Cinderella
"Cinderella" is another of those fairy tales that we all know or at least think we do. It's also a story that's been told in countless countries in countless ways.
I read a few versions this week. The one I was most familiar with was written by Charles Perrault around 1697. His story includes the evil stepmother, the fairy godmother, the pumpkin and animals being turned into the coach and servants, the glass slippers. The father is alive, just not present in the story. These fairy tale fathers and their lack of any kind of backbone is astonishing. How he could let his only child, the daughter of his dead wife, be abused in his own household, given the most menial chores, be lower than a servant?
I also read a Grimm's version, which is entirely different, not the story I knew. Cinderellas' mother dies and on her deathbed she promises,
"Dear child, remain pious and good, and then our dear God will...