Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: This episode discusses sensitive topics. Please listen with care. My
Speaker 2: name is Miranda Hawkins. Welcome to the Deep Dark Woods,
Speaker 2: a podcast about sex, violence and fairy tales. Today's story
Speaker 2: is Cinderella.
Speaker 3: When evening came, Cinderella wanted to leave, and the prince
Speaker 3: tried to escort her, but she ran away from him
Speaker 3: so quickly that he could not follow her. The prince, however,
Speaker 3: had set a trap. He had the entire stairway smeared
Speaker 3: with pitch. When she ran down the stairs, her left
Speaker 3: slipper stuck in the pitch. The prince picked it up.
Speaker 3: It was small and dainty and of pure cold. The
Speaker 3: next morning he went with it to the man and
Speaker 3: said to him, no one shall be my wife except
Speaker 3: for the one whose foot fits in this golden shoe.
Speaker 3: The two sisters were happy to hear this, for they
Speaker 3: had pretty feet. With their mother standing by, the older
Speaker 3: one took the shoe into her bedroom to try it on.
Speaker 3: She could not get her big toe into it, for
Speaker 3: the shoe was too small for her. Then her mother
Speaker 3: gave her a knife and said, cut off your toe.
Speaker 3: When you are queen, we will no longer have to
Speaker 3: go on foot. The girl cut off her toe, forced
Speaker 3: her foot into the shoe, swallowed the pane, and went
Speaker 3: out to the prince. He took her on his horse
Speaker 3: as his bride, and rode away with her. However, they
Speaker 3: had to ride past the grave, and there on the
Speaker 3: hazel tree sat two pigeons crying out.
Speaker 4: Rickity gool, rickety goo, there's blood in the shoe. The
Speaker 4: shoe is too tight. The bride is not right.
Speaker 3: Then he looked at her foot and saw how the
Speaker 3: blood was running from it. He turned his horse around
Speaker 3: and took the false bride home again, saying that she
Speaker 3: was not the right one, and that the other sister
Speaker 3: should try on the shoe. She went into her bedroom
Speaker 3: and got her toes in all right, but her heel
Speaker 3: was too large. Then her mother gave her a knife
Speaker 3: and said, cut a piece off your heel. When you
Speaker 3: are queen, we will no longer have to go on foot.
Speaker 3: The girl cut a piece off her heel, forced her
Speaker 3: foot into the shoe, swallowed the pain, and went out
Speaker 3: to the prince. He took her on his horse as
Speaker 3: his bride, and rode away with her. When they passed
Speaker 3: the hazel tree, the two pigeons were sitting in it,
Speaker 3: and they cried out.
Speaker 4: Rickety goo, rickity goo. There's blood in the shoe. The
Speaker 4: shoe is too tight.
Speaker 1: The bride is not right.
Speaker 3: He looked down at her foot and saw how the
Speaker 3: blood was running out of her shoe, and how it
Speaker 3: had stained her white stockings all red. Then he turned
Speaker 3: his horse around and took the false bride home. Again.
Speaker 3: This is not the right one one either, he said.
Speaker 3: Don't you have another daughter? No, said the man, there's
Speaker 3: only a deformed little Cinderella from my first wife. But
Speaker 3: she cannot possibly be the bride. The prince told him
Speaker 3: to send her to him, but the mother answered, oh no,
Speaker 3: she is much too dirty.
Speaker 1: She cannot be seen.
Speaker 3: But the prince insisted on it, and they had to
Speaker 3: call Cinderella.
Speaker 1: She first washed her.
Speaker 3: Hands and face clean, and then went and bowed down
Speaker 3: before the prince, who gave her the golden shoe. She
Speaker 3: sat down on a stool, pulled her foot out of
Speaker 3: the heavy wooden shoe, and put it into the slipper,
Speaker 3: and it fit her perfectly. When she stood up, the
Speaker 3: prince looked into her face and recognized the beautiful girl
Speaker 3: who had danced with him. He cried out she is
Speaker 3: my true bride. The stepmother and the two sisters were
Speaker 3: horrified and turned pale with anger. The prince, however, took
Speaker 3: Cinderella to his horse and rode away with her. As
Speaker 3: they passed the hazel tree, the two white pigeons cried out.
