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Cinderella is one of the most known and beloved fairy tales. And when we think of fairy tales we often think of the Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, the German collectors of folk tales. But is the most famous Cinderella character, the one from the 1950’s Disney movie, actually based on the Grimm’s Cinderella story?
Cinderella is one of the most known and beloved fairy tales. Her story has been told, retold, adapted into movies, operas, ballets; one estimation is that there are 300 different variations of the Cinderella motif with the earliest dating back to Roman and Greek mythology in the 1st century (Rhodopis) and to China in the 9th century (Ye Xian).
Because the Grimm Brothers are so known for their fairy tale collection (they also collected and compiled Deutsche Sagen (German legends) and wrote a Deutsches Wörterbuch (German dictionary), we often default to thinking they were the only ones who wrote down and embellished the folk tales. But they weren’t the only ones or the first.
The Disney Cinderella that most Americans know is actually based on the Cinderella story published by Charles Perrault.
Charles Perrault: Cendrillon
One of the earlier recorded versions in Europe comes from Italy where Giovanni Battista Basile wrote down the Cinderella, or in Italian Cenerentola, story in his story collection Pentamerone which was published in 1634.
The French writer Charles Perrault built on and expanded the story and published Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufle de verre (Cinderella or The little glass slipper) in 1697. His version is the one that the Disney movie Cinderella is based on. The fairy godmother gives Cinderella beautiful dresses, turns a pumpkin into a carriage and the helpful mice into horses, and gives her the glass slippers.
There has been some controversy if Perrault actually meant that the slippers were made of glass (de verre). A case has been made that Perrault, when listening to the common people telling him the fairy tales, understood ‘de verre’ but really what the people said was ‘en vair’ which means ‘squirrel fur’. Squirrel fur might not sound like much but only rich people could afford it. Another theory is that Perrault was mistranslated.
However, as Sarah from Writing in Margins shows quite thoroughly there are multiple reasons why Perrault really intended Cendrillon’s slippers be made of glass.
For one, Perrault wrote down the Cinderella story, the expression ‘en vair’ was not in use anymore. Two, who wears fur slippers to a ball? Wearing furry shoes or boots when it’s cold outside is one thing but to a ball? The argument that one can’t dance in glass slippers doesn’t hold when you think of all the other things that are happening in the fairy tale: talking mice, a fairy godmother, a pumpkin turned carriage, a prince who can’t recognize the woman he loves by looking at her. The glass could also indicate that only a very delicate person can wear shoes like that and not break them.
Brothers Grimm: Aschenputtel
The brothers Grimm, Wilhelm and Jacob, who traveled extensively through the German speaking world to collect fairy tales, legends, sagas, and stories and then compiled them – with a good portion of embellishment – in a collection Grimms Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Grimm’s Fairy Tales) in 1812. Different editions followed, the last one was published in 1850, with more stories being added, others omitted, many of them changed.
The German name of Cinderella is Aschenputtel, Asche meaning ashes, and Puttel from Hessian for untidy or dirty girl, so it’s similar to Cinderella which comes from cinders. It’s interesting that many heroines in the fairy tales don’t have the grammatical feminine gender but are neuter: das Aschenputtel, das Dornröschen (Sleeping Beauty), das Schneewittchen, das Rotkäppchen. It might just be because their names are diminutives and have the ending –chen attached to them.
The German Aschenputtel differs in many ways from the French version and for that matter from its first version in the first edition of Grimms Märchen. When Aschenputtel loses her mother she visits the grave every day and plants a hazelnut branch on it that her father brought home from one of his trips. In her time of need Aschenputtel goes to the grave and asks the tree to throw gold and silver down on her. The connection of the mother as a helper is established here.
In the first edition, Aschenputtel has two doves which help her sort the lentils, in later versions, it’s a whole flock of birds who help her, as you can see in both pictures.
In the Perrault and Disney version, Aschenputtel loses her shoe when she runs down the steps of the palace. She leaves because the spell is wearing off. In the Grimm version, the prince puts down pitch on the steps so that she can’t escape again like the two nights before. Aschenputtel is still able to make her get-away but has to leave her shoe behind, which, by the way, is not made of glass but of gold.
Another difference is the fact that the stepsisters are trying to make their feet fit into the shoe by cutting off their heel and toes respectively. The doves who witnessed the deceit (because the prince apparently can’t tell) call out to the prince warning him that there is blood in the shoe and he has the wrong bride.
In Perrault’s version, Cendrillon forgives her stepmother and stepsisters, but in one version of the Grimm’s fairy tale, the stepsisters have their eyes picked out.
You can read the English Grimm version here, and here are the German and English version side by side.
Bechstein: Aschenbrödel
Ludwig Bechstein also included the Cinderella story in his fairy tale collection Deutsches Märchenbuch from 1845. He names the heroine Aschenbrödel from middle high German aschenbrodele which means “kitchen boy” or literally “somebody who scrabbles in the ashes”.
Bechstein’s story is very similar to the Grimm version: Aschenbrödel plants the hazelnut tree (that poked her father on his way back from a business trip), she receives clothes and slippers from the tree (or the dead mother), the prince tries to trick her by putting pitch on the steps, the stepsisters cut off their toes and heel and have their eyes picked out by Aschenbrödel’s helper doves.
The whole part where Aschenputtel escapes from the prince and hides in the dove coop and the pear tree, like she does in the Grimm version, is omitted here. The stepsisters in Bechstein’s story are not really her stepsisters but half sisters.
You can read his version here.
Adaptations
As mentioned before, there are many different versions of the Cinderella theme, inspiring operas, plays, ballets, parodies, movies, paintings, and books. I can’t go into all of them or even mention them.
I have collected some of them here in a youtube playlist, and I included my favorite Aschenputtel movie: Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel. (This version is in Czech with English subtitles.)
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