie as a form of social and political activism” — cover blurb. Includes: Introduction: On Our Backs, in Our Attics, and Our Minds; Ch. 1: Making Barbie; Ch. 2: Older Heads on Younger Bodies; Ch. 3: Barbie’s Queer Adult Accessories. Although it includes no explicit Cinderella references, the book deals thoughtfully with many of the same issues pertaining to Cinderella reception and politics at the end of the 20th century, i.e., the queering of white, middle-class, Christian, hetero-sexual marriage-centered ideology (i.e., the culture’s most marketable plaything) as a means of locating and tweaking cultural nerves. “Barbie is a great tool for social criticism and subversion because, as a widely debated cultural icon, she provides an easy-access hook into issues besides Barbie” (p. 180).]

[Compares Cinderella motifs in Grimm with those in 118 tales of Northwest Indians. All such tales have transformation plots which proceed through four stages, with a fifth sometimes added: 1) a need for change (inferiority); 2) a reason for change (rejection, ostracism); 3) a process of change (the doing of something that changes his lot); 4) the result of change (usually a rise in social and personal status). Some tales include a fifth sequence of retribution; this component is more common in Grimm than among the Northwest Indians and is mainly a result of differences between Christian ethics and Indian religious attitudes. Common plot categories are Poor-Man-Rich, Dirty Boy, Lazy Boy, Deficient Boy, Disguised Boy, Deformed-Transformed, Deserted Boy, Hidden Hero, Secret Paternity, Blind Dupe, Gambler-Conqueror. The youth’s handicap usually includes dirtiness, ugliness, or stupidity. The youth receives little or no help from family in his fight for prestige. The final status outstrips the original need, social position, or potentialities. If retribution occurs it is usually against some obstructive family member. The Indian Cinderella achieves status through power from within his person. European Cinderellas may be assisted by magic, the Indian by the potency of religion. The Indian tales seldom show little emotion such as love, though sometimes hatred is expressed. Emotions are given tangible expression like shame, sorrow, sulkiness or a desire for suicide after ridicule. Emotion is never described in the denouement. Cinderella may receive praise from the community but this is done not out of altruism but because of a de facto recognition of greater power or because they fear him. The last 27 pages are devoted to abstracts of Cinderella stories, with markings of the four stages of plot.]

[Surveys fifty-six versions. Includes a map to locate them.]

[East German Communist Party has re-written Cinderella, eliminating the fairy godmother and unmasking the king as “a witless minor despot”; his court is revealed to be full of “decadent parasites,” and the prince “a revolutionary who rejects his previous fruitless parasitic existence.” See Denis Galloway , above.]

[“The dream of the fire is a real event. Inner experiences of loneliness and of love alter our stustance …. The dark is all about us. We light our little lights. Our candle flames, the sensible flame, the living flame. This brings light into the darkness, shows the darkness to itself, its terror abates, the forms emerge, the dark forms turn into light; as the light moves, new shadows form, how beautiful it is, how stirring and formidable and unheard-of. Our consciousness changes” (pp. 219, 221).]

[Commenting on the ubiquitous nature of the Cinderella tale, Ricklin suggests that like dreams fairy tales are wish-fulfillments of sexual and sadistic impulses. Mechanisms of condensation, displacement, transposition upward, and sexual symbolism are prominent. The Cinderella story attempts to resolve the oedipal striving of the little girl through the perplexities of the hated stepmother/rival and the sexual attack of the father on the little girl.]

[On the hideous and ugly and “primitive dread” “interpreted by our oldest memory.” Fears of deformity.]

[A review of Tom Davenport’s several films based on Grimm’s fairy tales set in Appalachia. One of his Cinderella films, Ashpet , is set in wartime (1940), with the prince an innocent GI. In another, Mutzmag , Cinderella is a tough Appalachian girl who relies on her own imagination and a pocket knife with a broken handle. In Davenport’s films European kings and queens are transformed into doctors and mill owners. Davenport is fond of Richard Chase’s Jack Tales and Grandfather Tales and draws upon material from them in conceiving of his movie scripts. Davenport uses local Appalachian talent and settings. His stories demonstrate the triumph of survival that will comfort children in the end. The films may contain violence but never for its own sake. Rather, its function is to show that, as Davenport puts it, “this person got through this horrible situation and overcame these obstacles in a resourceful way.”]

[After summarizing Perrault and Grimm, Robbins draws on premises of 1970’s feminist theory to consider fairytale, and Cinderella in particular, as an anti-grotesque genre that looks more to wish-fulfillment than the way things are. Using Joyce Carol Oates’ stories “The Model” and “The Doll” to support her proposition, Robbins argues that sexuality and female independence are seen to be culturally grotesque and are thus written out of the tales to provide reassurance rather than reality , leaving a void of body-fluid emissions which are replaced by high fashion and success with the male, “the charming archetype to which all females must aspire, despite the artificial fairy-magic means by which Cinderella rises to such status” (p. 108). The tales have more to do with self-marketing than social criticism. “Folklorists present the sisters’ dominant personality traits - their assertiveness, rivalry, and overall focus on themselves - as abnormally grotesque and undesirable. But are the sisters truly so abnormal? They exhibit humanly bodily functions and engage in typical sibling rivalry, yet folklorists display them as beings more grotesque than the doll-like Cinderella” (p. 112). “The grotesques have no fairy godmother” (p.113).]

[The Kind/Unkind Girls stories (Aarne-Thompson tale type 480) often combine the following the river subtype with tale type 510A (Cinderella). Roberts’ materials are universal and are especially rich in European, Indian, and Far Eastern examples. See especially chapter 2.]

[Comprehensive comparative study of the tale, exploring five types described by Cox and Aarne/Thompson as they appear in diverse cultures: a: Cinderella (510A); b: Cat-skin (510B); c: Cap ‘o Rushes (510B); d: Indeterminate (511); and e: Hero Tales (511B).]

[In Dundes. Uses global maps to locate the spreading of subtypes of Cinderella.]

[Addresses theoretical intersection of folklore and literature, esp. folk narrative, in terms of structuralist analysis and oral formulae.]

[Analysis of different family members as they attempt to deal with the situations of their own lives. The stepmother’s destructive cravings perhaps reflect her own wretched childhood. She is in some ways Cinderella’s soulmate as she makes herself the heroine’s ruling fate and attempts to shatter the girl psychologically. She “seeks vengeance while at the same time she would have Cinderella, a substitute mother, serve her in order to gratify her thwarted dependency needs …. [She] would sculpt Cinderella into her very own self helplessly buffeted about by a cruel destiny, made to experience the same world that the stepmother had known” (p. 383), and thereby pour her own self-hatred onto the girl. Having lost her first husband she would deny Cinderella a father. The father likewise suffers from a distorted ego and uses Cinderella as a means for dealing with guilt felt for the death of his first wife. His “oedipal involvement with his pretty daughter may have fed his wish for his wife’s death” (p. 381). Having displaced self-blame onto his pretty daughter he obstructs her growing up by collusion with the stepmother’s persecution. “By selecting a new wife to realize his destructive intentions toward Cinderella, he has cleverly succeeded in defining the stepmother and stepsisters as the villains before the community, indeed for the entire Western World. He hides in the curtain folds, letting himself be upstaged by the stepfamily” (p. 382). The stepsisters endured their mother’s rearing; they also suffered the loss of a father and change in fortune. Like their mother they would “overcome fate’s arrows by now being the fateful bowman shooting Cinderella down” (p. 384). Cinderella herself “operates with a self-image based on mother’s appreciation of her. Fulfilling the desires of a supportive mother she has been able to protect her budding sexuality: she is interested in sexual matters (entering the pigeon coop), she accepts her physical maturation (climbing the peartree), she dresses most attractively for the ball, she is willing to exhibit a little of herself to the prince (losing her slipper), and she is ready to accept intercourse with the prince (placing her foot into the slipper he holds)” (p. 386). But Rosenman questions the future of the marriage. What will come after the deliverance. Perhaps the prince will wish to keep her as a non-entity, thus reinscribing the old problems, or she will attempt to save him by letting herself become once more a scapegoat. Or perhaps she “will emerge the real ruler, staying up nights doing the difficult administrative tasks while her inept, rescued husband is the ceremonial front man. In short, Cinderella will again be sounding the discordant notes of her earlier life” (p. 391). The story is laden with problems of choice, the best choice often seeming to be the object of least value (cf. Freud on the Theme of the Three Caskets). The tale may be most relevant to our time “wherein the hero is increasingly the dissident, who having dared to assert his claim for freedom, is then utterly deprived of it....Looking at the wall-less prison that society sometimes becomes, the intrepid person, like Cinderella tried to be, is one who can resist the group’s programming to be whatever the group thinks it needs, no matter how irrationally, to preserve itself” (pp. 394-395).]

[“This fairy tale delineates the struggle to separate from the collective while maintaining a relationship to the divine” (p. 65). Using clinical cases for comparison, Ross considers the nature and function of desire in Jungian terms, the function of disobedience in individuation, the prospective function of the darker elements, psychic ordering principles and their interrelations, the emergence of new ego structure within the Cupid and Psyche story along with the incarnation of new energy.]

[Includes twenty-three chapters on such topics as the Erotic Foot and the Sexual Shoe, Pedic Sex, Sex Symbols at Your Feet, The Foot’s ‘Sexual Nerves,’ Oriental Podoerotomania, Thank Your Foot for Sex, Walking is a Sex Trap, Pedic Sadomasochism, Foot Lovers, Podocosmetics, and The Talking Foot. Ch. 15: Cinderella Was a Sexpot (pp. 158-70) considers legends in which the size of the foot is indicative of the size of the vagina or penus and the persistent human desire for a tight fit. Early versions of Cinderella are latent with sexual content pertaining to obtaining the perfect fit, which equates with perfect sexual compatibility and therefore the ideal marriage. Discusses Rhodopis, the fitting of the virginal phallic foot and the furry yoni shoe (the pantoufle en vair), and the Grimm story with its bloody foot mutilation. Discusses public interest in shoe sizes of movie stars and its relationship to the glamour industry, and the eroticism of bondage fetishes. “Our reshaping and shrinking of the foot isn’t caused by vanity, ignorance, neglect, stupidity, nor deliberate malice of the designers and makers of shoes. It’s caused by the innate eroticism of the foot itself. The shoe, as the foot’s covering, has always served like a sorcerer’s magic wand in the ceaseless effort to convey erotic pedic illusions” (p. 170). Ch. 16: The Foot Lovers discusses foot fetishes.]

[“In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, romance was fast losing its negative connotations and emerging as the only acceptable basis for intimacy between women and men. Romance was redefined as the key to domestic harmony rather than a threat to it. As Romantic love became something to celebrate rather than mistrust, ‘falling in love’ would become an increasingly normative part of middle-class courtship” (p. 102).]

[Discusses the waiting-for-the-prince-to-come syndrome in popular romance fiction, “domestic fictions” that reduce fairy tales to sentimental clichés — erotic, ladies, and gothic. Tales like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, and Frog-Prince deal with adolescent conflicts, the trauma of blossoming sexuality, and the progress toward maturity. But more than alleviating psychic fears they also “prescribe approved cultural paradigms which ease the female’s assimilation into the adult community.” Stepmothers and bad fairies invariably appear odious and personify predatory female sexuality. At the same time, the role of the missing mother tends to assuage somewhat fears of separation. “As long as modern women continue to tailor their aspirations and capabilities to conform with romantic paradigms, they will live with deceptions, disillusionments, and/or ambivalences.” “The liberation of the female psyche has not matured with sufficient strength to sustain a radical assault on the patriarchal culture …. Politically and existentially, women still constitute … the Other for the male Subject. Whether expressed in pornographic, domestic, and gothic fictions or enacted in the daily relations of men and women, fairy tale visions of romance also continue to perpetuate cultural ideals which subordinate women … Women are caught in a dialectic between the cultural status quo and the evolving feminist movement, between a need to preserve values and yet to accommodate changing mores, between romantic fantasies and contemporary realities.”]

[A practicing Freudian psychiatrist analyses his five and a half year old daughter in terms of Cinderella tropes (Grimms’ version) — such matters as her handling of her penis envy, phallic striving, and masochistic wish to be beaten (attacked sexually) by her father. Associates pumpkin symbolism with pregnancy and the mice transformation with siblings becoming phallic horses (p. 205n). Discusses the father’s attack on the tree and dove cote with the axe in terms of a little girl’s active sadistic clitoral libido evolving into full vaginality by passive and masochistic regression (pp. 202-204).]

[A hands-on, integrated curriculum developed for and used with at-risk EDY, LEP, RSP, and GATE students in an inner-city junior high school. Activities and work sheets directed toward fourteen illustrated children’s Cinderellas from different cultures, with pre-test and post-test activities.]

[Extended discussions of Cinderella (pp. 105-164) and ‘Peau d’Ane’ (pp. 165-208) with ritual interpretations suggesting that Cinderella originates in European Carnaval festivals in February, a time of betrothal in anticipation of spring and fertility. Cinderella represents the new season or the new year (n.b., Roman calendars with March as the first month). She is the “fiancee of ashes,” the new which will emerge from the old. The wicked stepmother represents the old year, struggling to hold power, while the two evil stepsisters equate with the two months (i.e., January and February) preceding spring and the new year.]

[On the adult’s need of fairy tales. Juxtaposes child reading with man reading. Fairy tales do what no other literature does: “They reach back into a dateless time, speak with grave assurance of wishes and fears, harbor no moralizing, no sense of ‘art,’ because their ways and means are varied, because there are so many stories to tell, so many ways to tell the ‘same’ story” (p. 23). Discusses written tales from Perrault to Andersen, with chapters on animals in fairy tales, Lewis Carroll, Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Grahame, Kipling’s Boys, L. Frank Baum and Oz, and two pigs.]