Speaker 4: Rickedy goo, rickedy goo. No blood in the shoe.
Speaker 1: The shoe's not too tight. The bride is right.
Speaker 3: After they cried this out, they both flew down and
Speaker 3: lit on Cinderella's shoulders, one on the right, the other
Speaker 3: on the left, and they remained sitting there. When the
Speaker 3: wedding with the prince was held. The two false sisters came,
Speaker 3: wanting to gain favor with Cinderella and to share her
Speaker 3: good fortune. The oldest sister walked on their right side
Speaker 3: and the younger on their left side, and the pigeons
Speaker 3: pecked out one eye from each of them. Afterwards, as
Speaker 3: they came out of the church, the older one was
Speaker 3: on the left side and the younger one on the
Speaker 3: right side, and then the pigeons pecked out the other
Speaker 3: eye from each of them. And thus for their wickedness
Speaker 3: and falsehood, they were punished with blue blindness as long
Speaker 3: as they lived.
Speaker 1: Once upon a time.
Speaker 2: That's how a lot of fairy tales start. Once upon
Speaker 2: a time, there was a prince, or once upon a
Speaker 2: time and a land far away. You could argue it's
Speaker 2: almost the perfect setup for a magical tale.
Speaker 1: Before we get back to.
Speaker 2: The story you just heard, there's another once upon a time.
Speaker 2: I'd like to tell you one you might not be
Speaker 2: as familiar with. Once upon a Time. There are two
Speaker 2: brothers who lived during the midst of revolution and wars.
Speaker 2: Worried their Germanic culture would be lost, they begin collecting
Speaker 2: and documenting the oral tales of their people. Their first
Speaker 2: collected works were published in two parts, the first in
Speaker 2: eighteen twelve and the second in eighteen fifteen. Their books
Speaker 2: became wildly popular, second only to the Bible.
Speaker 1: The collection of.
Speaker 2: Tales would pull the brothers and their siblings out from
Speaker 2: the throes of poverty. Their desire to preserve their heritage
Speaker 2: would launch them into generations of fame. This is the
Speaker 2: legacy of the Brothers grim. My name is Miranda Hawkins.
Speaker 2: I've been a journalist and producer for.
Speaker 1: Almost a decade.
Speaker 2: I've worked on shows like Monster, the Zodiac, Killer, Camppell
Speaker 2: and Awaki and American Shadows. But long before I started
Speaker 2: writing my own stories and working on others, I read.
Speaker 2: I read everything in. My favorite stories were fairy tales.
Speaker 2: Like many people, the stories of Cinderella and snow White
Speaker 2: that I grew up with were the Disney versions. They
Speaker 2: had clear, definitive lines of good versus evil, and always
Speaker 2: had a happy ending. Everything came packaged with a nice,
Speaker 2: tidy beough. I remember the first time I ran across
Speaker 2: an original brother's grim tale. It was Cinderella. It was
Speaker 2: much darker than i'd anticipated. Instead of the wicked stepsisters
Speaker 2: trying to shove their foot into the glass slipper and
Speaker 2: it's simply not working, they cut off parts of their feet.
Speaker 1: I was instantly hooked.
Speaker 2: I love all things dark and twisted, and here is
Speaker 2: a story I grew.
Speaker 1: Up on, but so much grittier.
Speaker 2: These stories didn't quite have the happily ever after ending
Speaker 2: you'd expect. Next thing I knew. I found myself falling
Speaker 2: down the rabbit hole and reading all of the original tales,
Speaker 2: And the more I read, the more I wanted to know.
Speaker 2: Why were these stories told and re told? Why have
Speaker 2: they endured for centuries? Where did they come from? And
Speaker 2: how have they evolved to reflex the society's changes. I
Speaker 2: believe that stories are the heart of life. They teach
Speaker 2: us about ourselves in the world. So what can we
Speaker 2: learn by taking a deeper dive into some of the
Speaker 2: most well known tales that have lasted generations. Well, let's
Speaker 2: find out. To find Cinderella stories and many folk tales,
Speaker 2: we head to the Arn Thompson Uther Index. It's a
Speaker 2: system folkloreists use to group and examine tales from different cultures.
