Disney’s artists and writers had plenty of Cinderellas to choose from, had they cared to audition a few. Hundreds of variations on the Cinderella story have been flourishing around the world since at least the ninth century. There’s Zezolla, heroine of a 1634 Neapolitan tale thought to be the first European ““Cinderella’’–her story starts when a governess advises her to murder her cruel stepmother, which Zezolla promptly does. Then there’s Donkeyskin, another prototype that never made it into Mother Goose. She gets her name because she’s forced to run away from home in a donkey skin to avoid her father, who’s intent on marrying her. Even Aschenputtel, or Ash-Girl, the Cinderella immortalized by the Grimm brothers, has a good deal of moral fiber. No fairy godmother pops up to help her: she generates her own magic by keeping faith with her dead mother. But Disney ignored these resourceful maidens in favor of the most docile Cinderella, the one from Charles Perrault’s 1697 version, created for the French court and made almost entirely of sugar.
““Disney told his illustrators he wanted an all-American girl,’’ says Kay Stone of the University of Winnipeg, who has studied the making of the movie. And that’s just what he got, at least in ’50s terms. Since then women’s lives have changed dramatically. But like that other great archetype of ’50s femininity–June Cleaver–Disney’s Cinderella lurks even now in women’s collective unconscious. In fact, the secret of her longevity may be precisely her partnership with Beaver’s mom. The two have a lot in common, besides all the time they spend in the kitchen. By accepting the identities bestowed by their princes, they’re saved from the hardest work in life: figuring out for themselves how the story should go.
““The whole idea of a man who’ll take care of you–it makes you feel feminine,’’ says Katie Roiphe. Her recent article in Esquire, describing a secret fantasy of being rescued by marriage to a rich lawyer, brought ““tons of letters’’ from women who had the same old-fashioned longing. The dream dies hard, especially for those too young to remember how ’50s femininity turned to frustration. Oh, we’ve had updates on the dream–““Pretty Woman,’’ for instance, in which Julia Roberts is transformed from prostitute to rich man’s wife-to-be, with Richard Gere supplying the magic dollar signs. But it’s still the prince who’s in charge of the happy ending. Even a revision progressive enough to cast Brandy as Cinderella hasn’t notably disrupted the balance of power: this is still a tale of female passivity rewarded.
Arguably, it’s time to give Cinderella a real makeover and haul her with us into the next century. Cut her hair, make her a self-starter. But do we really want a fairy-tale heroine who’s in rapture because she’s been promoted to marketing manager? After all, we need fairy tales for their access to the impossible as well as the glimpse they offer into our own hearts. As a story of rescue, recognition, even the saving power of the right dress, ““Cinderella’’ will never be out of date. But as a role model, she’s history. What’s more tempting than another rewrite is a reimagining: how about a fresh look at Zezolla?