[Considers the myth’s crossing of the boundaries of genre-folktale, epic, romance, ballad, lay, legend-and its encompassing varieties of discourses-psychological, philosophical, theological, sociological, political-but especially its crossing of gender boundaries. Salisbury surveys male-Cinderella narratives from those of Odysseus and Joseph to the Russian Korsbury-Popeljuh, or Dirty-Cinder Boy, and recent adaptations of the story in children’s books for boys. Salisbury focuses most espansively on medieval English male Cinderella romances, however, e.g., two thirteenth-century male Cinderella romances, King Horn and Havelok the Dane, and several subsequent metrical adaptations of the myth in Bevis of Hampton, Sir Torrent of Portugal, Tristram, Ipomedon, Sir Isumbras, Guy of Warwick, William of Palerne, Gamelyn, Percevale of Galles, Octavian, Libaeus Desconus, Eglamour, Sir Degare, Sir Gowther, and Malory’s Sir Gareth, La Cote Male Tayle, and Alexander the Orphan. Salisbury concludes with a look at American male Cinderellas, such as Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick and Tattered Tom, Jerry Lewis’s Cinderfella, Babette Cole’s Prince Cinders, and Bernice Myers’s Sidney Rella. But “despite these valiant attempts to ‘trouble’ gender and defuse sexual stereotyping, the hegemony of canonical traditions relating to gender roles is as difficult to redress for contemporary American society as it was for earlier societies …. The true redressing of ‘these’ traditional tales still remains in the realm of fantasy” (pp. 290-291).]

[Samuelson examines Barbara Tori’s The Cinderella Factor (1972), Irving Wallace’s The Fan Club (1974), and Dan Wakefield’s Going All the Way (1970), all of which are billed as modern Cinderella tales, to demonstrate how popular romance fiction, while promising exotic experience, newly delivered tastes, sensations, and freedom, depends in fact on conservative formulas rather than realism, a kind of “chamber of commerce fantasy.” “Far from delivering on these promises [of an exciting new life], popular novels are popular because of their imposture: they systematically retreat from the new to formulate experience as superficial and tiny and formulaic as that of fairy tales literally read” (p. 770).]

[English psychoanalyst analysis of a pantomime version of Cinderella used by comparison to understand the case history of a suicidal patient whose brothers tore up her teddy bear, who feels that she is neither male nor female (a half and half) and who said in one session, “Even if Dior himself decked me out in specially designed garments I’d still be the same hideous mess underneath, and in the end I’d have to take the lovely clothes off and there would the mess be for all to see,” which Sanford compares to Cinderella when the clock strikes twelve (p. 131); with solicited critiques by Robert J. Stoller, Virginia Leono Bicudo, Morton Levitt, Judith S. Kestenberg, and Alan Dundes; and with a response by Mrs. Sanford. See Pantomimes in the bibliography for a summary of Sanford’s psychoanalytical reading of the Cinderella pantomime.]

[A feminist discussion of the nude tradition in art history. The chapter entitled “The Fetishized Female” discusses the continual fragmentation and fetishization of female bodies in art. “Active versus Passive” discusses unequal looking relations in art, e.g., woman as spectacle.]

[Frances Clarke Sayers, former head of work with children in the New York Public Library, challenges Max Rafferty, California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction for praising Walt Disney as “the greatest educator of this century.” Sayers responds by accusing Disney of ignoring genuine feeling, with bludgeoning children with mediocrity and vulgarity. “Look at that wretched sprite with the wand and the over-sized buttocks which announces every Disney program on TV. She is a vulgar little thing, who has been too long at the sugar bowls” (p. 117). Sayers is then interviewed by Charles M. Weisenberg, Public Relations Director of the Los Angeles Public Library. Sayers finds books better than movies. “Walt Disney has never addressed himself to children once in his life — never. This material is made to reach an adult audience” (p. 122). Disney makes everything “so obvious that it asks nothing of the readers, then after a while, their ability to respond is atrophied” (p. 123). There is only one kind of dirty book, the one that falsifies life. “I think Disney falsifies life by pretending that everything is so sweet, so saccharine, so without any conflict except the obvious conflict of violence” (p. 124). Great illustration of children’s literature is possible, witness Maurice Cendak or Marcia Brown’s seventeenth century French period costuming of Cinderella . Disney “has made a great contribution to the humor of the world. What I object to is his treatment of traditional literature and of the great books of childhood” (p. 125).]

[Discusses the frontispiece (reproduced in color as the cover of this issue) of Histoires ou contes du temps passé (1697) designed by Antoine Clouzier of an old woman spinning yarn (a visual pun) with two children by her side, an older youth on a nearby chair, and a cat (the agent of witches) by the embers. Discusses origins of various stories, including Cinderella. Offers a brief biography of Perrault and his first effort at storytelling, “La Marquise de Salusses, ou la patience de Griseldis,” then discusses the complex history of early printed editions in French and English, with thirteen color illustrations, mainly from the eighteenth century (mostly Red Riding Hoods and frontispieces).]

[Considers how illustrations extend meaning and also interfere with it. Illustrated children’s stories provide amusement and entertainment, have meaningful human interest, provide social significance, and have aesthetic appeal. Illustrated children’s books help children sort out conflicts as they grow to understand the world. The Schwarczes discuss examples in terms of the stress, anxiety, identity, love, and support that they generate.]

[The struggle between “good” and “bad” parents is one of the big problems of childhood. Fairy tales tend to present bad mother as witch (phallic mother) and good father as Oedipal hero. The protagonist struggles for gratification and wish fulfillment and conformity with social norms. This does not necessarily reinforce submissiveness but rather “a certain amount of common sense, which goes into conforming with the social mores, [and which] is a realistic necessity for children and adults alike” (p. 755).]

[Seventeen essays defining society and human culture, including Ruth Benedict, “The Growth of Culture” (pp. 223-236), Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The Family” (pp. 333-577), and Robert Redfield, “How Society Operates” (pp. 417-440).]

[Discusses Frog Prince stories in Grimm and in Scotland, then suggests a possible biological basis for such stories: “Bufotenin is a substance present in the skin of some common species of frogs, and its ingestion (such as would occur in licking or kissing a frog) can result in vivid hallucinations. This biological property offers an explanation for the portrayal of frogs in folklore as creatures of transformation, or as intermediaries with other worlds” (p. 558).]

[Discusses cinematic phenomena of suture (identification) and the gaze.]

[Using Freudian concepts of projection and fetishism, discusses visual relations in cinema.]

[“Girls not only acquire cultural knowledge about romantic love, but also develop several feeling and expression norms to deal with their own concerns about romance. These norms involve the relative importance of variety of discourse strategies to communicate normative information and to reinforce discourse. Yet, even though girls obtain normative information about romantic love, they do not always abide by feeling and expression norms. Instead, they sometimes respond to these norms with resistance and defy them intentionally. This finding suggests that emotion norms constrain, but do not determine adolescent females’ affect and behavior” (p. 29).]

[See especially pp. 1-31, a sophisticated comparative analysis of “Aschengrubel,” with commentary on various names given the heroine.]

[Considers value of transformed tales such as Babette Cole’s Prince Cinders , Arthur Yorinks’ Ugh , Jane Yolen’s Sleeping Ugly , and Jon Scieszka’s The Stinky Cheese Man in teaching reading appreciation to sixth graders who “love to revisit and reexperience favorites from their early childhood” (p. 18), “while enjoying the humor and creativity in transformations” and developing “tools of literary understanding such as comparing and contrasting the new and old stories” (p. 20). Suggests writing assignments such as retelling the tales in rap style.]

[“A thoughtful consideration of the implications of the existence of multiple versions of a plot for narrative theory, with Cinderella used as an example (pp. 215-22)” –Dundes, 1982, p. 311.]

[Stereotypically the stepchild is “a pitiable creature who suffers from cruelty and neglect.” The term with its sinister implications makes a deep impression and influences reactions to anyone who has the label attached to her or him. “The stereotype has done much to make the lot of the stepchild an unhappy one” (p. 14).]

[Includes essays by Julia Jewett on Allerleirauh, Anne Baring on Cinderella, Lena B. Ross on Cupid and Psyche, and Ladson Hinton and Lucille Klein, both on the Goose Girl.]

[Steiner relates three fairy tales, using them to spin off his anthroposophical wisdom, whereby we learn of the three members of the soul: the sentient, the intellectual and the spiritual. As the eye and ear have different relations to the surrounding world so have the three members of the soul. They become the means of understanding himself and the world. In olden times man was very close to all forces of nature and was still bound up with them. The stories provide facsimiles of one’s former self — giants of immense strength, understood by the sentient soul. The intellectual soul takes man into an intermediate state where he can construct female beings who bring wisdom into the fabric of the world — wise women at the back of all formed things and who themselves construct everything. In such a condition the soul is withdrawn from ordinary physical perception and says to himself, “What I see in my soul is contained in what I see by day — in my intellectual soul. But when I see it by day it is exactly reversed” (p. 14). Things appear as if they had their real being bewitched within them. “Through the spirit soul we see those spiritual beings who have remained beyond at the stage at which man was when he had only the sheath of the ego” (p. 15). The incidents of the inner life appear to man as reflected pictures of the events of the outer world but have now withdrawn. Overcoming the rough forces or giants in fairy tales demarcates moving into the intermediate state where one can catch sight of the spiritual world he has lost, the wife to be that is missing. A betrothal does not occur in ordinary circumstances. Fairy tales have the remnants of an ancient picture seen astrally. Everything corresponds to astral events.]

[Examines the social aspirations and eating patterns of thirty-two girls, ages 14-18. The group defined their aspirations in terms of two types first defined by Gilligan: the Wise Woman and the Super Woman. The girls who aspired to the Wise Woman model saw themselves in terms of patterns of new societal ideals of “autonomy and independent achievement in career and looks” for a woman (p. 171), while those aspiring toward the Super Woman identified with a marketable commodity whose body maintenance is part of her diverse successes. Forty percent of the respondents who strove to attain Super Woman status had some sort of eating disorder. Such aspirants saw thinness as a self-defining trait, an inherent part of the autonomous woman’s briefcase carrying image, a part of the beauty package required by society. As long as the successful woman remains idealized with a masculine body, the stepsister phenomenon of self-sculpting of the body logically follows.]

[Although most American children identify “Cinderella” with Disney’s film, teachers would do well to introduce them to a few of the 700 variants folklorists have identified. Stewart focuses on three children’s books of the 1990s, The Rough-Face Girl, an Algonquin tale, Sootface, an Ojibwa narrative, and The Turkey Girl, a story from the southwest Zuni and Pueblo Indians. Although these tales do not follow a slipper test, fulfill some promise, or even end with a happy marriage, they reflect astutely Native American values very different from “pow-wow” and face paint cliches that are so often imposed on Native Americans by non-Indian culture. In these stories reward is bestowed on the person who speaks the truth, while those who lie fail. Contrary to “happy-ending” Cinderellas, the turkey girl fails to keep the turkeys she is supposed to be watching, the result being that “from that day unto this, turkeys have lived apart from their tall brothers.” But she is still honored for telling the truth and living with the consequences of her failure, an important lesson for her and her tribe to contemplate. All three of these Native American children’s stories demonstrate respect for Native American culture with its emphasis on inner values rather than material rewards. They show how children through their choices participate meaningfully in their societies. The stories affirm how Mother Earth is the Fairy Godmother that matters to young and old alike. “Much can be gained by introducing young readers to these variants” (p. 14).]

[Studies the ignoring of active heroines in America, especially as they are represented in the numerous translations of Grimm stories and in Disney films. If heroines in Grimm are “uninspiring, those of Walt Disney seem barely alive” (p. 44). Disney stereotypes good versus bad women and displaces potent fantasy with “false magic,” with the good all clean and neatened up. Stone contrasts heroines found in oral tellings in America (Ozark tales, etc.) who would make “Disney’s hair curl,” along with such British folk heroines as Kate Crackernuts, Mossycoat, Tib, and Mally Whuppee. Folk tales give women a vital sexuality that is absent in Disney. “The restriction of women at puberty can … be interpreted as a reaction of men to the threat of female sexuality” (p. 47). Stone interviewed forty women who confirmed Eric Berne’s thesis that adults are influenced by their reading of fairy tales. Several yearned to reenact components of Cinderella in their real lives. “Disney neglected to tell us that Cinderella’s freedom does not always end at midnight” (p. 50).]

[Stone argues that Disney produces successful film adaptations because they appeal to both child and adult audiences and thus create bonding through family entertainment. She examines how Disney encouraged his staff to develop more complex and compelling storylines in an effort to appeal to a diverse range of people. Stone shows how Disney adds dimension to his heroines, expands the role of the Prince or rescuer, and sometimes increases the part of the villain. More importantly, Stone considers how Disney uses more developed secondary characters and humor to alter the narrative tone, and this change shifts the focus of the story to romance. While these changes also help increase the length of the narrative, thereby making the stories usable for film, Disney also transforms discussions of monarchy and magic to meet the demands of his North American, twentieth century audience. Late in the article, Stone begins to explore how women identify with the Disney heroines, and she states that the danger to women comes from the repetition of the Disney interpretation of the story: “In giving back to the audience what it already believes, Disney magnifies rather than merely reflects. True love must continue happily ever after, because Disney agrees, and portrays it so compellingly” (p. 45).] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[A detailed argument on sexual bias in traditional fairy tales that should be recognized and addressed. Cites Thompson, Luthi and Lurie’s positions that fairy tales offer positive images for both boys and girls, and Girardot and Bettelheim’s suggestions the gender differences are less important than psychological significance. But supported by Beauvoir, Lieberman, and Minard, Stone insists that differences in heroes and heroines do exist and that that they contribute to differential socializing of boys and girls in contemporary Western society. Stone bases her findings on many interviews (several of which are printed here) with teachers, students, and adults, focusing on the Cinderella stories as dangerous models for young women, particularly in the misleading rewards. It is a mistake to pass off such stories as child’s play. For many the slipper “does not fit though they try to wear it anyway” (p. 140). “While fairy tales are not inherently sexist, many readers receive them as such. This study indicates that many females find in fairy tales an echo of their own struggles to become human beings. Gender of both reader and protagonist is indeed significant in this struggle” (p. 144).]

