Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Jane Yolen on Cinderella in America

Harry Clarke

When I first saw Jane Yolen's essay "America's Cinderella," I wasn't initially interested, because I just recently did a post basically arguing with many of Jane Yolen's points on why Disney's Cinderella is a bad role model. But the essay expands the arguments and takes a look at older versions of Cinderella for comparison, which provides a bigger picture.

As I've mentioned before, if you look at a relatively recent version of a Princess tale, the story on its own usually isn't that offensive. A Cinderella that cries? That's natural and understandable. A Cinderella who is accused of doing nothing? You could say she's biding her time and waiting for the right opportunity (which is what we would probably assume about a male protagonist in the same situation), and for the record, her constant housework is actually really active. It's when we look at the history of a tale that we find patterns which are troubling. 
Gustav Dore

The English tale "Cap O' Rushes" is a Cinderella tale type, which features an incredibly resourceful heroine. When her father kicks her out of the house, she makes herself a disguise, offers her services as a maid, and of her own initiative and efforts goes to the ball in her finery, earning the love of the master's son. Even in Perrault's tale, although the fairy godmother is the one who provides the nice clothes, Cinderella is the one to suggest using a rat for a footman, and goes off to find it herself. Folklore versions of Cinderella very rarely forgive their stepsisters, but allow their punishment to take place without comment. This point makes me a little leery, because forgiveness is obviously a valuable and good trait, but the way it happens in Perrault's tale and many subsequent versions is definitely unrealistic. It's naive on the part of Cinderella to assume that her stepsisters would "never, never" be unkind to her again, after years and years of abuse.
Charles Folkard

But with the advent of books marketed specifically for children, Cinderella characters became weaker and weepier. In the 1870s, a children's magazine called St. Nicholas featured a Cinderella tale in which the character is crying and prostrate, who must be "aroused from her sad revery" by the godmother. When she does meet the prince, she "speaks meekly" and "with downcast eyes and extended hand."

Chapbooks and other children's storybooks over the next decades continued in this trend. Cinderella was increasingly represented as crying and doing nothing else to help herself. Any creative thinking and action disappear entirely. Yolen even states that, although the chapbooks changed all the tales, Cinderella was the most dramatically different in her transition from folklore to print.

Herbert Cole

A quick point about Disney: especially after reading feminist critiques of his movies, we tend to picture him and his team of old, white men gathered around a copy of the Grimm's or Perrault's stories and saying, "Nope, scrap this-we can't have a woman so active, we need her much more passive." Fairy tale scholarship was not what it is today back in the 1950s-who knows what his sources were? Even collections of Grimm tales you find in bookstores today may be inaccurate translations, with misleading illustrations (for example, doesn't Cinderella in the Folkard illustration above look way too happy to be tying her stepsister's sash? That was from 1911). Disney and his team would have been familiar with the versions that were in print at the time which claimed to be from Grimm and Perrault but were much altered. No, Disney wasn't the most forward in terms of gender roles, although he did try to hire a man to make Cinderella more politically correct, but he caved to his team and the gender-forward ideas were never used.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but although Yolen only cites American Cinderellas, I believe the tale followed this same pattern in Europe where the heroine becomes more helpless when published in children's books, during the same time period.

8 comments:

  1. I take it you'll probably be doing a commentary on the new Disney Cinderella that will be out on 2015? After reading it I think that Disney will try to make their Cinderella a little "tougher," but at the same time I'm so used to the current perception of the current Disney's Cinderella that I don't know what she is going to be like.

    Cap O'Rushes is also one of my favorite Cinderella adaptations! I love how she manages to find love and happiness on her own and forgives the misgivings that drove her out of her house in the first place.

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    1. Well I'm interested in the new Cinderella, and I'm sure she will be more feminist approved-in 2014 no one would dare have a completely inactive woman who must be saved by a man! But if I follow my usual pattern, I'll just read other fairy tale bloggers' reviews when it comes out, and wait till its available on Netflix to see it, by when no one else will care much about it

      Cap O Rushes really is a great tale, one that I tend to forget about, so I was glad this essay reminded me of it!

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  2. The thing about Cinderella is that there really wasn't much she could have done in her situation. Trying to "be active" about her fate would likely have gotten her in big trouble with her stepmother. And given the version you read, her father was either dead or the stepmother had him wrapped around her little finger. Too confrontational with the stepmother and she'd likely end up out on the streets with her best hope being to become a maid in someone else's house. At least in that situation, it was her own house (a nice house too. her father had to at least be merchant class if not some kind of landed gentry).

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    1. Adam-your arguments are what I usually point out when people criticize Cinderella for being passive, and if we're being realistic, that was absolutely the case. But in other folklore versions of Cinderella, she is more active and decisive and is able to change her destiny on her own. There's a level of suspension of disbelief, as in all fairy tales, or really any fictional story. I don't think it's bad to have Cinderella helped out of a situation-in other fairy tales, the male character is just given the keys to his destiny w/o working for it-but it is unfortunate that none of these other Cinderellas have remained in the public awareness

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  3. As Adam pointed out, being historically realistic, staying put really would be the only option. And if she angered step mom, she prob isn't going to be able to just waltz off and be a maid. There are references and a system to even that occupation. No, she would have likely been on the streets. And besides, it is HER home too, which I'm sure is what she's thinking in the back of her mind, she doesn't want it to go to rack and ruin. Because for one, I get the impression that Lady Tremaine either has just enough to live on or may be in debt. The hints are subtle, but there are no servants (Cinderella doesn't count). If they had any money, they'd hire at least one. Unless I'm forgetting a scene and we see any other servants in the house after her father's death. And Lady Tremaine is still overseeing the girls education at their age. Women of her social class did at times teach their own daughters, and to be sure if she'd been a Madame Genlis for example, she'd educate them throughout. But we don't know Lady Tremaine's past and must assume there is no supplement to her own lessons because of finances. At least that was my impression. The last thing I was thinking of with Disney's version is the time period it came out in the theater, most mothers and working class women don't have the option to go elsewhere. When you have five-eight kids you have to persevere and believe hard work will pay for a better life for you and them and I think that's the message Walt was going for.

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    1. I completely agree with the historical context angle-I've talked about it in some of my previous posts and I strongly dislike the connotation that it's negative for a woman to choose to stay home and raise kids. But it is interesting that, in older Cinderella folktales, even though a female servant probably wouldn't have had any better chances of striking off on her own, that's what the characters in the story did, and it turned out well for them.

      In my posts "Cinderella: A Progressive Victim"? http://talesoffaerie.blogspot.com/2014/08/cinderella-progressive-victim.html and Fairy Tales in Context: 20th Century America http://talesoffaerie.blogspot.com/2014/07/fairy-tales-in-context-20th-century.html I outline a lot of this, but there have been definite patterns in the evolution of the Cinderella tale to make her more less active, when you look at its history.

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  4. Nice post! I followed your link and was delighted read about Maurice Rapf, whose suggestions to invest Disney's Cinderella with a temper (and a personality) went unheeded. Interesting to know his next subversive plan was to make Peter Pan the villain of Neverland. I couldn't agree more! Personally, I always felt like Captain Hook was the true hero of that tale.

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    1. Yeah, isn't that so interesting?? I'm really fascinated by this Maurice Rapf guy...he literally could have altered history if he was able to influence Disney like that.

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