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The Darker Cinderella:

Murder-Mutilation, Cannibalism and Incest in Some Cinderella Variants
BY APRIL ROSE FALE

Twenty-first century children, when asked to tell the story of Cinderella, talk about a good, lovely girl whose mother died when she was young. Her father is eventually remarried, but to an evil stepmother and two ugly stepsisters, who mistreat her when her father also dies. Aided by a fairy godmother and some animal friends, she manages to go to a royal ball, where the prince falls in love with her. However, the magic wears off at the stroke of midnight and, in her rush to flee, she leaves behind a shoe. The prince looks for the owner of the lone shoe, finds Cinderella, marries her and they live happily ever after. This plot follows that of Charles Perraults Cendrillon, the version catapulted to fame by Walt Disneys animated film, Cinderella. This version, however, is only one of the hundreds of Cinderella-type tales that abound all over the world. In her 1892 Cinderella, Marian Roalfe Cox compiled 345 variants of the worldfamous story of Cinderella and classified them into three main categories. The Cinderella category, to which Perraults version adheres, involves an ill-treated heroine who is rescued from her plight by means of a shoe. The Catskin category features a heroine fleeing from an unnatural father and finding happiness in a foreign land. The Cap oRushes variants involve a heroine outcast in the style of William Shakespeares King Lear (Mulhern 3). Later works by Anna Birgitta Rooth, Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson produced more defined classifications using over 700 samples that made

Fale 2 Coxs categories seem like very general groupings (Dundes). With each new discovery and analytical study, what the general population considers a Cinderella story seems further and further away from its predecessors. Apart from some violence in well-known variants, such as Giambattista Basiles La Gatta Cenenterolla and the Grimms Aschenputtel, there are also Cinderella-type tales, drawn from older and less known sources, which are starkly different from the currently popular version of the tale. These versions contain dark and violent elements the average reader would not expect to find: murder and mutilation, cannibalism and incest. The utmost act of evil in the Disney version of events would be Cinderellas mistreatment, her stepmother forbidding her from going to the ball and her imprisonment in a locked room when the kings messenger comes to find the owner of the glass slipper. In certain accounts, however, the Cinderella figure is not always the clear-cut protagonist and evil deeds take on more sinister forms, including murders and mutilations. In Giambattista Basiles La Gatta Cenenterolla, for example, Zezolla eliminates her stepmother at the behest of the governess by shutting the lid of a chest on her stepmothers neck, breaking it instantly (Dundes 6). In a Tibetan tale, the Cinderella figure kills her own mother by severing her breasts, and later orders the burning and decapitation of the ogress who takes her place as queen (Schlepp 131). In an Icelandic version, the evil stepmother is an ogress who cuts off her ogress daughters toes and heels so she could fit her foot in the shoe. The prince puts the impostor on his ship and begins to sail for his homeland. Then, two birds alight on the ship and sing a little rhyme: At the prow sits Hewn-heel, Full is her shoe with blood;

Fale 3 At home sits Mjadveig In her golden bower. Turn back, kings son! Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm tell a story that is strikingly similar to the Icelandic version. In Aschenputtel, the stepmother orders one daughter o cut off her toe and the other to cut off her heel so their feet can fit into the shoe (Dundes 28). In each case, when the prince is about to take away a daughter to his palace, two birds fly close to his horse and sing a little rhyme: Look, look! Theres blood in the shoe! The shoes too small. The right brides still at home. A particularly interesting Cinderella reference is historical and refers to Queen Fredegund, a once-living example of the wicked step-mother who, driven by jealousy, plots to crush her daughters neck with a treasure chest. It is said that the true numbers of the murders and tortures ordered by the Queen may never be known (Dundes 12). Less common than murder-mutilation, but definitely a theme in many Cinderella-type tales, is cannibalism. In the same Tibetan tale mentioned above, when the girl reports to the ogresses that she had killed her own mother on their orders, the ogresses promptly ate the meat and gnawed the bones. The tale goes on to say that the girl was given tasteless gruel instead of being allowed to partake in the meal, as if this was a regrettable thing (Schlepp 125). In two Icelandic accounts, where the ogress daughters foot is mutilated, the prince finds out that he has been deceived, kills the impostor and makes porridge out of her (Carpenter 240). In another version, the prince

Fale 4 salts down the ogress daughter and places her flesh in twelve barrels (Carpenter 245). In both cases, the prince ends up feeding the ogress mother with her daughters remains. Incestuous intention is also an ingredient in many Cinderella variants. In fact, the Catskin category of the Cinderella tales features the protagonist girl fleeing from an unnatural father, usually one who seeks from her a romantic relationship or marriage. Among Coxs collection is The Princess Who Would Not Marry Her Father (Mulhern 6). There is also Anne Darrochs The King Who Wished to Marry His Daughter, which is in J. F. Campbells Popular Tales of the West Highlands. In the tale, a king loses his wife to an illness and he refuses to remarry anyone who does not fit in his wifes old dresses. His own daughter grows up, tries on the dresses and finds that she fits in them perfectly, which leads the king to demand her hand in marriage (Campbell 219). The Story of Hanchi, a Cinderella-type tale heard in Kittur, a village in North Karnatak, India, tells of a brother who falls in love with his sister upon seeing her gold, flowing hair and asks for her hand in marriage (Dundes 260). It takes only a light rippling of the surface to discover that the tale of Cinderella is its own field of study. With all the elements of violence and social taboo in many variants, it must be through a fortunate process of natural selection that Cinderella did not emerge to the public as a tale of horror. For many twenty-first century children, Walt Disneys depiction of Cinderella may be the only version they will ever know in their entire lives. They will never know of the Native American Sootface or the Icelandic Mjadveig. For most of them, Cinderella will always be the kind, lovely girl who is wrongfully ill-treated but, with the help of a fairy godmother, ends up in the arms of the dashing prince. The darker versions may never find their way into a four-year-old girls

Fale 5 bedtime stories. And perhaps it is best that way: to leave the fairy tale to the children and let the older four-year-olds confront the darker, more sinister Cinderella.

Fale 6 Works Cited

Campbell, John F. Popular Tales of the West Highlands: Orally Collected, Volume I. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1860. Print. Carpenter, William H. The Icelandic Story of Cinderella. The Folk-Lore Record 3.2 (1880): 237-249. 16 September 2010 < http://www.jstor.org/stable/1252396 >. Dundes, Alan. Cinderella, A Casebook. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. Print. Mulhern, Chieko. Analysis of Cinderella Motifs, Italian and Japanese. Asian Folklore Studies 44.1 (1985): 1-37. 16 September 2010 < http://www.jstor.org/stable/1177981>. Schlepp, Wayne. Cinderella in Tibet. Asian Folklore Studies 61.1 (2002): 123-137. 16 September 2010 < http://www.jstor.org/stable/1178680>.