Elements of a Cinderella Story
What exactly makes a story a Cinderella story? While there seem to be several interpretations of this, there also seems to be general agreement that you will usually find certain elements in a Cinderella story. The main character is generally, but not always, a girl who is badly treated by her family. Cinderella is a good and kind person. Her goodness is rewarded with magical assistance. She is recognized for her worth by something she has left behind (for example, a golden slipper). She is elevated in position by a royal person, who loves her for her good qualities.
Story Variations
I was surprised to find that as early as the late nineteenth century, variations of the story were being collected for publication. In 1891 The Folk-Lore Society in London published Marian Roalfe Cox's Cinderella: Three Hundred and Forty-Five Variants of Cinderella, Catskin, and Cap 0' Rushes, Abstracted and Tabulated, with a Discussion of Medieval Analogues and Notes. Professor Russell Peck's online
Cinderella Bibliography will give you an idea of just how very many versions there are. The bibliography, which includes summaries for many of the stories, includes basic European texts, modern children's editions and adaptations, including versions of the Cinderella story from around the world, as well as a great deal of other information.
The Cinderella Project
If you'd like to compare some versions yourself, visit
The Cinderella Project. It is a text and image archive, which contains a dozen English versions of Cinderella. According to the site's introduction, "The Cinderellas presented here represent some of the more common varieties of the tale from the English-speaking world in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. Materials to construct this archive were drawn from the
de Grummond Children's Literature Research Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi."
More Cinderella Resources
Cinderella Stories, from The Children's Literature Web Guide, provides an excellent list of reference books, articles, picture books, and online resources. One of the most comprehensive children's books I've found is Judy Sierra's Cinderella (compare prices), which is part of The Oryx Multicultural Folktale Series. The books contains one- to nine-page versions of 25 Cinderella stories from different countries. The stories are good for reading aloud; there are no illustrations of the action, so your children will have to use their imaginations. The stories also work well in the classroom, and the author has included several pages of activities for children nine to fourteen years old. There is also a glossary and a bibliography as well as background information.
An interesting article, "Multicultural Cinderella Stories," appeared in Book Links, a publication of the American Library Association. The author, reference librarian Mary Northrup, recommends a number of Cinderella stories, including tales from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. She also includes a list of parodies and humorous treatments of the Cinderella story.
Help!
While I have read some versions of the Cinderella story, there are many I have not read. It would be helpful to me and to those who visit About Children's Books, if you would
post your comments, good and bad, about any Cinderella stories you and your children have read.
Related Links
"Grimm's Fairy Tales and Other Versions" is an article I wrote about the brothers Grimm and their fairy tale collection, with an emphasis on some other Cinderella versions and resources.
The Cinderella page on the Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts site contains the texts of folktales and related stories from a variety of different countries about persecuted heroines.
"Cinderella or The Little Glass Slipper" is an online version of the classic tale by Charles Perrault, from The Blue Fairy Book.