[Stone offers a historic perspective on fairy tale scholarship and its efforts to explore the impact fairy tales have on women. She focuses on initial efforts of scholars to determine whether fairy tales encourage passivity in women and observes that newer versions of the stories with more proactive heroines and collections from around the world have been offered to present counter models to the stereotype of the passive female main character in stories such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White. Stone notes that fairy tale scholars, however, soon became trapped in focusing on the same stories for their arguments before she examines her own work and the broader view of scholars who began to read the narratives for examples of internal or silent agency, often characterized through a character’s ability to respond to the world around her. This second type of growth resulted in fairy tale revisions where men and women were placed in opposition. Writers of this type of tale include Anne Sexton, Angela Carter, and Tanith Lee. She next observes that, subsequently, scholars used a third approach that no longer separated myth and fairy tales and that offered a more useful discussion of gender dynamics as male and female were no longer seen as binaries but as categories with a shared nexus. Stone concludes her work by asking fairy tale scholars to look at their primary sources again to see how these narratives provide lessons of transformation for both women and men.] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[Studies of artistic and complex social interactions among children, an attempt to redefine and reinterpret expressive behaviors of children. Includes Sylvia Ann Grider, “Who Are the Folklorists of Childhood?”; Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt, “The Complexity of Children’s Folklore”; John McDowell, “The Transmission of Children’s Folklore”; Richman Beresin, “Double Dutch and Double Cameras”; Linda A Hughes, “Girls’ Gaming”; Gary Alan Fine, “Methodological Problems in Collecting Folklore from Children”; C. W. Sullivan III, “Songs, Poems, and Rhymes”; Danielle M. Roemer, “Riddles”; Elizabeth Tucker, “Tales and Legends”; Marilyn Jorgensen, “Teases and Pranks”; Bernard Mergen, “Children’s Lore in School and Playgrounds”; Simon J. Bronner, “Material Folklore of Children”; Jay Mechling, “The Folklore in Children and Adolescents in Total Institutions”; Felicia McMahon and Brian Sutton-Smith, “The Past in the Present: Theoretical Directions for Children’s Folklore.” With glossary of key terms and bibliography.]

[Presents Cinderella tales he collected in the 1980s in Cáceres, Spain, which he analyses to show how men and women use the tales to grapple with contradictions found in gender relations in the culture and to convey an understanding through a common model of marriage that permits men and women to overcome their fear of each other in heterosexual love.]

[Discusses limitations of Propp’s system of analysis to suggest a less constrictive and more fruitful approach, namely, the understanding of the tales through oppositions, an approach that works especially well in dealing with family structures in the narratives. The adversaries — whether cunning witches, plotting stepmothers, or foxy chambermaids — retain eminently human features. The allies, on the other hand, are likely to be fantastic animals or trees that come to the hero or heroine’s aid. (p. 88). Discusses nature and dreams as wish fulfillment and a “correction of everyday life.” The symbolic codes of fairy tales are relatively easy to decipher, which is their strength.]

[“Recollections of the powerful attraction of fairy-tale figures confirm the now-tired cliché that these stories incarnate our deepest hopes and most ardent desires” (p. xv).]

[Includes chapters on adults rewriting children’s literature, the pedagogy of fear, reward-and punishment tales, the art of dying happily ever after, heroines and the seven deadly sins, Ch. VI: “Tyranny at Home: “Catskin” and “Cinderella” (pp. 120-139), Ch. VII: “Beauties and Beasts: From Blind Obedience to Love at First Sight” (pp. 140-162), violence and fulfillment of wishes, cannibalism and oral greed, parents vs. children in “Juniper Tree,” and an epilogue on reinvention through intervention.]

[After considering ways in which the blame is shifted from murderous husbands (Bluebeard, etc.) to curious wives, Tatar considers the helplessness and abject self-pity characteristic of both male and female Cinderellas in Grimm and Perrault, along with their vengeance once they have gained access to power. Passion rather than compassion frequently leads to the happy ending. “The protagonists of fairy tales rarely achieve their ends by observing strict ethical codes” (p. 144), and young female beauties always defeat the adult beast.]

[First published in Dundes, Cinderella: A Casebook , pp. 115-128. Considers Japanese and African versions.]

[Characters in stories can represent traits that both males and females have somewhere in their personalities. Nonetheless, children’s responses tend to be gendered. Discusses a primary school’s responses to gender issues in a discussion of Mayer and Mayer’s Beauty and the Beast .]

[Contents include Prologue: Anatomy of a Movie Scene, From Printed Word to Finished Film; Part One: From Legend to Film (“Beauty and the Beast” Through the Ages; Script: A Disney Heroine Who Reads; The Story Takes Shape; The Storyboard Process; Story Meeting: The Emergence of Chip); Part Two: The Elements of Animation (Production: The Unity of Vision; Direction: The Disparate Partners; Voices: Listening to Actors with Closed Eyes; Music: “Tale as Old as Time, Song as Old as Rhyme”; Art Direction: “They Should Be Lighted like Bette Davis”; Layout: Putting the Fun Back In; Animation: Enter the Actors; Cleanup: Achieving the Final Line; Background: A Dr. Zhivago Kind of Snow; Effects: Everything but Volcanoes); Glossary of Animation Terms.]

[Studies 45 female under-graduates whose eating disorders resulted from “aspiring to those traits that are socially desirable for males but not females” (p. 710). “Women who felt that many roles were central to their sense of self worth were likely to place greater importance upon appearance, and these women reported significantly more symptoms and eating disorders. The picture that emerges from these results is suggestive of the ‘Superwoman’ ideal” (p. 710).]

[Comparative study that includes Vietnamese and Cambodian versions of the tale.]

[On James’ use of Perrault.]

[Discussion of The Folklore Process; Dynamics of the Folk Group; The Folk Performance; Dimensions of the Folk Event; Community Taste; Folklore and Connotation; and Folklore and Cultural Worldview; with concluding remarks on Being a Folklorist, doing Folklore Research, and the Applications of Folklore.]

[Tolkien assesses the value of enchantment, emphasizing man’s need for the beauty and wonder of another world, albeit a “perilous realm,” with a faerie capacity to consume or to illuminate the folk of this world. “The association of children and fairy-stories is an accident of our domestic history” (p. 34), though a childlike willing suspension of disbelief is a crucial component of a fairy-tale world. “If adults are to read fairy-stories as a natural branch of literature - neither playing at being children, nor pretending to be choosing for children, not being boys who would not grow up - what are the values and functions of this kind?” (p. 45): Fairy stories offer the needy human spirit four things: Fantasy, Recovery, Escape, and Consolation, with Fantasy (or, in its older form, Fancy) being the primary element, akin to (not opposite to) Imagination. The fantastic enables one to glimpse other-worlds, to be liberated “from the domination of observed ‘fact’” (p. 45). Its “arresting strangeness” (p. 45) makes possible the recovery of a fresh view of the unfantastic, dulled by long familiarity. The escapism of fairy tale is a good thing, a step toward fundamental realities obscured by the grim face of industrialism (pp. 57-60). Consolation is tied to “the Great Escape: the Escape from Death” (p. 61). “The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending; or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn’...does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe , of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium , giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief” (p. 62). In this regard the Christian Gospels contain “a fairy story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy stories” (p. 65), the Incarnation being the eucatastrophe of Man’s history, and the Resurrection the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation, the ultimate happy ending, where legend and history meet and are fused (pp. 65-66).] See also Verlyn Flieger, Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1981), especially ch. 2, “Catastrophe and Eucatastrophe” (pp. 13-33), for discussion of the essay in the context of Tolkien’s ethical semiotics. She suggests that “Of Fairy Stories” is “a kind of latter-day defense of poesy” with considerable debt to the Romantics, especially to Coleridge. Beyond this it is a trove of information about Tolkien’s thoughts, feelings, and critical reactions to his own work. Interspersed with discussion of the nature of fairy-stories and of the criteria for creating fantasy are phrases and allusions — almost asides — which, read in the context of Tolkien’s fiction, become specific references to aspects of his own work. These allusions, always germane to the discussion of the essay, are windows into Tolkien’s mind, affording a look at the creative process as well as the critical one” (pp. 22-23).

[Compares both conscious and unconscious effects created by the narratives, particularly for women.]

[The May Hill Arbuthnot Honour Lecture. Townsend considers problems of a “nonparticipating audience”: “children’s books are written by adults, published by adults, reviewed by adults, and, in the main, bought by adults. The whole process is carried out at one, two, three, or more removes from the ultimate consumer.” Attempts to address question of what constitutes children’s literature or what its aim might be.]

[Children’s stories are often accused of perpetrating unhealthy monstrosities (e.g. Sarah Trimmer’s attack on Cinderella in 1806 as a “monster of deceit,” exhibiting “some of the worst passions that can enter into the human breast, and of which little children should, if possible, be totally ignorant, such as envy, jealousy, a dislike of mothers-in-law and half sisters, vanity, a love of dress, etc. etc.”). But children produce their own horror. Adults need to understand what frightens a particular child and deal with that. Picture books may help deter fear or they may heighten it. Arthur Rackham’s illustrations are often “unnecessarily repulsive.” Sendack’s monsters, on the other hand, “are essentially amiable grinning things, easily tamed and if anything rather ridiculous.” It may be that adults want to horrify children, at least moderately. Does Cinderella encourage “boot-fetichism?” If children are upset by this sort of thing their anxieties must be close to the surface. We should not dwell on horror lest it lead to a feeling of insecurity as well as horror.]

[Includes one skip-rope rhyme not found in the Oxford edition of children’s games (p. 23): Cinderella, Cinderella, Went out dancing with the fellas, On her way her petticoat busted, This is how many men were disgusted, 1, 2, 3, 4. …]

[Psychological and theological explorations of envy.]

[On Amando Palacio Valdes’ novel.]

[Spiritual readings of fairy tales. See also “The Slipper on the Stair,” ( World Review , 25 (1951): 50-52) for an anthroposophical reading of Cinderella as the soul in search of its home. In Dundes.]

[Richardson’s heroine shares much with Cinderella: she is “an adolescent girl kept for months on the verge of sexual experience” (p. 7); she dreams of escape from slavery and provides a model of how to rise to the highest ranks of society (pp. 7-8, 328-35). Utter and Needham cite several other heroines (Pamela’s daughters) in the 1750s and later who combine Pamela and Cinderella virtues — Sylla in The Fair Wanderer (1751), the heroines in The Life of Patty Saunders . Written by Herself (1752) and The History of Lucy Wellers “written by a lady” (1754), Charlotte Lennox’s Henrietta Courtney (1760), Anne Hughes’s Caroline Ashford (1787) and Juliana (1788). “In the fairy tale, Cinderella’s only specified occupation is picking out of the ashes the beans that others have spilled. Most Cinderella-Pamelas have felt that people spilled beans only to make trouble for them, and they have neither pride nor joy in the work of picking them up” (p. 335). Cites several novels on difficulties working girls face: e.g., Lillian Mortimer’s A Girl of the Streets: A Novel Founded Upon the Drama of the Same Name , Grace Miller White’s Dangers of Working Girls: A Romantic Story Founded on Martin Hurley’s Play of the Same Name , Laura Jean Libbey’s Only a Mechanic’s Daughter ; and early twentieth-century melodrama’s like Dwight Tilton’s Miss Petticoats (1902), Eric St. Ross’ Only a Mill Girl, or, A Manchester Man’s Revenge , Clarles Klein’s Maggie Pepper (1911), or Elsie Brandon’s A Working Girl’s Honor (1911). “An occupational census of the heroines of novels of three centuries, somewhat more than a hundred, of which some ten percent are of the eighteenth century, fifty per cent from the nineteenth and forty percent from the twentieth, shows heroines hampered by their delicacy to about ninety-six percent; that is, they take advantage of about four per cent of their opportunities. In the eighteenth century we find the ten are evenly divided between governesses and servant maids. In the nineteenth century we find fifteen governesses or teachers, seven factory girls, three apprentices to dressmakers, three shopgirls, three artists, three models, and one or two each of dairymaids, servant maids, nurses, bookkeepers, pit-girls, fishwives, and truckfarmers. In the twentieth century we have twelve secretaries and stenographers, seven shopgirls, four models, two each of teachers, companions, beauty parlor operators, managers of large businesses, and one each of the following: personal maid, post girl, chorus girl, artist, farm girl, writer, famous dress designer, partner in a firm of accountants, partner in a bank — in all barely four percent of the number of occupations in which women were engaged in 1841. The difference between two occupations registered in the eighteenth-century novel and four hundred in the nineteenth-century census is a startling index of the changes of the century between Pamela and Old Curiosity Shop ” (p. 336).

[This impressive monograph takes fairy tale beyond folklore and psyphanalytic study into the mental landscape of cultural logistics. Working through methodologies of Ovid, Lévi-Strauss, Alan Dundes, Stith Thompson, Carlo Ginsburg, Bengt Holbek, Vladimir Propp, Ananda Coomarswamy, Roman Jakobson, and Petr Bogatyrev, Vas da Silva develops a tropological mythism that opens the arbitrary inner-workings of a European mental construction that use fairy tales as a means to reify themselves. Ch. 1: Fairy Tales and Ethnography explores “Fairy Tales and the Perils of the Soul,” “The Meaning of 'Meanings,'” “Extraordinary Children in Praxis and the Fairy Tales,” “The Great Round of Souls,” “Double Skins and Metamorphosis,” “Female Werewolves,” and “Symbolic Echoes.” Ch. 2: Metamorphosis and Ontological Complexity subdivides into “Self-sacrificial Sloughing and Ominiscience,” “The Blood of Genesis,” “Bleeding Werewolves,” “Propp and Lévi-Strauss on Metamorphosis,” “Ontological Complexity in Fairy Tales,” “Cyclic Themes in Fairy Tales.” Ch. 3: Bloody Tales tells of “Folklorists and Origins,” “Thematic Transformations in Le Petit Chaperon Rouge ,” “A Medieval Red Cap,” “Scholarly Tradition on Little Red Riding Hood ,” “Floral Language in Cultural Context,” “Re-evaluating Perrault,” “Tradition as Corruption,” and “Meet the Loathly Bride.” Ch. 4: The Core of Fairy Tales investigates “The Dragon Slayer as Cinderella,” “The Slayer and the Victim: Androgyny,” “Tobias Nights and the Loathly Bride,” “Freud and Oedipus,” “Oedipus the Dragon Slayer,” “Cinderella the Snake Slayer,” “Variations and Theme in the Cinderella Cycle,” “Tobias Nights, Muteness, and Poison-Damsels,” “Skins, Flowers and Salt,” and “Riddle.” The Conclusion reminisces on “Cyclic Logic: The Dragon,” “A Basic Pattern of Thought,” “The Metaphysics of Kin Intimacy,” and “Transformations and the Unconcious.”]

[“We now know that the odds are very high that no matter from what economic station, no matter from what group, no matter from what section of the country, Cinderella-grown-to-womanhood is likely to be divorced, likely to be in a dead end, low-paying job, and likely to be poor in her old age” (p. 1).]

[Includes chapter on “The Beautiful Wassilisa,” reprinted in Dundes.]