Speaker 2: Since there are so many stories with similar traits, the
Speaker 2: system categorizes everything by plot. There are three men to
Speaker 2: think for the ATU Index, Auntie Arn of Finland, Stif
Speaker 2: Thompson of the US, and Hans Jorg Uther of Germany.
Speaker 2: Arn began collecting and documenting all Scandinavian folklore and published
Speaker 2: his first findings in nineteen ten. The Thompson translated the
Speaker 2: index to English and added tales from his corner of
Speaker 2: the world. Finally, Uther updated and added another two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty categories and subcategories. Uther also shifted titles to
Speaker 2: make the index less sexist. For example, the tale of
Speaker 2: a sister saving her seven brothers after they'd been transformed
Speaker 2: into swans or another type of bird changed from the
Speaker 2: brothers who returned into birds two the maiden who rescues
Speaker 2: her brothers. Similar to the Dewey decimal system used in libraries,
Speaker 2: the ATU index has its own system to track down stories.
Speaker 2: Starting with ATU followed by a number and a title.
Speaker 2: The ATU index breaks collected tales into seven main types,
Speaker 2: animal tales, tales of magic, religious tales, realistic tales, anecdotes
Speaker 2: and jokes, formula tales, and my favorite category name tales
Speaker 2: of the stupid ogre giant devil. From those seven major
Speaker 2: tale types, it breaks down into smaller tale types. For example,
Speaker 2: today's story is found under tales of magic subtale type
Speaker 2: the persecuted heroine. And as a quick side note, many
Speaker 2: of the stories in the ATU index originate in Europe
Speaker 2: and the western part of Asia. Folklorets across the world
Speaker 2: are trying to fix us to include stories missing from Africa, Asia,
Speaker 2: and South America. One article I've found says that even
Speaker 2: the well known Arabian night stories might not be included either.
Speaker 2: As much as these stories are categorized, studied, and told
Speaker 2: and retold.
Speaker 1: Let's first ask what makes a folk tale of folk tale?
Speaker 2: I think One of my favorite aspects of making the
Speaker 2: show was learning about folklorists, people who study fairy tales
Speaker 2: and folklore for a living. Throughout the series will be
Speaker 2: hearing from different people in the field. Every person will
Speaker 2: have their own perspective, as there's no definitive takeaway on
Speaker 2: stories themselves. Doctor Lynn McNeil is a professor of folklore
Speaker 2: at Utah State University in the English Apartment. She has
Speaker 2: also made appearances on national television to discuss folklore and
Speaker 2: is the author of several books. And she said, what
Speaker 2: is important to know about folklore is this fundamental truth.
Speaker 5: It's meant to change over time. It's meant to change
Speaker 5: to stay relevant.
Speaker 2: Here's how she explained folk tales to me. Folklore is
Speaker 2: all cultural expression that is shared through word of mouth.
Speaker 2: So folk tales are the stories that are learned and
Speaker 2: shared and generated collectively from person to person through time
Speaker 2: and plays. Folk tales adapt to the environment they are
Speaker 2: being told in, so that means we can use these
Speaker 2: tales as a barometer for cultural difference, cultural similarity, and cultural.
Speaker 5: Change, invoking a sense that we're talking back to something,
Speaker 5: we're responding to something prior. And of course, scholars of
Speaker 5: literature and film would say the same thing. Any new
Speaker 5: contemporary film is responding to its predecessors, to the films
Speaker 5: that came before it, But in fairy tales, we're doing
Speaker 5: it in this really specific and direct way, because it's
Speaker 5: a genre that by definition adapts and evolves.
Speaker 2: So what about Cinderella or, as she was originally called
Speaker 2: in The Brother's grim Tail, Ashen Poodle, which roughly translates
Speaker 2: to ashen dirty girl. What you heard at the beginning
Speaker 2: of the episode was the second half of the original
Speaker 2: Brother's grim Tail, and in their version, the father was
Speaker 2: still alive and stood by while the stepmother in steps
Speaker 2: sisters treated Cinderella as they did before.
