march2015

MARCH 2015 -

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MAGAZINE -

According to Disney: After her widowed father remarries and then dies, Cinderella is left at the

mercy of her wicked stepmother and two ugly stepsisters. They force her to do manual labour and

wear rags, but she’s so sweet, kind, and beautiful that even wild animals love her and help her

out.

When the prince throws a ball, Cinderella’s fairy godmother appears and creates a dress, coach,

and footmen for her, so she can go to the party. The prince falls in love with her, but the magic

ends at midnight – so she has to run away, leaving behind only her glass slipper. The prince trav-

els the country looking for the girl who fits the shoe, but her stepsisters sabotage her by smashing

According to Disney: Disney’s adaptation of Rapunzel, Tangled, is very recent, and not very traditional. Rapunzel gets a lot more

agency than most other Disney princesses, and her prince isn’t a prince at all. But the elements of a sanitised Rapunzel story are there:

a beautiful princess is kept captive by a witch, who uses the girl’s long hair to climb in and out of a tower prison, and it’s only when

she meets a man that she gets to escape.

But originally: According to the Grimms, the reason the wicked witch gets to make off with baby Rapunzel is that her dad stole herbs

from the witch’s garden to meet his wife’s cravings, and when he got caught, he agreed to hand over his first-born. Rapunzel gets

stuck in the tower, letting down her hair for the witch, but when a passing prince hears her singing, he decides to pay Rapunzel a visit

himself. He visits her, secretly, several times, and the witch only finds out because Rapunzel gets pregnant, and innocently asks why

her belly’s getting so big.

In a rage, the witch cuts off the girl’s hair, uses it to lure the prince back into the tower, then chucks him off the top, letting him fall

into a thorn bush that plucks out his eyes. Eventually, though, there is a happy ending where the couple get back together, and Rapun-

zel’s tears heal the prince’s eyes.

Disturbed enough yet? There’s more. In some of the Grimms’ stories, there’s an unpleasant seam of anti-Semitism. For example, in

one story, the hero tortures a Jewish man by making him dance on thorns until he’s torn and bleeding, as punishment for some imag-

ined sins. When the man cries for help, the judge sides with his torturer, and the Jew is hanged as a thief. The racism, combined with

German patriotism, might explain why the Nazis saw the Grimm fairy tales as such a great match for their propaganda: in films aimed

at kids, Little Red Riding Hood gets rescued by a man in an SS uniform, while Puss in Boots morphs into a kind of Hitler figure at the

end. Scary stuff.

That’s jumping a long way into the future, though. Back in the 1800s, after the first edition of the collection was published, the

Grimms were criticised for writing stories that were unsuitable for kids. In response, they re-edited some of the stories to soften their

rough edges, and later editions were split: ‘Large’ editions contained all the stories, with academic annotations by the brothers, while

‘Small’ editions contained selected re-edited stories deemed suitable for kids. Those edits created a wider audience for the Grimms’

books, and probably ensured that their stories endured.

it. Happily, she’s still got the

other one, so she gets to live hap-

pily ever after, too.

But originally: Well, originally,

the Cinderella story appeared in

a volume of Charles Perrault’s

fairy tales. But in the Grimms’

more German version, Cinderella

(or “Aschenputtel”, Ash-fool) has

two beautiful step-sisters – they

just happen to be utterly horrible.

There’s no fairy godmother, just

white doves sent to help Cinder-

ella by her dead mother, and the

prince actually holds three balls

– at midnight on the third night,

the prince lays a tar trap for Cin-

derella, which is where she loses

her shoe.

When her sisters get their chance

to try on the missing shoe, they

each cut off different parts of

their feet in order to fit into the

tiny slipper, but the blood drip-

ping from their shoes gives them

away. The prince eventually finds

his girl, and at their wedding, the

magic doves reappear to peck out

the evil sisters’ eyes.

Cinderella