[From two lecture series at the C. G. Jung Institute, Zurich: “The Problem of the Shadow in Fairy Tales” (Winter, 1957); and “Dealing with Evil in Fairy Tales” (Winter, 1964).]

[Vonnegut explains that his prettiest contribution to his culture was his master’s thesis at the University of Chicago, which was rejected. It included graphs of plots, the most complex being Cinderella. “At this very moment, a thousand writers must be telling that story again in one form or another. This very book is a Cinderella story of a kind.” Vonnegut says that he was tempted to leave the Cinderella graph out of his thesis because it was too complicated — steps upward, a sudden drop, then a rapid sweep upward. The steps are “all the presents the fairy godmother gave to Cinderella, the ball gown, the slippers, the carriage, and so on. the sudden drop is the stroke of midnight at the ball. Cinderella is in rags again. All the presents have been repossessed. But then the prince finds her and marries her, and she is infinitely happy ever after. She gets all the stuff back, and then some. A lot of people think the story is trash, and, on graph paper, it certainly looks like trash. But then I said to myself, Wait a minute — those steps at the beginning look like the creation myth of virtually every society on earth. And then I saw that the stroke of midnight looked exactly like the unique creation myth in the Old Testament. And then I saw that the rise to bliss at the end was identical with the expectation of redemption as expressed in primitive Christianity. The tales were identical” (p. 315)]

[Vonnegut reflects further on his universal Cinderella plot to give wise advice to new writers b means of a blackboard demonstration. He draws a vertical line with G at the top for “good fortune” and I at the bottom for “ill fortune.” He the draws a horizontal line that crosses the middl eof the vertical line and runs a ways, marking “Beginning” at the left and "End" at the right. Across this grid he draws a double curve that starts high up on the vertical line, crosses the horizontal line running low, then curving back up across the horizontal to a position higher than it began. He calls this plot “Man in Hole,” which he explains. Next he labels the graph “Boy Meets Girl,” and explains how that mirror-image works. The third variation he calls “Cinderella,” which begins in the ill fortune area and works its way up by steps to a good height, then falls again into ill fortune only to swing back up even higher to end in eternity (marked by the horizontal 8 sign). He then juxtaposes a Kafka plot, which beings fairly low on the ill fortune vertical, moves horizontally, then sinks even further into eternity. That's pessimism — from hell to deeper in hell. His conclusion gives us the grid with no plot line, and labels it “Hamlet,” an undefined plot that mainly asks questions — is it good or ill fortune? “Shakespeare was as poor a storyteller as an Arapho. But there's a reason we recognize Hamlet as a masterpiece: it's that Shakespeare told us the truth, and people so rarely tell us the truth in this rise and fall here [ indicates blackboard ]. The truth is, we know so little about life, we don't really know what the good news is and what the bad news is. And if I die — God forbid — I would like to go to heaven and ask somebody in charge up there, 'Hey, what was the good news and what was the bad news?'” (p. 37).]

[Four basic aspects of step-relationship: bereavement, replacement, negative connotations of the intruder, and lack of institutionalization of family forms of consolation.]

[Translation of ninth-century version with commentary.]

[Includes “The She-Wolf,” “Princess Questa,” “Snow Night,” “Gorga and the Dragon,” “The Frog Princess,” “Ugly and the Beast,” “Thomas Rhymer,” “Jill and the Beanroot,” “Barbidol,” “Sir Vivor and the Holy Cauldron,” “Ala Dean and the Wonderful Lamp,” “The Descent of Shaloma,” “The Weaver,” “The Sea Witch,” “Prince Grimme and the Fairy of the Forest,” “The Oracle,” “Lily and Rose,” “The Gargoyle,” “Little White Riding Hood,” “How the Sexes Were Separated,” “The Littlest Mermaid,” “Cinder-Helle,” “How Winter Came to the World,” “The Empress’s New Clothes,” “The Three Little Pinks,” “Fairy Gold,” “How the Gods Met their End,” “The White God.” [Walker traces her Cinder-Helle story back to religio-political allegory satirizing the feudal church and state, “recalling northern Europe’s indigenous worship of the Goddess Helle, or Holle, or Ella, or Hel. In one of the original German versions, the gift-giving fairy Godmother was a sacred tree grown from the grave of the heroine’s mother, obviously a former pilgrimage shrine. The story touches on the uneasy truce between the urban political power of medieval Christianity and the spiritual power of pagan (meaning ‘rural’) cults of the old Goddess — who was doubly underground when the primal netherworld earth mother survived to become a heretical secret, and her worship went underground. Cinder-Helle’s use of menstrual blood in her charm is one of the oldest and most durable notions about witches’ magic, dating from that remote pre-patriarchal time when women’s moon blood was considered the source of every life, the foundation of all family blood bonds, and the essential medium of spiritual power. Patriarchy regarded it with horror, and its extraordinary taboos perpetuated many absurd superstitions about the capacity of such blood to defy the will of male gods. The scepter in the shoe is an ancient symbol of sexual intercourse or sacred marriage, dating … back to the Eleusinian Mysteries sacred to Demeter …. Its unconscious survival even today may be sought in various kinds of shoe fetishisms” (p. 196).]

[Considers, among other things, African-American women’s relation to white standards of beauty.]

[In The Color Purple , Walker uses the Cinderella story and Bettelheim’s commentary on it to show how characters both engage enchantment and work to escape its unnatural state. Celie is Walker’s Cinderella. Her “truly wicked stepfather” must be “overcome or eliminated before the author’s heroine can assume her rightful place and inheritance” (p. 91). Celie’s innocent guiltlessness parallels that of a Cinderella. She too is transformed by a magic helper after her fall to utter degradation, ultimately to “return to a much more exalted position at the story’s end” (p. 95).]

[” Cinderella ( Society , 1880). A dance which ends at twelve - the name fancifully suggested, it is not known by whom, in reference to that successful young professional beauty who, at midnight, was by force major compelled to give up dancing. Adopted in France - 1880. N’ayez pas peur, ma chère, ce n’est qu’une Cendrillon; à minuit - finis et silence . The hours at which balls begin grow later and later. The stroke which sends the last guest hurrying away from the Cinderella dance scarcely ushers the first arrival to a season ball. - D.N. , 27th March 1884.”]

["Jim Ware offers a compelling explanation of not only how literature transforms the soul, but how traditional stories, myths, and fairy tales have 'come true' in Christ! Especially helpful for the 'literature-challenged.'" -- Hank Hanegraafe, host of the Bible Answer Man radio broadcast. Ware reads fairytales through a Christian ideology that promotes allegorical and social interpretation that supports faith. He divides his presentation into the following chapters (the T's in the main stem of the chapter titles are printed like crosses): 1) Prologue: A Tree by Another Name: Finding God in the Fairy Tale; 2) BreakThrough: Close Encounters with a World Beyond: Thomas the Rhymer ; 3) Enchanted Forest: The Mystery of God's Creation: Phantastes ; 4) Magic Word: The Power of Speech: Ali Baba and the Forty Theives ; 5) Forbidden Room: Heeding the Word of Warning: Bluebeard ; 6) Savage World: The Cruelty of Fallen Creation: Hansel and Gretel ; 7) Creeps and Shivers: Wisdom and Fear: A Tale About the Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was ; 8) East Wind, West Wind: The Inscrutable Sovereignty of God: Mary Poppins ; 9) Divine Monstrosity: The Lover Behind the Gruesome Mask: Beauty and the Beast ; 10) Seeking Love: God's Relentless Grace: The Snow Queen ; 11) Impossible Odds: The Miracle of Mercy: The Red Shoes ; 12) Golden Trumpet: Free in Christ: Jack the Giant-Killer ; 13) Royal Surprise: Reversing the Order: Cinderella ; 14) Matchstick Kingdom: Poverty's Paradox: The Little Match-Girl ; 15) Flight: Soaring on Wings of Childlike Faith: Peter Pan ; 16) Ragtag Band: Refugee Church: The Bremen Town Musicians ; 17) Stinging Nettles: The Anguish of Redemption: The Wild Swans ; 18) Foam on the Water: Self-Emptying Love: The Little Mermaid ; 19) Kiss of Life: Death Is Not the End of the Story: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ; 20) The Great Riddle: Unlocking the Meaning of the Heart's Desire: The Golden Key ; 21) Green Isle of the West: Our Destiny Beyond This World: The Tale of Oisin and Niam ; 22) Epilogue: Eyes to See: " Second Sight ." Royal Surprise , the chapter on Cinderella (pp. 103-09), begins with the cruel treatment of Cinderella by the stepfamily, the lentils in the ashes, the name-calling -- "Cinder-Slut," to demonstrate that there is much beyond the compass of grasping souls like the stepfamily. When Cinderella is revealed as the choice of the prince at the ball, the stepsisters cry out "Forgive us...we didn't know it was you," the moment of absolute reversal. "It's the heart and soul of all good drama and storytelling...the fulcrum upon which the judgment and redemption of the world will one day turn" (p. 105). Ware traces common components of redemptive reversals in other fairytales -- the ugly duckling, goose girl, the simpleton who marries the princess to become ruler of twelve kingdoms, Cinderlad in "Princess on a Glass Hill," etc. He also references the story of the harping, singing, and stone-slinging shepherd boy David who would rise to the throne of Israel; and the Son of God Himself, and Messiah, with His glory hidden behind "a cloak of ash and dirt, flesh and blood, weakness and death" (p. 107). Ware sees parallels in Philippians 2:8-11, the Magnificat in Luke 1:52, and in Zechariah 12:10. But Grimm offers a more sobering conclusion, where the stepsisters "were punished with blindness for the rest of their lives due to their wickedness and malice," which is a possibility too. "Apparently it's worth ending up on the right side of this Great Divide" (p. 109).]

[“In a cluster of stories — hagiography and fairy tale — there recurs a figure of a wronged daughter, a young woman in flight from the unwelcome desire of a man, who is her own father or otherwise a man in power, an emperor, a prefect, a tyrant … The trope may yield a common truth about young women growing up and family fantasies, fathers’ and daughters’” (p. 155). Such an approach may lead to the thorny thickets of Freud’s puberty theories. This article explores the greater possibility of discovering something about the fairy-tale princess if the historical context of fairy tales are borne in mind. Warner examines tales ranging from Basile’s She-Bear and Cat-Cinderella to Perrault’s adaptations of both stories, along with Hearth Cat and Cap-O’Rushes, to generalize about wronged-women and hirsuteness in historical mythology such as the accounts of Mary Magdalene, Cordelia in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account of King Lear, and Christine of Pisan’s Joan of Arc. Warner suggests that Perrault’s account of Cinderella’s nickname, Cinder-bottom has sexual innuendoes. Wronged-women are often pursued women like Joie in Philippe de Beaumanoir’s La Manékine , who cuts off her hand to avoid incest with her father, flees to avoid being burned, and lands in Scotland where she marries the king, only to have mother-in-law problems, solved when a fish brought to the kitchen is found to have her hand inside. The various retellings of Apollonius of Tyre (Pericles, etc.) likewise provide instances, as do saints lives of Dympna, Barbara, Catherine, and Margaret, where women would avoid marriage as best they are able. Such narratives get reembodied in history as the Lady Anne, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, goes into hiding as a cookmaid to avoid marriage with Gloucester, later Richard III. In such narratives hair is often a prominent factor of attraction, disguise, and demarcation.]

[This eclectic anthropological/feminist study traces the development of the fairy tale as a literary genre in the salons of 17th-century Paris where a generation of aristocratic feminists like Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy and Marie-Jeane L’Héritier stood in “polite revolt against the dominant culture,” through the Victorian period with its burgeoning concerns for women, children, and the household, and into 20th-century revivals and revisions of fairy tale reflecting recent cultural preoccupations. Mother Goose originates in ancient history as a kind of subversive female voice, like that of Sybil, to deal with wisdom lying beneath the rationalized prescriptions of the dominant culture. For Warner, Mother Goose owes something to the cult of Jesus’ grandmother, St. Anne, but also to the world of gossips and female chatter. Mother Goose tale-telling is a partisan activity, often born by those whose professions let them pass from house to house, like “prostitutes, midwives and wetnurses,” armed with stories “tending to excess in both praise and blame.” Warner suggests that fairy tales are not primarily about children but, rather, about marriage, especially exogamy, the practice of marrying outside one’s own tribe, as in Beauty and the Beast or so many of the Cinderella narratives. Stepmothers often equate with mothers-in-law and the need to break the old woman’s rule so that the new generation can take its own rightful place in the household. The daughters always do win, though the old wives may be telling the tales. Warner acknowledges that fairy tales have often been annexed to ugly ends to subvert as well as to reinscribe dominant values. Warner uses over three hundred pictorial illustrations in developing her arguments.]

[Considers how stories lean on stories to suggest ways folk tales might serve in developing a curriculum of intervening stages between a child’s learning to read and university level literature courses. Uses Cinderella to study progressions of variants. Includes a bibliography of folk tale variants for Beauty and the Beast, The Best of the Bargain, Cinderella, The Gallant Tailor, The Lad and the North Wind, the Princess Who Wouldn’t Laugh, Puss in Boots, and Rumplestiltskin.]

[A compendium of changing philosophical, anthropological, psychological, and economic theories of the couple in American cinematic ideology and its stars as behavioral models. Discusses the development of concepts of “companionate marriage” in Hollywood, particularly with regard to romantic love, and the recent breakdown of the ideal of monogamous marriage in Hollywood experimentation with self-reflexive acting styles. Considers movies as social ritual, patriarchal marriage and traditional gender identities, companionate marriage and changing constructions of gender and sexuality, and the destabilization of gender norms and acting as performance beyond the couple. The cinema provides not only a primary guide to courtship but, certainly in the middle of the twentieth century, a primary site for courtship.]

[Traces illustrations in two hundred years of children’s books in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Includes reproductions of Perrault’s second English edition (1737), a frontispiece of 1808-10, a hand- colored illustration of 1860 (Griffith & Farran), Cruikshank’s etching of 1854, the centre-page spread from Walter Crane’s Toy Book (1873), the frontispiece and a silhouette from Arthur Rackham (1919), and an Edinburgh woodcut of 1805. Includes a bibliography of twenty-two illustrated editions.]