Speaker 1: One of his.
Speaker 2: Travels, the father asked his three daughters what gifts they
Speaker 2: would like. The two stepsisters of Corus wanted clothes and jewelry,
Speaker 2: but Cinderella one of the first twig that brushed her
Speaker 2: father's hat on his way home. Cinderella then plants a
Speaker 2: twig at her mother's grave. The twig is watered by
Speaker 2: Cinderella's tears and ends up growing into a beautiful tree.
Speaker 2: When she is not allowed to go to the ball,
Speaker 2: Cinderella goes to the tree to ask for a gown
Speaker 2: and shoes so she can make it to the dance.
Speaker 2: Each time the birds granted her wish, she dashed off
Speaker 2: to dance with the prince, and each time the prince
Speaker 2: was smitten and dance with only Cinderella. Every night Cinderella returned,
Speaker 2: she would give back the gown and slippers. That was
Speaker 2: until the third night, when she lost one of her shoes.
Speaker 2: It wasn't glass, though, it was gold. And now we've
Speaker 2: come full circle to the brother's grim story of Cinderella.
Speaker 2: As for where the story originated from, that's another question entirely.
Speaker 5: Did it begin in China? Did it begin in Egypt
Speaker 5: and move as humans moved and shared their stories through
Speaker 5: time and space all the way up until now. Or
Speaker 5: are those story elements a persecuted young woman, a mechanism
Speaker 5: of recognition, a deceased mother helping her child from the afterlife.
Speaker 5: Are those story elements so basic to human experience that
Speaker 5: that story, or something resembling it cropped up in multiple places,
Speaker 5: all at once or at different times, and grew from
Speaker 5: there And the truth is we don't know.
Speaker 2: Initially, my research showed that the first recorded version of
Speaker 2: Cinderella dates back more than two thousand years. It was
Speaker 2: documented by Herodotus. He was a Greek historian and geographer
Speaker 2: who is best known for writing histories of the Greco
Speaker 2: Persian Wars. But like many of us, Herodotus couldn't resist
Speaker 2: a good tale. He was even accused of making up
Speaker 2: stories for entertainment. In the Herodotus version, Cinderella was named Rodopus,
Speaker 2: which means either rosy cheeked or rosy eyed. To be clear,
Speaker 2: rosy idrifers having sparkly eyes, not bloodshot. Rhodopus is then
Speaker 2: again mentioned at a later date by the Greek geographer
Speaker 2: Strabo of Amasia. He is the one who is credited
Speaker 2: with first writing the tale down Rhodapus was kidnapped from
Speaker 2: her home in Greece and sold as a slave in Egypt. There,
Speaker 2: the other slave girls made fun of her because she
Speaker 2: looked different.
Speaker 1: Where the other.
Speaker 2: Women had bronze skin and straight, dark hair, Rhodipus was
Speaker 2: light skinned with golden curls. At night, she would go
Speaker 2: to the banks of the river and dance for her
Speaker 2: animal friends. On one such night, an old man spotted
Speaker 2: her dancing and thought she deserved a beautiful pair of shoes,
Speaker 2: so he had gold sandals made and delivered to Rhodopus.
Speaker 2: Not long after, a falcon steals one of her sandals,
Speaker 2: flies across a Mediterranean and drops it in the lap
Speaker 2: of an Egyptian pharaoh. The pharaoh takes us as a
Speaker 2: sign from the gods and crosses land and sea to
Speaker 2: find the owner.
Speaker 1: Of the shoe.
Speaker 2: When the pharaoh finally finds Rhodapus, they get married. There's
Speaker 2: a theory that Rhodapus is based on a true story,
Speaker 2: but in that story, Rhodopus became a well regarded courtesan
Speaker 2: who tricked a man to fall in love with her
Speaker 2: and buy her freedom.
Speaker 1: When he did, she left.
