Fairy Tales 2010

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Cinderella vs. Donkeyskin

As a fan of the classic Disney movies, I was at first confused as to how the tales of women being swept off their feet by handsome princes could be compared, in any sense, to the disturbing tale of Donkeyskin. However, after reading Tatar's argument: that the two fairy tales should be read together and compared due to their inherently similar motifs, I would have to agree. Having read multiple versions of both Donkeyskin and Cinderella stories I believe there are common threads which tie the two together. First, is the "tendency to defame women and to magnify maternal evil." In Donkeyskin, the dying mother demands that her husband only remarry if the woman is in some way comparable to her (usually the most beautiful woman in the kingdom). The mother makes her husband promise this seemingly impossible task out of jealousy and determination to control his life even after she herself is no longer living. Ultimatly, the mother's selfish request forces the king to develop incestual feelings towards his daughter, the only equitable maiden in the kingdom. The king's feelings frightens the child and forces her to eventually run away to escape her father's inappropriate feelings. Similarly, in Cinderella, the evil stepmother forces Cinderella to do magnitudes of chores. The description of the stepmother in the stories supports Tatar's comparison of the two stories through evil mothers. In the Cinder Maid the evil stepmother is, from the inception of the story, introduced as wicked. "The noble's daughter was set to do all the drudgery of the house, to attend the kitchen fire, and had naught to sleep on but the heap of cinder raked out in the scullery."
Another theme that is consistent with the two stories is the weak minded father. In Donkeyskin, the father never refuses his wife's demand. He never once questions her possibly selfish motives. He never stops himself from falling in love with his daughter. Similarly, in Cinderella, particularly Cinder Maid, the father is extremely weak when it comes to defending his own daughter. He succumbs to the pressure from his new wife and indirectly causes Cinderella's eventual pain and suffering.
The last comparison that can be made between the two stories is the heroine's return to nature. A common characteristic of fairy tales is combining nature and magic into the story. In Donkeyskin, the daughter is forced to, with the 3 gifts that her father made for her, escape into the forest disguised in a cloak of some type of animal skin. She lives in the forest until she comes into contact with a guard and is offered a job in the kitchen. In the Cinder Maid, Cinderella is so alone that she retreats to her mother's grave and pleads to the hazelnut tree to help her- since she can rely on no one else. A little bird responds and grants her wish. This asking and granting of wishes continues on for the rest of the story. In both cases, the female heroine is betrayed by her family, and her ideals of what a family should be, and is forced to escape and reconnect with nature.

2 comments:

  1. Obviously I agree that the two types of stories should be studied together but I think you overemphasize the demonizing of the mother in Donkeyskin. I wouldn't exactly call it an evil motive to want to keep my spouse's love all to myself. Arguably selfish, but I don't think she was doing it because she had evil motives.

    I do think it is interesting how much greater a role the father played in the transformation of the heroine in Donkeyskin than in Cinderella. I think you're right about the commonality of weak mindedness between the two, but I also think that the heroine's predicament was most directly the father's fault in Donkeyskin and most directly the step-mother's fault in Cinderella. While the father's weak-mindedness did allow the cruelty towards Cinderella to continue if he were removed from the picture entirely (save for the point where he mentioned his daughter as a candidate to try on the shoe) the story would have been almost identical, I feel. In Donkeyskin the father plays the most prominent role in the heroine's predicament.

    Just to add to your idea about the return to nature, it seems important to me that in both stories the dresses would be made to resemble nature, as well. That fact definitely plays into the idea of the heroine's being one with nature as they dress themselves in its image and surround themselves with it.

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  2. I would agree with Jimmy Jon that you are perhaps being a smidge too harsh toward the mother in the Donkeyskin story (personally, I think she was trying to protect her daughter from a Cinderella-esque stepmom), but I like your phrasing of the "weak-minded father" as a similarity between the two types of fairy tales. Your discussion of the two types of parents also relates to a question you raised on a comment to my post: Do you think the mother or the father is to blame for the treatment of both heroines? And I think my answer is this: Yes?

    I think you've pointed out that parents are more often the problem than the problem-solver here, whether it be through the aggression of their actions or the lack of intervening. Women, especially in the Donkeyskin story, are shown as being especially excellent in maintaining their virtue and working independently to gain their own happy ending (although there is that whole abusive stepmother situation). I would say overall between the two stories, the father is more to blame. If nothing else, he has no good moments. In Cinderella, he fails to rescue his persecuted daughter from the tyranny of the woman he married, and in Donkeyskin, he's obviously more on the incestuous, perverted side in his actions. The father, absent or not, never helps his daughter and is never good, which I think is a progressive notion behind the story of the tales, no?

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