Cinderella (Continued)

by Terri Windling

A remarkable version of the story was recorded twenty years ago in eastern Iran in which, like the Scottish version, the mother returns in the form of a cow. The story is part of a Muslim women's rite in honor of Bibi Fatimeh (the daughter of Mohammed and wife of Ali, also known as the Lady of Wishes) in which a ritual meal is prepared in supplication for the fulfillment of a wish. The ingredients for the meal must be begged from certain households in a certain way: the begging is done by dark of night, by pairs of completely silent women whose identity remains concealed. The food is taken to the mosque. No men may be present there.

In the morning the women return and a meal is prepared of foods no men may touch: komaj, a bread of "blessed" flour, and ash, a kind of soup. A widow and a motherless virgin sit side by side in the center of the mosque, surrounded by ten to fifty other women. The widow has a bowl of ash. The young girl has an empty bowl. As the widow spoons soup into the child's bowl, she recites "Mah Pishani," a long and lively variant of "Cinderella." Each time the girl receives a spoonful of ash, she must answer "Yes" to affirm the tale, which is briefly thus: A rich merchant sends his daughter to religious school. A female teacher at the school convinces the girl to kill her mother in a vinegar jar, and subsequently the teacher marries the widowed father. The new wife bears a child, after which the first daughter is starved and mistreated. The original wife comes back in the form of a cow and gives aid to the girl, who proves herself to be quick–witted and good–hearted after all. The second daughter is vain and lazy and this eventually causes her downfall. The first is rewarded with a moon on her brow, a star on her chin, and a good marriage. The second is cursed with a snake on her chin and a donkey penis on her forehead. At the end of the story, the meal is consumed and the ceremony completed.

Margaret A. Mils, a folklorist who has worked extensively in Iran and Afghanistan, comments on the tale at the core of this fascinating ritual: "In this form of [Cinderella], as in most, the dominant relationships are between women: loyalty and disloyalty between mother and daughter; rivalry between the stepmother and her offspring and the first born daughter. That the girl first betrays her own mother is an important element in the equation of solidarity and redemption, as is the choice of this story as part of a solidarity ritual for women, in which women join together to call on a spiritual "mother," deceased but present, in support of the desires of one or more of their members. . . .The marking of the wicked daughter with a donkey's penis and a snake, in contrastive relation to the good daughter's marking with signs of radiant female beauty, the moon and star, constitutes a strong rejection of male symbols. . .a direct result of her and her mother's attempted exploitation of other females, human and supernatural, and as an indirect result of her mother's antisocial competition for a male. In this tale about women told exclusively for women, acquisition of male characteristics by a female is a grotesque punishment for disloyalty to women." (For more on this story, see Mils's intriguing essay in Cinderella: A Casebook, edited by Alan Dundes.)

When we turn to the French "Cendrillon," written by Charles Perrault and published in Paris in 1697, we find a version of the story that more closely resembles Cinderella as we know her today. Perrault eliminated the mother's ghost, the lentils in the hearth, the blood–drenched shoe, and added a cheery fairy godmother complete with magic wand. The pumpkin coach and the rat coachmen are original to the Perrault version. (The glass slippers have also been erroneously attributed to Perrault, but they turn up in older, non–French sources as well — which ought to end the debate about whether glass and not fur was simply a mistranslation from the old French.) Perrault's "Cendrillon" is elegant and courtly, written for circulation in aristocratic literary salons. The rough edges of the older tales are smoothed and polished in Perrault's nimble hands. The Ash Girl is more clearly virtuous, and less clearly self–motivated. The sisters are no longer actively sadistic, merely vain, self–centered, and spiteful. In the end, our heroine kindly forgives them, and arranges good marriages for them too.

When fairy tales were taken up by the publishers of Victorian children's books, it is not surprising that Perrault's version was the one they most often turned to. Not only was it a kinder, gentler Cinderella, but it was also funny without being bawdy, filled with charming incidents, plump white mice and long whiskered rats. It was this version Walt Disney drew upon for his animated film in 1949. This extraordinarily successful film would come to influence the way whole generations now perceive the tale — as well as influencing subsequent printed editions of Cinderella.

In an incisive essay first published in Children's Literature in Education (#8, 1977), Jane Yolen writes that the Golden Press picture book based on the Walt Disney film "set the new pattern for America's Cinderella. The book's text is coy and condescending. (Sample: 'And her best friends of all were — guess who — the mice!') The illustrations are poor cartoons. And Cinderella herself is a disaster. She cowers as her sisters rip her homemade ballgown to shreds. (Not even homemade by Cinderella, but by the mice and birds.) She answers her stepmother with whines and pleadings. She is a sorry excuse for a heroine, pitiable and useless. She cannot perform even a simple action to save herself, though she is warned by her friends, the mice. She does not hear them because she is 'off in a world of dreams.' Cinderella begs, she whimpers, and at last has to be rescued by — guess who — the mice!" Such editions are responsible for the helpless girl we call by the name Cinderella today; a Cinderella decried by feminists unaware of the Ash Girl's bold ancestry; a Cinderella who, Dr. Yolen points out, "is not recognized by her prince until she is magically back in her ball gown, beribboned and bejewelled."

As a result, a film like Pretty Woman is promoted with apparent sincerity as a modern day "Cinderella" tale. What makes Pretty Woman a fairy tale? To an audience weaned on Disney films, it is that a poor but beautiful girl grows up to marry a wealthy "prince." Yet the knight̫on–the–white–charger who swoops into our lives and relieves us of the need to determine our own fate is a creature of modern Hollywood films, not of traditional folktales. What has the prostitute heroine of Pretty Woman done to win her prince or transform her life? Precisely nothing — except to be beautiful, and in the right place at the right time.

That's no fairy tale. The old tales, as Gertrude Mueller Nelson has succinctly expressed it (in her Jungian study, Here All Dwell Free) are about "anguish and darkness." They plunge heroines and heroes into the dark wood, into danger and despair and enchantment and deception, and only then offer them the tools to save themselves — tools that must be used wisely and well. (Used foolishly, or ruthlessly, they turn back on the wielder.) The power in fairy tales lies in such self–determined acts of transformation. Happy endings, where they exist, are hard won, and at a price. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is a better example of a fairy tale than Hollywood's Pretty Woman. Combining elements of "Cinderella," "Beauty and the Beast," and other tales, Jane is a classic folklore heroine: good–hearted yes, but also clever, resourceful, and determined.

In modern parlance, the term "fairy tale" is sometimes used to refer to a lie or fanciful untruth. This describes the modern Cinderellas: the Disney film, and Pretty Woman, and umpteen hundred mass market retellings; they lie to us by reducing our dreams to simplistic formulas that empower no one, neither those who wait for Happily Ever After to arrive on the back of a shining white horse, or those who seek it in a pretty face. By contrast, the oldest Ash Girl tales use simple language to tell stories that are not really simple at all. They go to the very heart of truth. They've spoken the truth for a thousand years.

Once upon a time, they say, there was a girl.  . .there was a boy.  . .there was a person who was in trouble. And this is what she did.  . .and what he did.  . .and how they learned to survive it. This is what they did.  . .and why one failed.  . .and why another triumphed in the end. And I know that it's true, because I danced at their wedding and drank their very best wine.