Speaker 2: Him, and his sister was furious, and supposedly that man's
Speaker 2: sister was none other than the famous Sapphos. However, when
Speaker 2: historians sit with the timeline of the story of Rhodapus
Speaker 2: and this courtisan, it doesn't quite add up. Another early
Speaker 2: version of Cinderella is about a young Chinese girl named
Speaker 2: Yashen that was written sometime between six hundred and nine
Speaker 2: hundred eighty during the Tong dynasty. Yashen's father was a
Speaker 2: cave chief who had two wives, and each wife bore
Speaker 2: him a daughter, not long after Yashin was born, her
Speaker 2: mother died, and soon after so did her father, the chief.
Speaker 2: The stepmother was insanely jealous of her new stepdaughter's beauty
Speaker 2: and kindness. Because of this, the stepmother would give Yashin
Speaker 2: the most difficult chores. Yashin's only friend was a golden fish.
Speaker 2: The stepmother ended up finding out about the fish and
Speaker 2: killing it.
Speaker 1: Yashin was devastated, but an old.
Speaker 2: Man told Yashin to keep the bones and make wishes
Speaker 2: with them when she most needed it. When the Spring
Speaker 2: festival came up, a time when people hoped to meet
Speaker 2: who they were going to marry, Yashen's stepmother told her
Speaker 2: to stay home. So Yashin used her magical fishbones to
Speaker 2: turn her rags into a beautiful gown, a cloak with
Speaker 2: kingfisher feathers, and slippers woven in golden threads that looked
Speaker 2: like fish scales. But like most stories, there was a
Speaker 2: warning don't lose the slippers. Unfortunately, in order to avoid
Speaker 2: being caught by her stepmother, Yashin had to flee the
Speaker 2: festival and lost a slipper Immediately, her gown and cloak
Speaker 2: returned to rags, and when she got back to her home.
Speaker 2: The spirit of the fishbones was gone, although the slipper remained.
Speaker 2: Yashin had lost her only friend. Later, a villager found
Speaker 2: the lost slipper and sold it to a merchant, who
Speaker 2: then took it to the king. The king marveled at
Speaker 2: the slipper and realized he lust meet the woman it
Speaker 2: belonged to. He realized it would take too long to
Speaker 2: search for her. Instead, he had the slipper put on
Speaker 2: display at the place where it was found for maidens
Speaker 2: to try it on.
Speaker 1: He waited all.
Speaker 2: Day, but it fit no one, including yashen stepmother and stepsister. Then,
Speaker 2: when the night was in its latest hour, the king
Speaker 2: spotted yea Shen taking the slipper. At first, he thought
Speaker 2: she was stealing it, until he saw how beautiful and
Speaker 2: kind her face was. The king cracked her down and
Speaker 2: married Yashen. As for the stepmother and stepsister, they were
Speaker 2: forced to stay home in the caves, and later it
Speaker 2: was said they were crushed to death by flying stones.
Speaker 2: Fish are considered a symbol of prosperity. During this era,
Speaker 2: people began keeping karp and a mutation change to carp
Speaker 2: scales from silver to gold. Then people began to breed
Speaker 2: the fish for the Golden Scales. An argument could be
Speaker 2: made that not only was a fish alluding to Yushin's
Speaker 2: prosperity in marrying the king, but also the prosperity of
Speaker 2: the dynasty leading up to.
Speaker 1: The Tong dynasty.
Speaker 2: The collapse of the Han dynasty in two twenty a
Speaker 2: d had left China divided for three hundred years. The
Speaker 2: Sui dynasty then unified China, paving the way for the
Speaker 2: Tong dynasty. Tong is considered one of the greatest empires,
Speaker 2: not only because it was the Golden Age of arts
Speaker 2: and culture, but also because it was a dynasty ruled
Speaker 2: by benevolent leaders with economic growth and successful political endeavors.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until the seventeenth century that the broad outlines
Speaker 2: of the version of Cinderella we're most familiar with originated.
Speaker 2: This time the story would be from France. When I
Speaker 2: first started looking into Cinderella, I thought the Disney version
Speaker 2: I grew up with was based on the Brother's Grim,
Speaker 2: But it's not Disney pulled from the sixteen ninety seven
Speaker 2: French story The Little Glass Slipper, written by Charles Perraut.
