Kristen Baranek Professor Signorotti English 300M A04 Response #2 9/13/11 Folks & Fairy Tales Cinderella The

relationships between and among family members that are portrayed in fairy tales tend to show complex patterns. They are relatable to real life situations to a certain extent but tend to be more warped and deliberate. Nonetheless, they are consistent and necessary in order to deliver the point of the story (The Introducer). One of the most prominent ones, parent-daughter relationships, is depicted consistently throughout the different versions of Cinderella (The Inserter). Although there are so many varying tales, each Cinderella story has the same basis of the parent-daughter relationship. Cinderella is on her own with a distant father figure in her life, always without the balance of a birth mother, who is eventually replaced by the prince (The Linker). Perraults Cinderella: Or The Little Glass Slipper, San Soucis Little Gold Star, A Spanish American Cinderella Tale, and Maitlands The Wicked Stepmothers Lament all commence with the understanding that Cinderellas mother died but passed onto her daughter the loving and kind characteristics she possessed. Lee kills off the mother as well in When The Clock Strikes, who also passed her ways onto her daughter (albeit Satanist). It is no coincidence that the natural mother is immediately effaced from the story and replaced by an evil, cold stepmother. Cinderella cannot fully function and come to rise without being abused and humiliated by the role the stepmother and her daughters fulfill. The birth mother cannot be anywhere near her daughter because she will interfere with the roles the stepmother and stepsisters must play. Cinderella is the chosen one who

must battle the temptation of anger and aggression towards her abusers in order to rise in society, all of which she learns without the presence of a mother, nor a father. Another unique parent-daughter characteristic is evident by the role of the father. He is never truly around for Cinderella, whether he is preoccupied with other duties or physically intangible due to a mission or other business he must attend to. One would expect a man to protect his daughter, but he is never truly there for Cinderella. The father remarries, and then leaves his daughter on his own to face the foreign family she must adapt to (The Coordinator). Although the father is not dead in the varying Cinderella stories, he might as well be due to his lack of concern or presence in the innocent girls life. In Grimms Aschenputtel he even goes so far as to chop down the house of doves and pear tree with an axe. He does not approach these hideaways to help; he instead sets out to destroy them. Once the prince finds Cinderella, they live happily ever after and now she is paired. One man replaces the other, so a new, more present father figure comes into the picture for her. It is impossible for Cinderella to blossom on her own without the heavy presence of other characters, whether they are her abuser or savior. The evil women allow her to experience her necessary share of humiliation before she seeks happiness in the prince, who rescues her from the ragged life she led. Without him she would still be mocked on a daily basis and the story would never come full-term, but without the stepmother there would be no true Cinderella story that people contemporarily relate to because of its unique plot based off of the striking parentdaughter relationship.