Should "Cinderella" and "Donkeyskin" Be Read Together?

I strongly believe that the “Cinderella” and “Donkeyskin” tales should be read together. Although the major plot points that run through every version of the “Cinderella” tale differ in some important ways from those that wind through every version of the “Donkeyskin” tale (respectively – a cruel stepmother and stepsisters degrade a rich man or king’s pitiful daughter versus an amorous father and king motivates his young daughter to run away), I think reading one off of the other provides compelling material to fill in the gaps. Again, the “Donkeyskin” tales provide a potentially incestuous relationship as the primary motivation (cause) for the effect of the princess running away from her father. If we deliberate as to why the father is such a weak figure in the “Cinderella” tales, we could extrapolate from his typical motivations from the “Donkeyskin” tales and assume that “Cinderella” is, in effect, a “cleaned-up” version of the “Donkeyskin” tales. Indeed, as Maria Tatar points out (regarding the work of Marian Cox), many variants of the “Cinderella” narrative actually incorporate a father with incest on the brain as a plot point.

But to compare the two types of tales is perhaps the best way to see how they work for and against each other. Maria Tatar rightly notes that

the two narratives encoded in the tale-type index seem virtually unrelated at first glance. The plots of ‘Cinderella’ stories are driven by the anxious jealousy of biological mothers and stepmothers who subject the heroine to one ordeal of domestic drudgery after another; the plots of [‘Donkeyskin’] tales are fueled by the sexual desire of fathers, whose unseemly behavior drives their daughters from home. In tales depicting the social persecution of a girl by her stepmother, the central focus comes to rest on the unbearable family situation produced by a father’s remarriage… In tales depicting erotic persecution of a daughter by her father, stepmothers and their daughters tend to vanish from the central arena of action (Tatar 102-3).

After noting these significant plot points, Tatar rightly asserts, “Yet the father’s desire for his daughter in the second tale type furnishes a powerful motive for a stepmother’s jealous rages and unnatural deed in the first tale type. The two plots can be seen as conveniently dovetailing to produce an intrigue that corresponds to the oedipal fantasies of girls. Psychoanalytic criticism has indeed seen ‘Cinderella’ and [‘Donkeyskin’] as enactments of Oedipal desires, with each tale suppressing one component (love for the father or hatred of the mother) of the Oedipal plot” (Tatar 103).

Honestly, I do not know what more I could say that Tatar did not already make so clear in her introduction to the “Cinderella”/“Donkeyskin” section of The Classic Fairy Tales. I think the oedipal readings are undeniably compelling, and I am disposed to reading the modern-day preference for a wicked stepmother over an incestuous father as reflective of modern inclinations toward patriarchal order and a readership comprised of children. This would be why we hear so little about the “Donkeyskin” tales, as opposed to the extremely popular “Cinderella” stories.