Speaker 1: Pireaut had created his own spin on.
Speaker 2: A darker Italian story of a woman named Zizzola. Zazzola,
Speaker 2: or as a title of the story, is called The
Speaker 2: Cat Cinderella, was written by John Battista Bazille in sixteen
Speaker 2: thirty four. In The Cat Cinderella, Zazzola already has a
Speaker 2: wicked stepmother who is married to her father, who is
Speaker 2: a prince. Zizzola's governess convinces a girl to kill her
Speaker 2: stepmother so the governess can marry the prince. Instead, Zizzola
Speaker 2: murders her stepmother by dropping the life of the largest
Speaker 2: dress trunk on the woman's neck.
Speaker 1: And breaking it.
Speaker 2: After she tricks her father into marrying the governess.
Speaker 1: For a few days, things.
Speaker 2: Are well, and during this time a dove from the
Speaker 2: Island of the Fairies visits Zola and tells her that
Speaker 2: if she ever needs anything, just come to the fairies
Speaker 2: for help. Well, it wasn't long until the governess turned
Speaker 2: out to be just as wicked. She brings forward six
Speaker 2: daughters she had been hiding and slowly demotes Zola to
Speaker 2: the place of a servant. Zizola becomes the Cat Cinderella
Speaker 2: because she's no better than an animal. Later, the prince
Speaker 2: goes on a trip and asks his stepdaughters what they
Speaker 2: would like.
Speaker 1: The response is riches.
Speaker 2: Then, as a snub, he asks Zola if she wants anything.
Speaker 2: She tells them a gift from the fairy isle. But
Speaker 2: on top of asking for the gift, she also tells
Speaker 2: him that if he doesn't follow through, he will never
Speaker 2: be able to find his way home.
Speaker 1: Lo and behold.
Speaker 2: When he tries to sail back, he can't, So he
Speaker 2: follows through on his promise to his daughter. The fairies
Speaker 2: gave her a date tree. The date tree ends up
Speaker 2: producing a fairy who asks Zzola what she wants.
Speaker 1: Zizzola says to leave any.
Speaker 2: Time without her sister's knowing, so the fairy gives her
Speaker 2: a phrase to whisper to the tree whenever she wants
Speaker 2: to leave, and a phrase to whisper when she returns.
Speaker 1: To undo the magic.
Speaker 2: On one feast day, Zazola waits until everyone leaves and
Speaker 2: then goes to the date tree and makes her wish.
Speaker 2: She has given a gown and slippers and a royal procession.
Speaker 2: This happens three times over, each time grander than the last.
Speaker 2: Absolutely smitten by her beauty and charm, the king wants
Speaker 2: to learn who Zola is. He has a servant follow her,
Speaker 2: but all three times Zzola shakes a servant off her
Speaker 2: trail by tossing out gold and jewels. It's the third
Speaker 2: time she shakes off the servant that she loses her
Speaker 2: shoe by tossing it out. The king decides to hold
Speaker 2: another feast, declaring all maidens must attend. He planned on
Speaker 2: having all the maidens try the shoe. The prince, Zizola's
Speaker 2: father tells the king his daughter hasn't been attending because quote,
Speaker 2: she is a sorry, worthless creature, not fit to take
Speaker 2: her place at the table where you eat. But the
Speaker 2: king insists that she should be the first on the list,
Speaker 2: since that's what he's decreed.
Speaker 1: When it's z.
Speaker 2: Zola's turn to try the slipper on it, quote jumps
Speaker 2: to her foot like a moth of flame. Zizzola is
Speaker 2: zen crowned and the other people are told to obey
Speaker 2: her as queen. The Zelee has an extra element to
Speaker 2: him version though at the very end, the stepsisters, who
Speaker 2: are heartbroken and angry, confessed to their mother he is mad,
Speaker 2: who would oppose the stars. It's as if what happened
Speaker 2: was faded. It's easy to see how Perot's version was
Speaker 2: able to build upon Bazilli's story. The foundations of Cinderella
Speaker 2: most of us are familiar with are there, but Pero
Speaker 2: just made them more magical, including the pumpkin turned carriage,
Speaker 2: the fairy Godmother, and the glass slipper. At its core,
Speaker 2: these tales of Cinderella are all about class reinforcing hierarchies
Speaker 2: embedded in society, although some propose that it's a cautionary
Speaker 2: tale about the consequences of mistreating children. However, in more
Speaker 2: recent adaptations, Cinderella has evolved to reflect more modern sensibilities.