[Biography of Lupino Lane (of the Lupino family), a music hall, musical comedy, pantomime star (legendary for his Dandini and Buttons roles in Cinderella pantomimes and Pekoe in Aladdin 1920); silent film star with Douglas Fairbanks and subsequently in several Hollywood comedies. Tried to make a film of a Cinderella pantomime with Jack Buchanan as Prince, Ralph Lynn as Dandini, George Graves or Shaun Glenville as the Baron, Evelyn Laye as Cinderella, Nellie Wallace and Sidney Fairbrother as the Ugly Sisters, Nervo as Spotall, Knox as Grabbit, himself as Buttons, and Viola Tree as Fairy Godmother — the “ideal all-star cast,” a sure commercial as well as artistic success — but could not get the backing. He played Buttons in the London Coliseum’s first pantomime (1936), a Cinderella with book by Marriott Edgar, music by Tom Lewis and Eric Coates, and dances by Ralph Reader. He read Buttons for the gramophone recording of Cinderella made for the occupation troops in Germany at the Strand Theatre after Christmas 1946.]

[Williams, an African American working in a middle executive position, tells of the difficulties of following her best white friend’s advice on advancement through the friend’s notions of Cinderella success by dressing in the right designer gowns, meeting the right people, selling yourself to the Master of the Universe and the American Dream. “You see, part of the problem is that white knights just don’t play the same part of my mythical landscape of desire. If poor Cinderella had been black, it would have been a whole different story” (p. 94). Slave girls who worked their fingers to the bone were always in a different relationship with their legitimate half sisters and their mutual father — “scullery maids whose oil-and-ashes complexions would not wash clean even after multiple waves of the wand” (p. 94). Though MBWF insists that the key problems are economic rather than racial, Williams tells how her dreams differ, always being threatened with relegation to part-time mistress in some small room on the other side of the house. Her friend looks at her hair “as though it were a rude construction of mud and twigs, bright glass beads, and flashy bits of tinfoil … We gaze at each other with the deep disapproval of one gazing into a mirror … It turns out that my feet are much too big to fit into any of her sequinned little evening slippers, so I wear my own sensible square-soled pumps. My prosaic feet, like overgrown roots, peek out from beneath the satiny folds of the perfect dress. She looks radiant; I feel dubious. Our chariot and her husband await. As we climb into the limousine, her husband lights up a cigar and holds forth on the reemerging popularity of same … I do not envy her. I do not resent her. I do not hold my breath” (p. 97).]

[Discusses women in relation to exercise videos, exercise machines, etc., with a particular interest in consumerism and commodification.]

[“Of all subjects for Christmas ‘Cinderella’ is the most popular. It is safe to say that if you take a census during any pantomime season it will be found to out-number its nearest rival by at least two to one. It has been described as ‘the greatest story in the world.’ It is undoubtedly one of the oldest. The legend can be traced back many centuries. Learned investigators say that its origin is lost in the mists of prehistoric times. Something like four hundred versions of the story have been discovered, and there is hardly any part of the world where children are not familiar with it under some guise or other. In France Cinderella is known as Cendrillon, in Germany as Aschenbrodel. The Rumanians know her as ‘the Emperor’s daughter in a pigsty’; in Scandinavia she is called ‘Cinder Brat’ and in Russia ‘Mars with smuts on her nose.’ The earliest use of Cinderella (in the version borrowed from the French) for ‘pantomime spectacle’ was at Drury Lane in 1804; but in spite of the vogue of pantomime in early Victorian times, the theatre had to wait until 1864 for a real pantomime treatment of the story. Since then it has easily maintained its leading popularity. There have been frequent changes in the story since it was first used for pantomime. Dandini, for instance, was not always figured in it as the Prince’s aide. That character was borrowed from Rossini’s opera ‘Cenerentola.’ The hero was not always called Prince Charming. In the Covent Garden production of 1864 he was called Prince Ugolino, and as you may guess, such characters as the brokers’ men are modern additions to the story which has so delighted the children of many ages.”]

[Cites Basque version of BB where youngest daughter, after first night in Beast’s castle, awakens to a voice saying “I wish to place my head upon your knees.” The voice comes from an enormous serpent who subsequently turns into a beautiful young man. He had been cursed into serpent form until some woman would love him. In a Hungarian, version the man is transformed into a pig. Also in Polish, Tyrolese, Italian, and Lithuanian versions. (p. 79).]

[Atwood regularly draws upon fairy tales revisioning and reversing, parodying and transforming them. “Like Anne Sexton in Transformations , Atwood explodes the phallocentrism of the popularized “Cinderella” story (AT 510A) in all her novels, enabling us to see its sinister mirroring in the Grimms’ ‘The Girl Without Hands.’ Targeting especially Perrault and Disney versions and Frye’s “Cinderella archetype” ( Anatomy 44), Atwood also deconstructs most current readings of the fairy tale” (p. 20). Discusses Cinderella parody in The Edible Woman (pp. 82-96) and Surfacing , with its “failed Cinderella narrator” (p. 99). Atwood’s incestuous fathers owe something to “Catskin” typology , e.g., Life Before Man , with its abused daughter and elaborate Wizard of Oz analogues, and there are Cinderella-like women in The Edible Woman and You Are Happy , where Elizabeth marries Nate like trying on a shoe. And Elizabeth, after losing a shoe on the way to having her stomach pumped, flourishes later, making even the Prince feel inferior as she plans to attend law school. In Bodily Harm , Disney’s Cinderella is a major intertext, and Perrault and the Grimm Cinderella and Red Cap play important roles in The Handmaid’s Tale .]

[Wolf discusses the complexities of constructing beautiful women — the mutilation, the commercialism, the hidden agendas, the relativity of what is beautiful within society. A study in spell-breaking to “liberate occupied territories of our minds and energize ourselves to take up the real fight for women’s equality” (p. 7). The argument divides into chapters on Work, Culture, Religion, Sex, Hunger, Violence to assess components of the Beauty Myth in America. “The beauty myth tells a story: The quality called ‘beauty’ objectively and universally exists. Women must want to embody it and men must want to possess women who embody it …. Strong men battle for beautiful women, and beautiful women are more reproductively successful. Women’s beauty must correlate to their fertility, and since this system is based on sexual selection, it is inevitable and changeless” (p. 12). Wolf’s point is that none of this “story” is true, but rather what Ibsen called “vital lies.” “The beauty myth is not about women at all. It is about men’s institutions and institutional power” (p. 13). Affluent and not so affluent women in America have escaped one form of slavery (inexhaustible but ephemeral housework) only to fall into another (inexhaustible but ephemeral beauty work), with its multibillion dollar taskmaster, a taskmaster that invades concepts of work, culture, religion, and sex, that affects appetite, and promotes various forms of violence both against others and oneself.]

[Wood argues that scholars need to treat the Disney Cinderella as a fairy tale variant with equal weight to other stories, including those by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. She seeks to examine both the merits and limitations of the Disney version, and she records several changes Disney makes to the basic Cinderella storyline, such as changing the mother-stepmother rivalry to Cinderella versus her stepmother. Disney also adds an animal plot that mirrors the human competition seen in the narrative, and he also provides a motive for the hosting of the ball. Wood describes the moral of the film as female self control before examining Disney’s use of technology. She also notes how the filmmaker added new subplots and themes to the story to expand the narrative and how these changes shift the narrative focus to include a larger discussion of romance. Wood believes these changes have become so pervasive that they impact the plot structures of other fairy tale films. She also shows how Disney uses the role of symbolic and narrative contrast to tell a story that draws on but complicates Freud’s theories of dreams as wishing and faith to inspire success. Wood shows that Disney set out to create Cinderella in the image of the typical American girl before she examines the film and finds the theme of self-control operating as a positive image of female agency. Cinderella, as the main character, represents beauty and restrained sexuality, while the mice and feuding king and duke represent emotional release. The film also considers gender roles, the rewards of obedience, and homo-social bonding. Wood ends the article by calling for more work to see how the meaning of the film has shifted given its original context of publication in 1950 and its reproduction for audiences today.] [Annotation by Martha Johnson-Olin]

[“Connecting known stories to new, structurally similar ones is a powerful tool for reading instruction and excellent foundation for exploring other subjects through literature” (p. 290). Worthy and Bloodgood have chosen Cinderella because it’s most popular, with excellent illustrated versions for children readily available. They discuss various assignments which involve comparisons of different Cinderella versions and offer examples of students’ work showing ways in which stories overlap.]

[Considers effects of mass-marketing upon what children’s narratives get written and read in later 20th century America. “We Americans have it wrong” (p. 21). The coy, nice girl, helpless dreamer is not characteristic of Cinderella narratives in other cultures. Disney, especially, has been instrumental in robbing the heroine of her birthright of shrewdness, inventiveness, patience, and grace under pressure, changing the focus instead to the ingenuity of little lovable animals. Wishes are whimpers achieved by outside agency rather than appropriate, self-generated action. With such falsifications the wrong Cinderella goes to the ball in America, and the “true meaning” of the tale is “lost, perhaps forever” (p. 29).]

[A collection of essays reflecting Yolen’s belief that “culture begins in the cradle” (p. 9). Every story has two equal partners, the teller and the listener, who magically touch in the telling. The book is in three parts: [ Part One: The Tale and the Teller, with essays entitled “How Basic is Shazam?” (on the functions of myth and the abilities of stories to bridge centuries but also to penetrate individuals — “There is some one myth for every man which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he did and thought” [W.B.Yeats]); “The Lively Fossil” (on derivations of oral folktales, written folktales, literary tales, and responses to them, from Sarah Trimmer’s worry in the early 1800s that they “injure the tender minds of children by exciting unreasonable and groundless fears” to Johann Schiller’s “Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told me in my childhood than in any truth that is taught in life” [p. 27]); “Once Upon a Time” (on relationship of tales to children and their abilities to appreciate allegory. “If men really could not distinguish between frogs and men, fairy stories about frog-kings would not have arisen” [Tolkien]. Cinderella is not a story of rags-to-riches but of riches-to- rags-to-riches. [Pp. 36-39, a condensed version of Yolen’s essay “Cinderella in America”]); “The Eye and the Ear” (on illustrations. Uses Perseus/Medusa legend to get at the dangerous alliances between hearing and seeing. Disney’s Snow White illustrates “with finality” Mircea Eliade’s contention that “Man’s concept of the absolute can never be uprooted; it can only be debased” [p. 45] “The eye and the ear are different listeners” [p. 46]. Americans are more visually oriented than our ancestors. The synchronization of the visual and the auditory is a subtle art); “Tough Magic” (“The best stories touch the larger dream, that greater vision, that infinite unknowing …. They catch a glimpse of the soul beneath the skin” [p. 57]). [ Part Two: Taradiddles, with essays on “The Mask On the Lapel” (The mask says “I am not I”; so it is with fantasy novel, which speaks once to the ear, and again and again in the echo chamber of the heart.); “Tough Magic” (The old bargain principle: one cannot receive without giving first. As the Green Lady in Lewis’ Perelandra puts it: “The world is much larger than I thought … I thought I went along paths — but it seems there are no paths. The going itself is a path” [p. 71]. The tough magic is the unmarked path); “Here There Be Dragons” (title from a sentence on a map; so too with an effective story: cross at your own peril). [ Part Three: Wild Child, Feral Child, with essays on “The Gift of Tongues” (surveys animal children through history — wolfmen, etc. “All children are born feral. They are taught to be human” [p. 87]); “An Inlet for Apple Pie” (the essay’s title is from the Opies: “A child who does not feel wonder is but an inlet for apple pie” [p. 90]. Yolen’s book is a celebration of Ortega y Gasset’s proposition that “To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand” [p. 89]).]

[On ugliness, deformity, defilement, female sexuality, and displacement. “The monster’s defilement is doubly onerous: not only has sexuality polluted his existence, but in his hideousness he lives alone; he has a face only a mother could love — and, alas, he has no mother” (p. 353).]

[On sibling rivalry.]

[These male versions of the Donkeyskin stories relate well to male Cinderella stories as well as Beauty and the Beast narratives. Ziolkowski has four goals: 1) to explore the earliest European version, a medieval Latin poem entitled Asinarius ; 2) to consider the narrative as that of a musically talented man in an animal’s body in traveling mimes; 3) to study links between the story and Eastern (Afroasiatic) folklore; and 4) then to identify changes that the Brothers Grimm wrought as they adapted the story as “Das Eselein” (“The Little Ass”). Although there is superficial kinship between Grimm and Apuleius’s Golden Ass and Lucian’s Lucius or the Ass , the similarities are not extensive. Grimms’ central figure is not a picaresque character whose metamorphosis results from his lust or curiosity but a well-mannered prince who is born an ass and does not get free of that form until after marrying a princess, when his father-in-law snatches and burns the hide he doffs by night. The links are rather with a Medieval Latin poem Asinarius (“The Donkey Man” or “Donkey Book”), a poem which may have links with medieval travelling mimes, where one finds musicians dressed as donkeys, and which may derive in turn from a Sanskrit analogue. Ziolkowski reconsiders the controversies surrounding Theodor Benfey’s theories of Sanskrit origins for Western tales, using Linda Dégh’s Conduit Theory. He concludes by discussing the changes that the Brothers Grimm wrought as they adapted stories for inclusion in their Kinder- und Hausmarchen . An appendix includes Ziolkowski’s translations of Asinarius and Das Eselein , along with a translation of the Sanskrit analogue, all stories in which the male is the beast aided in his translation by a beauty.]

[Chapters include Fairy Tale Discourse: Towards a Social History of the Genre (pp. 1-12); Setting Standards for Civilization through Fairy Tales: Charles Perrault and his Associates (pp. 13-44); Who’s Afraid of the Brothers Grimm? Socialization and Politicization through Fairy Tales (pp. 45-70); Hans Christian Andersen and the Discourse of the Dominated (pp. 71-96); Inverting and Subverting the World with Hope: The Fairy Tales of George MacDonald, Oscar Wilde, and L. Frank Baum (pp. 97-133); The Fight over Fairy-Tale Discourse: Family, Friction, and Socialization in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany (pp. 134-69); The Liberating Potential of the Fantastic in Contemporary Fairy Tales for Children (pp. 170-94). Zipes considers several Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast narratives in his discussion of standards for civilization, offering sociological readings rather than psychological and essentialist interpretations (pp. 31-41).]

