Step-Mom has got it going on!

How do you know it's not her step-mom?!?!?!?

What is most interesting about Maria Tatar's conclusions about Donkeyskin and Cinderella stories is how one has become a part of mainstream culture and the other has not. I'm sorry but I don't think I've ever seen a Donkeyskin re-make in modern times. Perhaps this is what makes me resist declaring that the two should be compared with each other. To me, even the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella seems so much less obscene than the Donkeyskin tales where the father, driven to the point of raging lust by the death of his wife, attempts to marry his daughter because she looks the most like his lost spouse.

However, the more I think about it, the more I come to agree with Tatar. For instance, a story like Ass-Skin by Wentworth Webster Basque combines the idea of a Cinderella tale with that of a Donkeyskin one. Read it here: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0510b.html#webster.

In that story, a girl named Faithful is accused of a crime she did not commit. Forced to fake her death, she wears an ass' skin to disguse herself. She ends up going back to a ball to seduce the prince (sound familiar?) One problem: The king wants her as well. The story ends in Oedipal madness! Prince kills King and marries Faithful and they live happily ever after and have two children who die but then get heaven ready for Faithful and husband and then they die as well and go to heaven YAY!!! (phew...I'm out of breath after that).

Both Cinderella and Donkeyskin tales are based off the belief that good triumphs over evil. Sure, the king wishes to have the daughter but she will saved! Sure, the step-mother wants to keep Cinderella from happiness but her plot will be foiled! As Tatar shows in her argument, these two tale types describe family dynamics from both the side of a mother and a father. Thus, I have no problem with the two story types being studied together. Can't wait for the Disney film about Donkeyskin!