Speaker 2: During the brother's grim time, it was typical for stepmothers
Speaker 2: to be portrayed as wicked. Stepmothers were historically common due
Speaker 2: to mothers dying during childbirth. This pitted stepmothers against their
Speaker 2: stepchildren because of the intricacies of inheritance laws. Common knowledge
Speaker 2: says that inheritance was passed down through male lineage. However,
Speaker 2: if there were no male heirs or their father didn't
Speaker 2: have a brother, money and land would sometimes be passed
Speaker 2: down to the daughter. In cases where there was more
Speaker 2: than one daughter, money and property would be split equally. Historically,
Speaker 2: there was little opportunity for economic mobility. Inheritance was key
Speaker 2: to maintaining social status. So if the stepmother had a
Speaker 2: son and that was the only son, there wasn't a problem,
Speaker 2: but you can see how it would cause a riff otherwise.
Speaker 2: So at its heart, Cinderella is about class and how
Speaker 2: people can rise through the ranks or fall to their ruin.
Speaker 5: We see a lot of themes of the restoration of
Speaker 5: the right way that things are meant to be happening here.
Speaker 5: Cinderella is very often pitched as a rags to riches story,
Speaker 5: and in some iterations it is, but in the most
Speaker 5: common iterations of Western Europe it is a riches to
Speaker 5: rags to riches story.
Speaker 2: One of the easiest ways to maintain class or rise
Speaker 2: in the ranks was to marry. That's why one of
Speaker 2: the best ways to ensure marriage was to be beautiful
Speaker 2: and pure of heart.
Speaker 5: It is right that Cinderella have her wealth restored because
Speaker 5: she is good and virtuous and young and beautiful. And
Speaker 5: so we see all of those traits of positivity being
Speaker 5: tied together and even at times leading directly to an
Speaker 5: emphasis of the negativity on the other side of the spectrum.
Speaker 5: After Cinderella gets married, the beautiful doves that accompany her
Speaker 5: on her wedding day fly over to her sisters and
Speaker 5: peck out their eyes like they are blinded and maimed
Speaker 5: by the same magical helpers that assisted Cinderella into her
Speaker 5: beautiful marriage and wedding and life as royalty.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Newer adaptations have two different shifts. One is what is
Speaker 2: considered to be a woman's success, and two is how
Speaker 2: the stepmother and stepsisters are perceived.
Speaker 5: Cinderella gives us a way to talk about womanhood that
Speaker 5: lets us have a shared starting point to move from.
Speaker 2: Let's circle back to the wildly popular Walt Disney film
Speaker 2: released in nineteen fifty. Disney's adaptation pulled from Perrot's story
Speaker 2: because it was more in line with America's notion that
Speaker 2: a woman's success was that she married well, could stay
Speaker 2: at home, didn't have to work, and had a well
Speaker 2: kept house. It's also pretty cut and dry about who
Speaker 2: was right and who was wrong. This still lines up
Speaker 2: pretty strongly with the values from the earlier tales. But
Speaker 2: then you have stories like Gregory Maguire's Confessions of an
Speaker 2: Ugly Stepsister, which is told from Iris's point of view.
Speaker 1: She is one of the stepsisters.
Speaker 2: In this adaptation, it's not so much Cinderella versus her
Speaker 2: stepsisters and stepmother, but outside power as the sisters are
Speaker 2: fighting against. The book is sympathetic towards a stepmother and
Speaker 2: stepsisters and shows that there could be more to the story.
Speaker 2: In twenty twelve, Marissa Meyer wrote a book titled Cinder.