[Sixteen items, including Feminist Fairy Tales for Young (and Old) Readers , stories by Jeanne Desy, Tanith Lee, Jay Williams, Angela Carter, Judith Viorst, Jane Yolen, Joanna Russ, and Jack Zipes; Feminist Fairy Tales for Old (and Young) Readers , stories by Meghan B. Collins, Anne Sexton, Olga Broumas, Sara Henderson Hay, Tanith Lee, Michael de Larrabeiti, and Margaret Atwood; and essays on Feminist Literary Criticism by Marcia Lieberman, Gilbert & Gubar, Karen Rowe, and Jack Zipes.]

[Includes chapters on Dreams of a Better Bourgeois Life: The Psycho-Social Origins of the Tales; Exploring Historical Paths; From Odysseus to Tom Thumb and Other Cunning Heroes: Speculations about the Entrepreneurial Spirit; The German Obsession with Fairy Tales; Henri Pourrat and the Tradition of Perrault and the Brothers Grimm; Recent Psychoanalytical Approaches with Some Questions about the Abuse of Children; Semantic Shifts of Power in Folk and Fairy Tales (especially on Cinderella); Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale.]

[Zipes argues that although scholarship concerning “Rumpelstiltskin” tales has been primarily devoted to the villain and the naming motif (a problem compounded by its classification in Arne-Thompson as tale type 500, “The Name of the Helper”), what is of primary importance is the treatment of the woman’s role as spinner. Drawing on the work of Gerburg Treusch-Dieter, Zipes sketches the importance of spinning throughout history. The province of women, spinning belonged to the domestic sphere, and the spindle was symbolic of a woman’s industry, creative capacity, and agency. Yet during the Industrial Revolution, the woman’s role as spinner was increasingly appropriated by men who, through the factory system, either worked alongside women as spinners or supervised and managed their work. Furthermore, during this period, attitudes toward female spinners were also becoming increasingly negative. Zipes argues that this change in roles and attitudes may be observed through the evolution of “Rumpelstiltskin.” He notes that in Mlle L’Héritier’s “Ricdin-Ricdon” (1705), an early “Rumpelstiltskin” variant, the role of woman as spinner is valued and female ingenuity celebrated. However, in the Grimm version of “Rumpelstiltskin” (1857), the female protagonist, who in earlier spinner tales would have used her abilities as a spinner to win a husband, is now dependent on a man to spin for her. Zipes goes on to demonstrate the effect of these social changes on other tales (namely the Grimms’ “The Lazy Spinner” and “The Three Spinners”) and by a comparison of “Rumpenstünzchen” (1810), an early oral variant of “Rumpelstiltskin” recorded by Jacob Grimm, and the 1857 version of the tale, illustrates the addition of domineering male figures and a male savior who shape the female protagonist’s fate. Zipes ultimately critiques “male bias” (p. 44) in the scholarship surrounding “Rumpelstiltskin” and its tendency to focus on a male figure, pointing out that the tale is not about a male “helper,” but the oppression of women and their loss of agency. He also uses his analysis to challenge established modes of folk and fairy tale categorization, which focus on formal attributes of the tales at the expense of their social and historical contexts.] [Annotation by Andrea H. Everett]

[“Introduction,” pp. ix-xviii, discusses problems contemporary audiences have with older stories that reflect the concerns of a former day. The Holocaust and advent of the atomic bomb have changed the concerns of post-1945 audiences. The “crossover tales” being written from the 1950s to the present attempt to move beyond the Utopian tales of former times to post World War II “imaginative realms where we can conceive of possibilities for humanitarian change in the twenty-first century” (p. xii). Includes Catherine Storr, Little Polly Riding Hood (1955); Richard Schickel, The Gentle Knight (1954); Ernest Hemingway, The Faithful Bull (1951); Jack Sendak, The Signal (1966); Tanith Lee, Princess Dahli (1972); Patricia Coombs, Molly Mullet (1975); John Gardner, Gudgekin the Thistle Girl (1976); Lloyd Alexander, The Cat-King’s Daughter (1977); Jane Yolen, The White Seal Maid (1977); Richard Kennedy, The Dark Princess (1978); Jay Williams, Petronella (1978); Judy Corbalis, The Wrestling Princess (1986); Antonia Barber, The Enchanter’s Daughter (1987); A. S. Byatt, The Story of the Eldest Princess (1991); Dov Mir, The Outspoken Princess (1992).]

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The slippery genius of the Cinderella story

Cinderella has endured for hundreds of years. That’s because it gives us a way to talk about families.

by Constance Grady

The fairy tale of Cinderella has a rep for being a bit retrograde. It’s a story about a girl whose passivity and meekness in the face of abuse is rewarded by a fairy godmother who hands her over to a man, goes the usual criticism. It’s the story of a girl who can’t even make it to a party without magical help.

But like all fairy tales, Cinderella doesn’t actually have an inherent value system or morality. It’s an obliging story that’s been told and retold so often that it doesn’t really have a stable moral anymore. Instead, it can have any moral.

In medieval Europe, Cinderella tended to triumph because she was clever and lucky. In the 19th century, the brothers Grimm, who recorded the version of the story that Americans are most likely to think of as canonical, centered Cinderella’s triumph on her kindness and her beauty. And as the story was told and retold, Cinderella moved back and forth between being the active author of her own fate and a passive, voiceless doll.

Over the past few decades, Cinderella has been repackaged over and over again as a feminist icon. Just this year, Rebecca Solnit, the feminist writer who coined the term “mansplaining,” published a children’s picture book titled Cinderella Liberator . It ends with Cinderella opening her own bakery and forming a lasting platonic friendship with the prince, who gives up his title to become a farmer.

The morality of Cinderella may not be consistent over the centuries, but the basic plot is: In every Cinderella, the heroine is a daughter who is betrayed and abused by her mother or stepmother, and she triumphs at the end because of her innate virtue. The virtue in question changes depending on who is telling the story.

That’s because what gives Cinderella its power isn’t its morality. It’s the way the story thinks about families.

Cinderella parses fundamental family questions. How do we combine two families? And how do family structures survive when children stop being children?

Early Cinderellas were tricksters

Early Cinderellas tended to be wily trickster characters who schemed their way to the top, says Jack Zipes, a professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota and one of the foremost scholars of fairy tales in the world. Zipes traces Cinderella back to ancient Egypt and China, but he says one of the earliest European versions of the story came from Giambattista Basile. Basile called his 1634 version “ The Cat Cinderella ” (“Cenerentola” in Italian, but it translates to Cat Cinderella in English), because his Cinderella was clever like a cat.

Cat Cinderella murders her first wicked stepmother after she gets tired of the abuse, and she repeatedly pokes her father with a pin until he agrees to marry her governess next. The governess eventually proves to be just as wicked as the first stepmother, and the rest of the story continues along familiar lines — except that Cinderella triumphs because she is smart enough to outwit her wicked stepsisters and scam her way to the ball, and because she is lucky enough to have fairy allies. Basile’s moral at the end, “You must be mad to oppose the stars,” nods to the importance of fate in his story.

But the central conflict here is the same one that we know and recognize in modern Cinderellas: Cat Cinderella’s mother is dead, and her father has married a new wife. (Two new wives, actually.) What happens to their family now?

In Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy’s 1697 version, “ Finette Cendron ,” our heroine is pointedly the cleverest of three daughters. Her sisters are named Fleur d’Amour (Flower of Love) and Belle-de-Nuit (Beauty of the Night), but the Cinderella figure is named Fine-Oreille (Shrewd Listener) and nicknamed Finette, or Little Clever Girl. Finette’s adventures unspool in a story that reads like a Cinderella/Hansel and Gretel hybrid, and when she eventually triumphs over her wicked mother, her wicked sisters, and the passel of ogres who want to eat her, it’s through her exceptional cleverness.

Finette is also exceptionally kind, but the narrator of “Finette Cendron” hastens to assure us that being virtuous doesn’t make her special. Instead, Finette’s kindness is important because being kind to bad people makes those bad people hilariously angry. “Do favors for the undeserving until they weep,” the narrator advises the reader in the rhyming moral lesson. “Each benefit inflicts a wound most deep, cutting the haughty bosom to the core.” Finette, in other words, was the original troll of the pre-internet world.

Finette’s story isn’t quite the same as the Cinderella we’re most familiar with now. Her wicked mother is her biological mother, her beautiful sisters are her biological sisters, and the mother is targeting all three of the daughters because she believes the family doesn’t have enough food to feed both parents and children. But the bones of the conflict between them is one that we see repeated over and over in fairy tales, including the Cinderella we know best today: What happens when a daughter reaches puberty? How does a mother handle a daughter who might be a sexual threat?

But although the conflict in these early Cinderellas is familiar and universal, the virtues that allow Cinderella her victory aren’t. In these stories, Cinderella may or may not be kind, and she’s usually at least pretty enough to clean up well in a ball gown, but that’s not why she wins in the end. She wins because she’s smart, and because she’s lucky. The moral system in these stories is one of chaos and happenstance, where the best thing you can do is forge powerful allies and be as clever as possible.

Charles Perrault’s 1697 “ Cinderella ” is the one that seems to have influenced the Grimms’ version most strongly — and it was the first to make Cinderella’s fateful shoe a glass slipper. In Perrault’s version, Cinderella is a little more passive than Cat Cinderella or Finette were (at no point does she murder anyone or poke anyone with a pin), but she actively collaborates with her fairy godmother to come up with her scheme, and she takes pleasure in deceiving her wicked stepsisters. In the end, the narrator informs us that Cinderella is victorious because of her beauty and her kindness — and because of her courage, common sense, and good fortune in having a fairy godmother.

It was with all those literary versions of Cinderella already recorded, and plenty of folklore variations floating through the oral tradition, that Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published their Cinderella in 1812 in their first edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales . And then revised their stories to publish them again in 1819. And then again and again, revising more and more, until by 1864 they’d published 17 editions of Grimm’s Fairy Tales .

Over time, the old trickster Cinderella loses her voice

Scholars don’t agree on why, exactly, the Grimms kept revising their stories. There’s a general consensus on the Grimms’ tendency to turn wicked mothers into wicked stepmothers, as they did over time for “Snow White” and “Hansel and Gretel”: It seems to be a gentle bowdlerization, an attempt to keep the biological mothers in their stories models of virtue. For the Grimms, says Zipes, mothers were meant to be “nice.” (Cinderella’s wicked stepmother, though, is always a stepmother for the Grimms, and the story goes through few structural changes from one edition to the next.)

But the Grimms continued to fiddle with their stories in other ways as they republished, and the possible explanations for some of those changes are controversial.

Zipes argues strongly that most of the changes the Grimms made to their stories as they revised were in the pursuit of accuracy to the oral tradition, and that they were just editing as they found more versions of Cinderella floating through folklore. But Ruth Bottigheimer, a folklorist at Stony Brook University SUNY, has a different idea.

Bottigheimer argues that the Grimms were necessarily influenced by their position as bourgeois 19th-century Germans when they wrote down the fairy tales they had collected, and that consciously or unconsciously, they edited the stories to correspond to their own moral values. “Who tells the tales?” she asks in her 1997 book Grimms’ Bad Girls and Bold Boys . “That is, whose voice do we actually hear?”

In Grimms’ Bad Girls and Bold Boys , Bottigheimer tracks the speech across the Grimms’ editions of “Cinderella,” looking at which characters get to talk out loud (direct speech) and which characters have their sentences summarized instead (indirect speech). What she finds is a consistent pattern: “Direct speech has tended to be transferred from women to men,” she writes, “and from good to bad girls and women.” In other words, as the Grimms continue to edit the story, the “good” women — Cinderella and her dead mother — start talking less and less. The men and the “bad” women start talking more.

In the Grimms’ 1812 version of the story, Cinderella has 12 lines of direct speech, her stepmother four, and the prince four. But by 1857, Cinderella is down to six lines of direct speech. Where she protests her poor treatment in 1812, she obeys unquestioningly in 1864; where she lies to her stepmother in 1812, she is silent in 1864. Her stepmother, meanwhile, is up to 12 lines of direct speech in 1864, and the prince to 11.

Bottigheimer argues that for the Grimms, silence is both gendered and moral: Good women illustrate their virtue through their silence and passivity. Bad women show their badness by talking, which is unwomanly and hence wicked. Men, who are strong and active, should speak at will.

The Grimms may or may not have erased Cinderella’s direct speech with the intention of making her more passive, but it certainly does seem to have vanished over time. And as the Grimms’ version of the story spread, the trickster Cinderella from 200 years earlier vanished entirely. Now Cinderella wins because of her moral virtue, and part of the way we can see she’s virtuous is that she is silent.

But while the Grimms may have altered Cinderella’s personality over time, they kept her family problems fundamentally stable — and they’re the same problems that show up in the Disney version, too. Cinderella’s mother is dead, and her father’s new wife is targeting Cinderella. How can the family survive?

Cinderella endures because it helps us think about our families

Zipes has a theory about why Cinderella has lasted as long as it has, no matter how often it’s edited or rewritten to express new moral lessons. He thinks it’s helping us think about a fundamental problem.

“In our brains, there’s a place that we retain stories or narratives or things that are important to the survival of the human species,” he says, “and these stories enable us to deal with conflicts that come up time and time again that have never been resolved.”

In Cinderella, Zipes says, the conflict is: “How do you mix families?”

Since the 17th century, Cinderella stories have consistently focused on a heroine whose mother has died, and whose father’s new wife favors her biological children over her. Zipes calls the story type “The Revenge and Reward of Neglected Daughters”: The heroine loses status after the death of her mother, but in the end she rises up more powerful than she ever was before. Traditionally, the thing that makes Cinderella win — her beauty or her kindness or her cleverness — is the thing that the narrator points to as important for us to emulate in the moral of the story. But that attribute can be practically anything, and it won’t change the shape of the family story.

Zipes argues that this family story has always been enormously important. The question of how to mix families successfully was a major problem in pre-20th-century Europe, when it was common for women to die in childbirth — and it also became a giant question in a different way starting in the 20th century, he argues, because “there are so many divorces that the Cinderella story is something that we rely on in our brains.”

Cinderella is also a family story on a more universal level. It’s one of a group of fairy tales — “Look at Snow White!” says Zipes — in which the heroine reaches sexual maturity and promptly becomes the object of intense sexual jealousy from her mother figure. The father figure in these tales is either utterly ineffectual in the face of the mother’s abuse or, in a story like the Perrault fairy tale Donkeyskin — a story in the Cinderella vein, which sees its heroine fleeing from her father after he proposes marriage to her — becomes a sexual threat to his daughter.

