Cesar Romero

Professor Hoehne

Fairy Tales and Rewritings

2 October 2019

A Modern Cinderella Story

Fairy tales have been passed down from generation to generation in what is commonly referred to as the oral tradition, and with them, their morals and general concepts have been passed down with them. Concepts like a damsel in distress, a persecuted heroine, or a battle between ugly and beautiful are one of the few examples that are still prevalent today. As we still see these concepts portrayed in the media, often by big broadcasting channels such as Disney, which has popularized and spread these concepts afar. Although they have received critiques due to societal changes, one fairy tale remains as a big influence on the mind of children, Cinderella. More importantly, the ‘Cinderella complex’ is still a large idea that can be seen in society today.

Cinderella is one of the many fairy tales in which there are many adaptations found in its library. However, they all follow the same plot in which a beautiful girl is born to a perfect family. This family then suffers a tragic loss in which both the mother and father die, the father dying later and after he remarries an evil woman with 2 daughters (Perrault 130). Thus, Cinderella is left alone with her new evil stepmother and stepsisters, being forced to be their maid and face their abuse. Until one fortunate day, in which a fairy godmother provides her with the resources to go to a ball thrown by the prince who she would later fall in love with and he with her (Perrault 131-132). But, with the magic running out she’s forced to leave and drops her glass slipper, beginning a long scavenger hunt for the prince to find her (Perrault 135). In the end, he does, and Cinderella is taken from her life of waiting to a life of royalty. This is what the ‘Cinderella complex’ is and this is what continues to influence people today, the idea that with a stroke of good luck, they can go from rags to riches with little effort and live happily ever after.

This beloved fairy tale has been told countless of times, with countless of new adaptations throughout the years. But they all share the same complex. As a result, this ‘Cinderella complex’ continues to spread and influence our way of thinking in multiple forms. In a study done by Kay Stone, she interviews 40 women of different background who have all been familiar with fairy tales. In it, she discovers that many admittedly report that they were greatly influenced by the fairy tales they were read when they were young. Furthermore, “Some had openly admired the lovely princesses and hoped to imitate them–especially their ability to obtain a man and a suburban castle without much effort” (Stone 48). There is already a basis of the ‘Cinderella complex’ seen here. This concept is embedded deep into them that they still have hope that Cinderella is their story, as one child puts it “I thought I’d just sit around and get all this money. I used to think that ‘Cinderella’ should be my story” (Stone 48). It only continues to stay as the child grows older, as later Stone reports that a 24-year old had told her “that she had really expected to bloom one day as Cinderella had done, but she was still waiting” (49). From this we see just how big an influence Cinderella has had on the minds of people and their own expectations on life.

More realistically, we can see the happily ever after part of the ‘Cinderella complex’ in the increasing number of women entering the workforce after World War II. As people enter the workforce, in this case women, their expectations, built on this complex, about the difficulty of balancing multiple lives often mislead them. Everyone has had to believe that everything is going to be easy with the balancing of all these lives, they forget that they’re human and not perfect like the heroines they see. For example, when surveying 225 college women about the attitudes they had on familial and career lives; more than half of them anticipated no conflict in between them, one-third expected some conflict, and 5% assumed there would be a lot of conflict (Wilson 137). This desiring for wanting the best of both worlds is often mislead by the expectations people have when they are influenced by this ‘Cinderella complex’. They fail to see that when the going gets tough, there won’t be a fairy godmother there to ‘bippity-boppity-boo’ everything away or that a prince will show up to save them. This is even more emphasized by Wilson when he mentions the plans of these college women for when they have a child, 20% said they would have a short maternity leave, 60% would go back to work once their child is in the first grade, and the rest would go back once their first child entered high school (137). Thus, when seeing that most of the women in this sample plan on working while raising a child we can tell how the ‘Cinderella complex’ has clouded their judgement. They may unknowingly follow this concept to heart, believing in the ’happily ever after’, that as they climb the ladder of the workforce, the conflicts of balancing both their lives catch them off-guard. As Wilson puts it, “The demands and pressures of these jobs are bound to influence the woman’s family responsibilities” (138).

Although the ‘Cinderella complex’ remains a big influence on the way people expect the world to occur, it can’t be the only thing at fault. What caused us to acknowledge this as a complex to base our lives on? As mentioned before, fairy tales often consist the main conflict as a princess in need of rescue by a prince, like how Cinderella is seen in her fairy tale, thus being automatically portrayed as weak (Prince 4). As a result, many critics such as Lieberman believe we interchange the word “protagonist” with that of “heroine”, since they are chosen for their beauty and not for anything they do, they exist passively until the hero comes in to save them, “They wait, are chosen, and are rewarded” (qtd. in Prince 4). Furthermore, Prince writes how “heroine” is synonymous with “protagonist” (4). Thus, when reading fairy tales, the protagonist locked away in a tower, bullied by her step-family, or imprisoned by giants ends up being the heroine of the story (qtd. in Prince 4). As a result, it began to form the stereotype of women being need of rescue (Prince 4) and as we have already seen, leading many women see themselves in the story and believing that the story is about them.

Cinderella is one of the most influential fairy tales that there probably is today, and for many reasons. Individuals can see themselves in the story as if it’s about them, its ‘Cinderella complex’ has in some ways served as an idea of hope about things being easier for a person. While it may cloud some judgement about the realities of life, this hope of all our troubles being magically taken away can have a positive effect on people by giving them a positive outlook on life. Nevertheless, it’s important to distinguish where and when this complex exists.

Works Cited

Perrault, Charles, and C. J. Betts. “Cinderella.” The Complete Fairy Tales, pp 130-141. OUP Oxford,      2009. EBSCOhost. Web, 2 October 2019

Price, Lauren A. Fairy Tale Reinterpreted: Passive Protagonists Transformed into Active Heroines. Middle Tennessee State University, Ann Arbor, 2014, Proquest, Web. 2 October 2019

Stone, Kay. “Things Walt Disney Never Told Us.” The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 88, no. 347, 1975, pp 42-50. JSTOR. Web, 2 October 2019

Wilson, Marian L. “College Women and the Cinderella Complex.” Educational Horizons, vol. 56, no. 3, 1978, pp. 137–139. JSTOR. Web, 2 October 2019

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