Speaker 2: It was the first in the Lunar Chronicle series. The
Speaker 2: adaptation is about a cyborg who goes on this journey
Speaker 2: to help save the population from a plague. In the end,
Speaker 2: Cinder and the crew that joins her along the way,
Speaker 2: including Prince Kai, saved the day. Although Prince Kai and
Speaker 2: Cender feel deeply about each other, they don't initially end
Speaker 2: up together. Cinda wants to help Luna, where she's from,
Speaker 2: form a democracy and gets stabilized, but she does tell
Speaker 2: the Prince she will be his empress once she's in
Speaker 2: a place to step down. In the twenty twenty one
Speaker 2: Amazon primary make, Cinderella has big dreams of designing dresses
Speaker 2: to sell at her own dress shop. Yes, she does
Speaker 2: meet the Prince and they fall for each other, but
Speaker 2: Cinderella is offered a job as a personal seamstress and
Speaker 2: tells the prince he can come with her, but she's
Speaker 2: taking the job. The prince agrees, gives up his right
Speaker 2: to rule the kingdom, and both he and Cinderella sail
Speaker 2: off so she can follow her dreams. It's a large
Speaker 2: jump from the nineteen fifties notion of what it means
Speaker 2: to be a successful woman. Also in this movie, Cinderella
Speaker 2: forgets the stepsisters and stepmother. She understands and isn't mad
Speaker 2: at them. The examples go on, but what we can
Speaker 2: see is that what it is to be a woman
Speaker 2: and how women relate to each other is reflected and
Speaker 2: how the Cinderella story has been told.
Speaker 5: And one interesting thing that folklorists are doing increasingly is
Speaker 5: looking at how children actually perceive and talk about these
Speaker 5: characters that they encounter through fairy tales through popular media.
Speaker 5: And it's not always in the baseline way that we expect.
Speaker 5: Young girls don't just see Cinderella and say I want
Speaker 5: to be a princess who marries a prince I barely
Speaker 5: know who's rich. Young girls will see Cinderella and want
Speaker 5: to play as Cinderella and have adventures and want to
Speaker 5: do different things or overcome the stepsisters in different ways.
Speaker 2: As doctor McNeil also points out, there's a reason Cinderella
Speaker 2: continues and will continue to change with time.
Speaker 5: I mean, princesses as a model from fairy tales are
Speaker 5: likely going nowhere right pop Culturally. It's an idea that
Speaker 5: we love, whether it's on a historic front or a
Speaker 5: fantasy front.
Speaker 2: And by retelling Cinderella, we recast who we are today
Speaker 2: and understand who.
Speaker 1: We used to be.
Speaker 5: And so when we manifest these stories in ways that
Speaker 5: are relevant to us today, we are intrinsically commenting on
Speaker 5: all the different ways they were relative in the past.
Speaker 5: And that's really powerful, because that's not something we can
Speaker 5: do with that same sense of intent or purpose. When
Speaker 5: we tell a holy new story.
Speaker 2: Cinderella, a tale of class, pain, hope, and sometimes magic.
Speaker 2: Every iteration has something to add, a kernel of its
Speaker 2: own truth to share. And there is one simple fact
Speaker 2: to this story that has survived centuries. Almost everyone can
Speaker 2: find something relatable to the persecuted heroine. There are more
Speaker 2: brothers grim tales waiting to be explored. Take my hand
Speaker 2: and let me lead you through.
Speaker 1: The deep dark woods.
Speaker 2: Next time we follow the breadcrumbs to a witch's House
Speaker 2: the Deep Dark Woods is a production of School Humans
Speaker 2: and iHeart Podcasts. It was created, written, and hosted by
Speaker 2: me Miranda Hawkins. This episode was produced by Mike hal
Speaker 2: June with senior producer Gabby Watts. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott,
Speaker 2: Brandon Barr, Elsie Crowley, and Maya Howard.
Speaker 1: Stories are voiced by Julia Christgau.
Speaker 2: Theme song was composed by Jesse Niswang, who also sound
Speaker 2: designed and mixed this episode. If you enjoyed the show,
Speaker 2: please leave a review and you can follow along with
Speaker 2: the show on Instagram at School of Humans.