Depending on how you look at that repeated fairy tale narrative of jealousy and danger, Cinderella is either the classic Freudian family fable or it’s the story of women competing for male attention under a patriarchal system where they know they’ll need that attention to survive. Either way, it is an extremely durable story. We’ve been telling it over and over again for centuries.

We’ve told it with a multiplicity of Cinderellas: with a silent Cinderella and the scheming Cat Cinderella and tricky Finette, with Disney’s pretty and passive Cinderella, with Solnit’s kind and rebellious Cinderella Liberator. They’re all there, and they’re all waiting to talk to us about our families. That’s what Cinderella is for.

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By Anne Sexton

‘Cinderella’ by Anne Sexton tells the story of Cinderella while also engaging with the theme of feminism and focusing on a very different ending.

Anne Sexton

Nationality: American

Poem Analyzed by Emma Baldwin

B.A. English (Minor: Creative Writing), B.F.A. Fine Art, B.A. Art Histories

‘ Cinderella ‘ appeared in Sexton’s fifth volume, Transformations, in which she focused, almost entirely, on the retelling of children’s stories. Sexton is remembered, along with Sylvia Plath, for the creation of the confessional style of poetry. These poems are usually in the first person and convey the personal sentiments of the poet. Although this poem is somewhat different than the work for which Sexton is best known, careful readers can still find the dark, emotional, and feminist elements that make Sexton one of the best poets of the 20th century.  

Explore Cinderella

• 3 Structure and Form
• 4 Literary Devices
• 5 Detailed Analysis
• 6 Similar Poetry

Throughout the poem, Sexton takes the story of Cinderella and changes it in order to present a narrative that is, in the end, critical of itself. The story follows the young Cinderella as she suffers at the hands of her stepmother and stepsisters. A dove brings her everything she asks for though and it is eventually that dove that helps her attend the ball. There is a fairly gruesome section of the poem towards the end when the stepsisters mutilate themselves in order to try to marry the prince. Then finally, the prince finds Cinderella. Their “happily ever after” is much more disturbing than one might expect, with Sexton suggesting that this idealized ending leaves much to be desired.  

Within ‘Cinderella,’ Sexton engages with themes of women and feminism, as well as good/evil. These are not the only themes, but they are some of the most prominent. Women’s lives are often at the forefront of Sexton’s work, whether they are other women or herself. This poem is no different. It tells the story of Cinderella with a few twists and turns that make it even more obvious that the scenario playing out is not going to turn out well for the women involved. The “good/evil” dynamic in the poem is incredibly strong. From the start, the same balance of good and evil exists but Sexton pushes it further, suggesting that the father and the prince have darker, more violent, and even cruel attributes.

Structure and Form

‘ Cinderella’ by Anne Sexton is a ten-stanza poem that is separated into uneven sets of lines. These stanzas range in length from five lines up to twenty-seven lines. As was often the case with Anne Sexton’s poetry, she chose to write this piece in free verse . This means that the poem does not make use of a specific rhyme scheme or metrical pattern. But, it does not mean that the poem is entirely devoid of either. Readers will be able to find lines that contain half or even full rhymes as well as discernible sections of rhythm .  

Literary Devices

Sexton makes use of several literary devices in ‘Cinderella’. These include but are not limited to examples of alliteration , enjambment , allusions , and similes . The latter is recognizable through the use of “like” or “as” to make a comparison . For example, Sexton’s speaker describes the “two daughters” as “pretty enough / but with hearts like blackjacks”. She also says Cinderella “slept on the sooty hearth each night / and walked around looking like Al Jolson”.  

The latter example also contains an allusion to Al Jolson. This is a surprising and nowadays controversial comparison that suggests Cinderella’s face is as “black” as Al Jolson’s “blackface”. Jolson is mainly remembered today as the “king of blackface”. Additionally, readers should recognize that the entire poem is one allusion to the original fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm.  

Enjambment is a formal device that is used to control the speed at which a reader moves through a poem and the use of end punctuation. There are several good examples in this poem, as enjambment is used most frequently in free verse poetry. For instance, the transition between lines two and three of the first stanza and lines thirteen and fourteen of stanza five.  

Alliteration is another important literary device. It is a kind of repetition that is concerned with the use and reuse of the same consonant sound at the beginning of multiple words. For example, “Denmark,” “Dior” and “diapers” in stanza two and “marriage market” in stanza six.  

Detailed Analysis

Stanzas one and two.

You always read about it: (…) from diapers to Dior. That story.

In the first stanza of ‘Cinderella,’ the speaker begins by citing two of four “rags to riches” examples. These stories are common enough that the speaker can think of four on a whim. She knows the reader is probably aware of more as well. The first is about a “plumber with twelve children” and the second is about a “nursemaid”. One goes from “toilets to riches” and the other from “diapers to Dior”. These changes happen on a turn of fate, some chance meeting, or a fantastic change of luck that alters someone’s life for, presumably, the better.  

Readers should take note of the use of repetition in these lines as the poet outlines “That story” she’s so familiar with. Both stanzas end with this two-word line suggesting that there are many more “that stories” to come.  

Stanzas Three and Four  

Or a milkman who serves the wealthy, (…) From mops to Bonwit Teller. That story.

There are two more examples of these “rags to riches” stories in the next two stanzas. Here, the speaker talks about a “milkman who serves the wealthy” and a “charwoman”. The latter gets rich off of the insurance when “the bus…cracks up” and the former “goes into real estate”. The charwoman leaves her mops behind and goes shopping at “Bonwit Teller,” a luxury department store founded in 1895 in New York, now defunct.  

There are numerous good examples of enjambment in these stanzas, allowing the miniature stories to come across as narratives within a larger poem. It’s quite easy to read and understand them as well. This is due to Sexton’s choice of language and her use of diction and syntax .  

Stanza Five  

Lines 1- 11  .

Once the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed and she said to her daughter Cinderella: (…) and walked around looking like Al Jolson.

It’s not until the fifth stanza of ‘Cinderella’ that the poet mentions the name “Cinderella”. She transitions into the story of a “the wife of a rich man…on her deathbed”. This is immediately recognizable as the start of Cinderella’s troubles. She tells her daughter that she should “Be devout. Be good” and Heaven will smile down upon her. Unfortunately, this good advice did not work out the way that the mother and Cinderella would’ve liked it to.  

Her story unfolds in the next lines. The rich man remarries and two “daughters” come into the family. They’re beautiful, but their “hearts” are “like blackjacks”. This simile suggests that these young women are far from kind, lining up with what readers likely knew about the fairy tale. Cinderella turns into their maid and ends up constantly covered in soot as if she’s wearing blackface “like Al Jolson”.  

Lines 12-19  

Her father brought presents home from town, jewels and gowns for the other women (…) The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.

The story runs on into the next lines and the father brings Cinderella a “twig of a tree”. This initially seems like a heartless gift, especially compared to the jewels and gowns that the other women received. But, the twig grew into a tree, and “a white dove” sat there. Whenever Cinderella wished for anything, the dove supplied it for her. In the Grimm version of the story, Cinderella asks for the twig, the first to touch her father’s hat on the way home. Whether or not the father knew what would happen with the twig is up for debate, but since Sexton changed this plot point it seems like that she intended for the gift to be just as cruel as it seems.  

In the final line of this stanza, the narrator addresses the readers asking everyone to pay attention to the “bird,” because he is “important”.

Stanza Six  

Next came the ball, as you all know. It was a marriage market. The prince was looking for a wife. All but Cinderella were preparing (…) That’s the way with stepmothers.

The sixth stanza of ‘Cinderella’ is not quite as long as the fifth, but it does cover a lot of ground. The diction in these lines is quite colloquial , the speaker tells the story as if everyone already knows it and she’s trying not to make a big deal about it. The ball is next, something that Sexton calls a “marriage market”. This clever metaphor is a great way of pointing out how the inherent sexism in such an event.  

As readers likely know, the stepmother refuses to let Cinderella go to the ball. She tells her if she’s able to pick up an entire bowl full of lentils that “you shall go”. This seems like an impossible task, but the white dove and “all his friends” come to help her. They picked up the “lentils in a jiffy,” another example of Sexton’s choice to use colloquial diction .  

Unfortunately, yet again, Cinderella’s stepmother refuses to let her attend the ball. But, what else did the reader expect? She has no clothes and “cannot dance”. Once more, the speaker acknowledges this as just the way things are.  

Stanza Seven  

Cinderella went to the tree at the grave and cried forth like a gospel singer: Mama! Mama! My turtledove, (…) and danced with no other the whole day.

Once more cinderella turns to the white dove for help. She directly asks, through song, that the dove help her. She calls the dove “Mama,” since the tree grew from her mother’s grave. It is important to take note of the fact that in these lines Sexton compares Cinderella to a gospel singer. This is an unexpected comparison but it is also the second time that she has brought up imagery associated primarily with Black culture (the first unfortunately being Al Jolson who imitated African American singing).   Gospel is traditionally sung by African American artists and it is likely that Sexton was trying to draw a comparison between Cinderella’s oppression and the historic oppression of African Americans.  

Unsurprisingly, the bird gives her what she needs, and she manages to go to the ball and dance with the prince “the whole day”. No one there recognized her, the speaker says, without her “cinder face”.  

Stanza Eight  

As nightfall came she thought she’d better get home. The prince walked her home (…) He went to their house and the two sisters were delighted because they had lovely feet.

Cinderella chooses to leave the ball, as she does in the version written by the Brothers Grimm. She disappears into a pigeon house, which the prince then chooses to knock down. This is slightly different than the original, but similar enough to be recognizable. The change does make the prince seem more violent and even dangerous. On the third day of the ball, the prince manages to trap Cinderella’s shoe on his stairway, just like in the original.  

Lines 14-27  

The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on (…) But he gave it one last try. This time Cinderella fit into the shoe like a love letter into its envelope.

The second half of this stanza is comprised of the prince trying the slipper on the two stepsisters. The eldest’s feet were too big, but this didn’t present her with a serious problem. She chose to cut her toe off and stick it in any way. Just as the rest of the poem has been relayed, these events are described as if they are commonplace.  

Both sisters tried something similar, but both were also found out due to the blood that was pouring from their feet. He “feels like a shoe salesman,” the speaker says. This humorous line in the midst of this gore is quite pleasing to come upon. But it also suggests that this male character is completely blind to the suffering women go through. Finally, Cinderella’s foot fits perfectly into the shoe.  

Stanza Nine  

At the wedding ceremony (..) like soup spoons.

The ninth stanza is only five lines long and describes the wedding and the fact that the “white dove” pecked the sister’s eyes out. The “hollow spots” were “like soup spoons”. This line presents readers with an example of a simile and the use of alliteration.  

Stanza Ten  

Cinderella and the prince (…) Regular Bobbsey Twins. That story.

The story concludes less up-liftingly than the Disney version does. Cinderella and the prince lived together “happily ever after / like two dolls in a museum case”. They were what they were supposed to be. They wore their “pasted on” smiles and never changed, for all of eternity. In these lines, Sexton is clearly passing judgment on the idealization of fairy tales . They’re completely at odds with the real world and the “real” life that they, or at least, Cinderella could’ve had. In the second to last line, Sexton alludes to the “Bobbsey Twins,” characters from a children’s book. Their writer froze them at six and twelve years old so that they never again aged.  

The line “That story” ends the poem, as it did three of the four opening stanzas. “That story” is not one that you want to take part in, she’s saying. The idealized marriage and life are not what it’s cracked up to be. It’s a warning to all readers, suggesting that they too will end up frozen unhappily in time.  

Similar Poetry

Readers who enjoyed this poem should also look into some of Sexton’s other best-known works. These include ‘Courage’ , ‘ The Truth the Dead Know’ , and ‘ Red Roses’ . Some other very related poems are Carol Ann Duffy ’s ‘Mrs. Midas, ’ ‘ Anne Hathaway’,   and ‘ Havisham’ . Each of these, as well as all the other poems in her collection The World’s Wife, are either retellings of classic stories or of real-life historical events. Each is tilted to focus on the overlooked woman and present a feminist narrative.  

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Baldwin, Emma. "Cinderella by Anne Sexton". Poem Analysis , https://poemanalysis.com/anne-sexton/cinderella-poem/ . Accessed 21 August 2024.

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“Cinderella” the Story by The Grimm Brothers Essay

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Despite all the magic of fairy tales, these stories also offer serious issues to consider. Grimm Brothers’ “Cinderella” is generally accepted as a story about love and the victory of good over evil. However, some critics argue that there is much more to discover in the fairy tale’s content. For instance, Bruno Bettelheim’s analysis is based on the relationships between siblings as depicted in “Cinderella.” While some of the scholar’s ideas seem irrelevant, his major argument is quite reasonable. Therefore, the Grimm Brothers’ “Cinderella” may be viewed as a fairy tale about the unfortunate experiences and aspirations of sibling rivalry that exists between Cinderella and her stepsisters.

The main argument in Bettelheim’s article is that “Cinderella” is “a story about the agonies and hopes which form the essential content of sibling rivalry” (236). Also, the author remarks that the theme of the degraded heroine winning over her abusing stepsisters is prominent in the story (Bettelheim 236). Indeed, it is possible to conclude that the Grimm Brothers’ tale touches upon these topics. At the beginning of the narration, it is noted that Cinderella’s sisters were “black and ugly at heart,” whereas the girl was “always pious and good” (Grimm and Grimm 1).

Thus, it is evident that the girl who has always behaved well and never disobeyed cannot accept the fact that her new sisters treat her unfairly. Their referring to Cinderella as a “stupid creature” and “nothing but a kitchenmaid” makes the girl devastated (Grimm and Grimm 1). Thus, there is the indication of the agony of sibling rivalry, as Bettelheim calls it (236). The unfairly bad attitude towards the poor girl makes her want to prove that she does not deserve such treatment.

The wish to be considered equal induces Cinderella to do everything possible to prove her stepmother and stepsisters wrong. According to Bettelheim, this is the desire of “winning out her siblings” that are constantly abusing her (236). While the girl is forced to do “heavy work from morning to night,” she cannot have a proper rest even when she goes to sleep (Grimm and Grimm 1). In the evenings, being exhausted from her errands, Cinderella has no bed to sleep in and is obliged to “rest on the hearth among the cinders” (Grimm and Grimm 2). As Bettelheim remarks, having to sleep among the ashes is another symbol of sibling rivalry (237).

