Cinderella Makes the Rounds: Stories for Children?

Frankly, I haven't much to say about this book, a collection of Cinderella stories from around the world. I am trained to read works of literature, and what this book offers, for the most part, are oral tales transcribed. In other words, most of these stories are not "literary tales." I ought to like this book because I spend much of my time telling tales I have heard but not read. In fact, one of the stories I tell is a version of "Cinderella" called "Molly Mop-Top," and it resembles the Grandmother's version of the story in "Cinderella in Tuscany." I heard it told in North Carolina in 1985. But I deviate from the task at hand which is to respond to Neil Philip's THE CINDERELLA STORY. My response is to the ingredients of the various stories, and what I like about these is their uncompromising bluntness, even their brutality. As Cinderella makes her various rounds from continent to continent and country to country, one thing remains constant: the folk versions do not conform to what we think of as children's stories.

The first story in the book is the prototype for all modern versions of the tale written for children. It is Perrault's "Cendrillon, or, the Little Glass Slipper." This is the easiest version for me to respond to because it is a literary version. Perrault's wit and irony reflect his position in the French court of the late seventeenth century. Clearly, he has fun with female vanity, evident for example in "two-layered head-dresses" and "beauty spots." Even Cinderella comes in for this male smirk; she is vain. For one thing she never gets bored hearing the Prince speak "sweet nothings" all night long. In addition, Perrault winks at his fellow courtiers with the vulgarism, "Cinderbutt," and he implies that the ball is part of a sexual ritual. In true sexist fashion, he tells his reader that what a female requires is not intelligence, wit, cunning, or education, but rather "charm." I can appreciate the fun in this story, but I do not, in the final analysis, like it. I regularly avoid it when I teach the fairy tale.

Despite the fact that most of the other stories in the book disarm my critical faculties, I like them. I like them because they reveal just how basic this story is. Versions here deal openly with such things as child abuse, as it manifests itself in incest, in abandonment, and in violent treatment of the child, in cannibalism, in relationships between humans and animals, in greed, envy, care, and selfish desire. Females and males fit into the Cinderella plot, and this ought to remind us that the folk tale is not, necessarily at least, sexist in the way Perrault's tale is. Not all stories end happily. In short, despite all the fantastic goings on in these stories--a child born with a snake about its neck, a cow with small golden slippers near her heart, a girl who turns into a golden turtle, and so on--the world they depict is starkly realistic. Frankly, I can't imagine telling many, maybe even any, of these stories, but they do tell me a lot about the folk mind. And the folk mind is, after all, the mind of us all.

Take one story as an example: the Brazilian story, "Dona Labismina." The mother's wish for a child, even if this child is a snake, is extreme, but it does capture the intensity of the woman's desire to give birth. What might be more surprising is the story's turn of events: the mother does indeed give birth to a snake (this brings to mind E.B. White's STUART LITTLE in which Mrs. Little gives birth to a mouse). I take it that the child with the snake about its neck is shorthand for twins or for the familiar doubling in folk tales, that is, a good mother is balanced by a bad mother (usually called a step-mother, sometimes called a witch), or for the child's presexual protection from violation. The snake remains with the child until "she became a young woman." In other words, with maturity the female child loses the direct protection of the snake. The snake's name, Labismina (cf. labia minora and labia majora--tissue related to the vulva), seems to suggest a sexual metaphor. Maria, the other sister, confronts danger after her mother dies. The danger is incest; her father chooses her as his next bride. For protection and advice, Maria turns to Labismina. Labismina advises her sister to ask for three dresses, each one related to a different element--one to earth, one to water, and one to air. The King provides the dresses, but Marian flees on a ship provided by her sister. The second half of the story now ensues, and the prince replaces the father. The dresses and Labismina's assistance ensure Maria of the Princes's love. The Prince, significantly, throws a jewel (perhaps related to the fourth element, fire) into Mria's lap, and it is this jewel that identifies her as the girl he loves. Whereas Maria's early sexuality was serpentine, her mature sexuality is gemlike. This might explain why she forgets her sister, the snake. Perhaps, as in Grimm's "The Frog Prince," Maria moves from premature, immature, and unpleasant sexualty, to healthy and mature sexuality. This story might reflect the way primitive people help their children make the transition from childhood to maturity.

These stories seems so sure of themselves, as if the snake, the jewel, the dresses and so on posed no difficulty of interpretation. These are not literary stories which might draw on arcane material; they are simple chronicles of growing up. However, becasue they are oral tales they exhibit various states of completion or integration. Take for example, the Irish story, "The Bracket Bull." This story has four distinct sections, each of which might make a story on its own. We have the story of the Bull and the stepmother's jealousy; the story of the Bracket Bull's death; the story of the three giants; and the story of the rescue of the Princess from the fiery dragon. This story appears to be about male power and the importance of fathers, but the four parts suggests to me a story that has been patched together--what Philip calls somewhere a "portmanteau" story.

So I like some of these stories for their frankness, their quirkiness, their open use of violence, their colloquial and matter-of-fact tone. What I find less successful is the attempt to capture the oral situation. This is most clear in "Cinderella in Tuscany" where the family storytelling appears in dialogue form. True, this does instruct us in the way oral stories change with the person who tells them, but reading of this dramatic and dynamic situation is no substitute for experiencing it.

The Cinderella Story serves the purpose of informing us of just how widespread a story like "Cinderella" is. Its appearance in so many cultures might testify to the power of cultural imperialism, or it might indicate just how similar people across the globe really are. We might also notice that some of these versions were collected not that long ago, and I note that the Tuscany versions represented in the penultimate story in the book clearly have children as part of their audience. Is it significant that these versions contain little or no violence?