In particular, being someone’s ash-sibling is regarded as being suppressed and degraded (Bettelheim 237). Grimm Brothers’ referral to stepsiblings rather than siblings are, according to Bettelheim, a “device” to explain and make acceptable the hostility which one wishes would not appear between siblings (237). The difference between Cinderella’s story and other similar cases of sibling rivalry is that usually, parents do not prefer one child to another no matter what relationship exists between them.

Thus, another topic that rises from sibling atrocity is parental rejection. Cinderella cannot understand why she is constantly forced to do hard chores as well as complete some bizarre tasks made up by her stepmother.

Throwing “a dishful of lentils in the ashes” and making the poor girl pick them within an hour is not something a loving and caring parent would do (Grimm and Grimm 2). Thus, there appears a problem closely associated with sibling rivalry: the feeling of being jealous and the need to be accepted by one’s parents (Bettelheim 238). Moreover, Bettelheim argues, such a difficulty may develop even in a single child who has no brothers or sisters but does not feel support from parents (Bettelheim 238). Thus, Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale depicts the girl’s wish to be acknowledged and accepted by her stepmother and, more importantly, her father.

The aspiration to become appreciated for all the hard work she is doing makes Cinderella feel less friendly towards her stepsisters. The girl seeks friendship and support, which she eventually finds in the bird that comes to the tree growing on her mother’s grave (Grimm and Grimm 2). Other birds are Cinderella’s helpers in the tasks set by her stepmother (Grimm and Grimm 3). Thus, the girl is not left entirely without support, but she utterly lacks encouragement from her closest people. Bettelheim notes that the themes raised in “Cinderella” find their reflection in young readers’ thoughts.

For instance, one may justify sibling rivalry by comparing oneself to Cinderella and thinking that he or she, too, is being treated unjustly and can, therefore, feel hatred against a brother or sister (Bettelheim 240). Thus, the agonies are turned into hope, and the child believes that good things will happen to him or her as well.

Having analyzed the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale and Bettelheim’s article, it seems reasonable to agree with the latter that “Cinderella” is a story of sibling rivalry and the sad experiences related to it. Children all over the world put themselves in Cinderella’s shoes and use the tale to justify their ill intentions against their siblings. The narration also touches upon the crucial aspect of parental love and support against hatred and discouragement, which find reflection in the relationships between siblings.

Works Cited

Bettelheim, Bruno. “Cinderella.” The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales , edited by Bruno Bettelheim, Vintage Books, 2010, pp. 236-277.

Grimm, Jacob Ludwig, and Wilhelm Carl Grimm. Cinderella . 1812. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2021, June 13). "Cinderella" the Story by The Grimm Brothers. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cinderella-the-story-by-the-grimm-brothers/

""Cinderella" the Story by The Grimm Brothers." IvyPanda , 13 June 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/cinderella-the-story-by-the-grimm-brothers/.

IvyPanda . (2021) '"Cinderella" the Story by The Grimm Brothers'. 13 June.

IvyPanda . 2021. ""Cinderella" the Story by The Grimm Brothers." June 13, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cinderella-the-story-by-the-grimm-brothers/.

1. IvyPanda . ""Cinderella" the Story by The Grimm Brothers." June 13, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cinderella-the-story-by-the-grimm-brothers/.

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IvyPanda . ""Cinderella" the Story by The Grimm Brothers." June 13, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cinderella-the-story-by-the-grimm-brothers/.

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Chinese Cinderella

Adeline yen mah.

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Adeline Yen Mah's Chinese Cinderella . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Chinese Cinderella: Introduction

Chinese cinderella: plot summary, chinese cinderella: detailed summary & analysis, chinese cinderella: themes, chinese cinderella: quotes, chinese cinderella: characters, chinese cinderella: symbols, chinese cinderella: theme wheel, brief biography of adeline yen mah.

Historical Context of Chinese Cinderella

Other books related to chinese cinderella.

• Full Title: Chinese Cinderella: The true story of an unwanted daughter
• When Written: 1996
• Where Written: Anaheim, California
• When Published: September 7, 1999
• Literary Period: contemporary
• Genre: memoir
• Setting: Tianjin, Shanghai, and Hong Kong
• Climax: Adeline is called home to speak with Father, where he reveals that she has won an international playwriting competition.
• Antagonist: Niang
• Point of View: first-person

Extra Credit for Chinese Cinderella

The Abridged Version. Chinese Cinderella is an abridged version of the author’s 1997 memoir, Falling Leaves , covering only her childhood and aimed at young adults.

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How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide

Published on January 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 14, 2023.

Literary analysis means closely studying a text, interpreting its meanings, and exploring why the author made certain choices. It can be applied to novels, short stories, plays, poems, or any other form of literary writing.

A literary analysis essay is not a rhetorical analysis , nor is it just a summary of the plot or a book review. Instead, it is a type of argumentative essay where you need to analyze elements such as the language, perspective, and structure of the text, and explain how the author uses literary devices to create effects and convey ideas.

Before beginning a literary analysis essay, it’s essential to carefully read the text and c ome up with a thesis statement to keep your essay focused. As you write, follow the standard structure of an academic essay :

• An introduction that tells the reader what your essay will focus on.
• A main body, divided into paragraphs , that builds an argument using evidence from the text.
• A conclusion that clearly states the main point that you have shown with your analysis.

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Table of contents

Step 1: reading the text and identifying literary devices, step 2: coming up with a thesis, step 3: writing a title and introduction, step 4: writing the body of the essay, step 5: writing a conclusion, other interesting articles.

The first step is to carefully read the text(s) and take initial notes. As you read, pay attention to the things that are most intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in the writing—these are things you can dig into in your analysis.

Your goal in literary analysis is not simply to explain the events described in the text, but to analyze the writing itself and discuss how the text works on a deeper level. Primarily, you’re looking out for literary devices —textual elements that writers use to convey meaning and create effects. If you’re comparing and contrasting multiple texts, you can also look for connections between different texts.

To get started with your analysis, there are several key areas that you can focus on. As you analyze each aspect of the text, try to think about how they all relate to each other. You can use highlights or notes to keep track of important passages and quotes.

Language choices

Consider what style of language the author uses. Are the sentences short and simple or more complex and poetic?

What word choices stand out as interesting or unusual? Are words used figuratively to mean something other than their literal definition? Figurative language includes things like metaphor (e.g. “her eyes were oceans”) and simile (e.g. “her eyes were like oceans”).

Also keep an eye out for imagery in the text—recurring images that create a certain atmosphere or symbolize something important. Remember that language is used in literary texts to say more than it means on the surface.

Narrative voice

Ask yourself:

• Who is telling the story?
• How are they telling it?

Is it a first-person narrator (“I”) who is personally involved in the story, or a third-person narrator who tells us about the characters from a distance?

Consider the narrator’s perspective . Is the narrator omniscient (where they know everything about all the characters and events), or do they only have partial knowledge? Are they an unreliable narrator who we are not supposed to take at face value? Authors often hint that their narrator might be giving us a distorted or dishonest version of events.

The tone of the text is also worth considering. Is the story intended to be comic, tragic, or something else? Are usually serious topics treated as funny, or vice versa ? Is the story realistic or fantastical (or somewhere in between)?

Consider how the text is structured, and how the structure relates to the story being told.

• Novels are often divided into chapters and parts.
• Poems are divided into lines, stanzas, and sometime cantos.
• Plays are divided into scenes and acts.

Think about why the author chose to divide the different parts of the text in the way they did.

There are also less formal structural elements to take into account. Does the story unfold in chronological order, or does it jump back and forth in time? Does it begin in medias res —in the middle of the action? Does the plot advance towards a clearly defined climax?

With poetry, consider how the rhyme and meter shape your understanding of the text and your impression of the tone. Try reading the poem aloud to get a sense of this.

In a play, you might consider how relationships between characters are built up through different scenes, and how the setting relates to the action. Watch out for  dramatic irony , where the audience knows some detail that the characters don’t, creating a double meaning in their words, thoughts, or actions.

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Your thesis in a literary analysis essay is the point you want to make about the text. It’s the core argument that gives your essay direction and prevents it from just being a collection of random observations about a text.

If you’re given a prompt for your essay, your thesis must answer or relate to the prompt. For example:

Essay question example

Is Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” a religious parable?

Your thesis statement should be an answer to this question—not a simple yes or no, but a statement of why this is or isn’t the case:

Thesis statement example

Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” is not a religious parable, but a story about bureaucratic alienation.

Sometimes you’ll be given freedom to choose your own topic; in this case, you’ll have to come up with an original thesis. Consider what stood out to you in the text; ask yourself questions about the elements that interested you, and consider how you might answer them.

Your thesis should be something arguable—that is, something that you think is true about the text, but which is not a simple matter of fact. It must be complex enough to develop through evidence and arguments across the course of your essay.

Say you’re analyzing the novel Frankenstein . You could start by asking yourself:

Your initial answer might be a surface-level description:

The character Frankenstein is portrayed negatively in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

However, this statement is too simple to be an interesting thesis. After reading the text and analyzing its narrative voice and structure, you can develop the answer into a more nuanced and arguable thesis statement:

Mary Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

Remember that you can revise your thesis statement throughout the writing process , so it doesn’t need to be perfectly formulated at this stage. The aim is to keep you focused as you analyze the text.

Finding textual evidence

To support your thesis statement, your essay will build an argument using textual evidence —specific parts of the text that demonstrate your point. This evidence is quoted and analyzed throughout your essay to explain your argument to the reader.

It can be useful to comb through the text in search of relevant quotations before you start writing. You might not end up using everything you find, and you may have to return to the text for more evidence as you write, but collecting textual evidence from the beginning will help you to structure your arguments and assess whether they’re convincing.

To start your literary analysis paper, you’ll need two things: a good title, and an introduction.

Your title should clearly indicate what your analysis will focus on. It usually contains the name of the author and text(s) you’re analyzing. Keep it as concise and engaging as possible.

A common approach to the title is to use a relevant quote from the text, followed by a colon and then the rest of your title.

If you struggle to come up with a good title at first, don’t worry—this will be easier once you’ve begun writing the essay and have a better sense of your arguments.

“Fearful symmetry” : The violence of creation in William Blake’s “The Tyger”

The introduction

The essay introduction provides a quick overview of where your argument is going. It should include your thesis statement and a summary of the essay’s structure.

A typical structure for an introduction is to begin with a general statement about the text and author, using this to lead into your thesis statement. You might refer to a commonly held idea about the text and show how your thesis will contradict it, or zoom in on a particular device you intend to focus on.

Then you can end with a brief indication of what’s coming up in the main body of the essay. This is called signposting. It will be more elaborate in longer essays, but in a short five-paragraph essay structure, it shouldn’t be more than one sentence.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

Some students prefer to write the introduction later in the process, and it’s not a bad idea. After all, you’ll have a clearer idea of the overall shape of your arguments once you’ve begun writing them!

If you do write the introduction first, you should still return to it later to make sure it lines up with what you ended up writing, and edit as necessary.

The body of your essay is everything between the introduction and conclusion. It contains your arguments and the textual evidence that supports them.

Paragraph structure

A typical structure for a high school literary analysis essay consists of five paragraphs : the three paragraphs of the body, plus the introduction and conclusion.

Each paragraph in the main body should focus on one topic. In the five-paragraph model, try to divide your argument into three main areas of analysis, all linked to your thesis. Don’t try to include everything you can think of to say about the text—only analysis that drives your argument.

In longer essays, the same principle applies on a broader scale. For example, you might have two or three sections in your main body, each with multiple paragraphs. Within these sections, you still want to begin new paragraphs at logical moments—a turn in the argument or the introduction of a new idea.

Robert’s first encounter with Gil-Martin suggests something of his sinister power. Robert feels “a sort of invisible power that drew me towards him.” He identifies the moment of their meeting as “the beginning of a series of adventures which has puzzled myself, and will puzzle the world when I am no more in it” (p. 89). Gil-Martin’s “invisible power” seems to be at work even at this distance from the moment described; before continuing the story, Robert feels compelled to anticipate at length what readers will make of his narrative after his approaching death. With this interjection, Hogg emphasizes the fatal influence Gil-Martin exercises from his first appearance.

Topic sentences

To keep your points focused, it’s important to use a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph.

A good topic sentence allows a reader to see at a glance what the paragraph is about. It can introduce a new line of argument and connect or contrast it with the previous paragraph. Transition words like “however” or “moreover” are useful for creating smooth transitions:

… The story’s focus, therefore, is not upon the divine revelation that may be waiting beyond the door, but upon the mundane process of aging undergone by the man as he waits.

Nevertheless, the “radiance” that appears to stream from the door is typically treated as religious symbolism.

This topic sentence signals that the paragraph will address the question of religious symbolism, while the linking word “nevertheless” points out a contrast with the previous paragraph’s conclusion.

Using textual evidence

A key part of literary analysis is backing up your arguments with relevant evidence from the text. This involves introducing quotes from the text and explaining their significance to your point.

It’s important to contextualize quotes and explain why you’re using them; they should be properly introduced and analyzed, not treated as self-explanatory:

It isn’t always necessary to use a quote. Quoting is useful when you’re discussing the author’s language, but sometimes you’ll have to refer to plot points or structural elements that can’t be captured in a short quote.

In these cases, it’s more appropriate to paraphrase or summarize parts of the text—that is, to describe the relevant part in your own words:

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The conclusion of your analysis shouldn’t introduce any new quotations or arguments. Instead, it’s about wrapping up the essay. Here, you summarize your key points and try to emphasize their significance to the reader.

A good way to approach this is to briefly summarize your key arguments, and then stress the conclusion they’ve led you to, highlighting the new perspective your thesis provides on the text as a whole:

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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By tracing the depiction of Frankenstein through the novel’s three volumes, I have demonstrated how the narrative structure shifts our perception of the character. While the Frankenstein of the first volume is depicted as having innocent intentions, the second and third volumes—first in the creature’s accusatory voice, and then in his own voice—increasingly undermine him, causing him to appear alternately ridiculous and vindictive. Far from the one-dimensional villain he is often taken to be, the character of Frankenstein is compelling because of the dynamic narrative frame in which he is placed. In this frame, Frankenstein’s narrative self-presentation responds to the images of him we see from others’ perspectives. This conclusion sheds new light on the novel, foregrounding Shelley’s unique layering of narrative perspectives and its importance for the depiction of character.

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Caulfield, J. (2023, August 14). How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide. Scribbr. Retrieved August 21, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/literary-analysis/

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