Favorite Thing About Them: It varies from version to version, since her personality is a little different in each retelling, but most common among all is the fact that she never lets her hard life make her bitter or destroy her kindness. Even in versions where she is bitter and not always kind (for example, Leslie Caron’s The Glass Slipper), there’s still a clear spark of warmth and goodness within her that her stepfamily can’t extinguish and which is eventually rewarded.
Least Favorite Thing About Them: This isn’t her fault, of course, but the fact that in most versions she’s beautiful while her stepsisters are ugly or plain, implicitly linking beauty with goodness and worth. This probably explains why so many modern retellings either make the stepsisters beautiful too or give one of them a redemption arc. The latter choice fits with Perrault’s comment that the younger sister was less bad than the older one anyway.
Three Things I Have in Common With Them:
*I love pretty clothes.
*Like Disney’s Cinderella, I love animals.
*Like most versions of her, I always try to be kind.
Three Things I Don’t Have in Common With Them:
*I’ve never been abused or treated like a slave.
*I don’t have small feet.
*I’m not very good at housework (not that Cinderella is naturally good at it, per se, she’s just had plenty of forced practice).
Favorite Line:
This passage from the Disney version:
Oh, that clock! Old killjoy. I hear you. “Come on, get up,” you say, “Time to start another day.” Even he orders me around. Well, there’s one thing. They can’t order me to stop dreaming. And perhaps someday… (sings)
….THE DREAMS THAT I WISH WILL COME TRUE.
This is an excellent quote to cite whenever anyone claims (either as praise or as a criticism) that Cinderella is always passive and “never complains.“ Here she’s unabashedly complaining and annoyed at being jarred out of her dreams and forced to start another day of hard work and insults from her stepfamily. But at the end, we find the real key to her character: the thing that helps her survive and saves her from becoming hard and bitter. It’s that she never gives up hope.
And from the 1997 version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, when she prays to her father’s spirit in the garden after the Stepmother insults her following the ball:
“Father, I know I promised that I’d never leave here, but after tonight, I don’t see how I can stay. If you only knew how she’s changed, you’d understand. I deserve better, Father. I deserve to be loved. And that’s what I found out tonight, and that’s all that really matters.”
BROTP: Her Fairy Godmother, and in the Disney version the mice and birds.
OTP: The Prince.
NOTP: Her Stepmother, or. in the case of the opera La Cenerentola, her stepfather Don Magnifico.
Random Headcanon: As a princess and later a queen, she’ll always respect her servants, employees and subjects as equals to herself, and be renowned for her fair, generous treatment of them. She’ll also be a particular advocate for orphans and other children in need.
Unpopular Opinion: The Cinderella of the Disney version and other traditional retellings deserves all the defense in the world; to disparage her as a weakling for “letting” her stepfamily abuse her and being “helpless” without her Fairy Godmother is victim-blaming. That said, retellings like Three Wishes for Cinderella, Ella Enchanted, Ever After, Cinder, Mechanica, et al, that feature a feistier, less conventionally sweet and more proactive Cinderella are welcome too. There’s room for both types of Cinderella, just like there’s room for both types of women in the real world.
Song I Associate With Them:
Disney’s classic, "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes.”
“In My Own Little Corner” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical. (Actually I’m tempted to list every song from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s score.)
“Non piú mesta accanto al fuoco” (”No longer sad beside the fire”) – her triumphant final aria from La Cenerentola.
The title song from the 1935 Betty Boop cartoon Poor Cinderella:
Favorite Pictures of Them:
This illustration by Edmund Dulac:
This illustration by Arthur Rackham:
This illustration of the Grimms’ Aschenputtel by Elen Abbot:
Disney’s Cinderella:
Yanina Zhejmo in the 1947 Russian film version:
Leslie Caron’s scrappy gamine Ella from 1955’s The Glass Slipper:
This illustration by Kinuko Craft:
Brandy Norwood’s 1997 Rodgers and Hammerstein Cinderella, with Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother:
Laura Osnes in the Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical, 2013:
Favorite Thing About Them: It varies from version to version, since her personality is a little different in each retelling, but most common among all is the fact that she never lets her hard life make her bitter or destroy her kindness. Even in versions where she is bitter and not always kind (for example, Leslie Caron’s The Glass Slipper), there’s still a clear spark of warmth and goodness within her that her stepfamily can’t extinguish and which is eventually rewarded.
Least Favorite Thing About Them: This isn’t her fault, of course, but the fact that in most versions she’s beautiful while her stepsisters are ugly or plain, implicitly linking beauty with goodness and worth. This probably explains why so many modern retellings either make the stepsisters beautiful too or give one of them a redemption arc. The latter choice fits with Perrault’s comment that the younger sister was less bad than the older one anyway.
Three Things I Have in Common With Them:
*I love pretty clothes.
*Like Disney’s Cinderella, I love animals.
*Like most versions of her, I always try to be kind.
Three Things I Don’t Have in Common With Them:
*I’ve never been abused or treated like a slave.
*I don’t have small feet.
*I’m not very good at housework (not that Cinderella is naturally good at it, per se, she’s just had plenty of forced practice).
Favorite Line:
This passage from the Disney version:
Oh, that clock! Old killjoy. I hear you. “Come on, get up,” you say, “Time to start another day.” Even he orders me around. Well, there’s one thing. They can’t order me to stop dreaming. And perhaps someday… (sings)
….THE DREAMS THAT I WISH WILL COME TRUE.
This is an excellent quote to cite whenever anyone claims (either as praise or as a criticism) that Cinderella is always passive and “never complains.“ Here she’s unabashedly complaining and annoyed at being jarred out of her dreams and forced to start another day of hard work and insults from her stepfamily. But at the end, we find the real key to her character: the thing that helps her survive and saves her from becoming hard and bitter. It’s that she never gives up hope.
And from the 1997 version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, when she prays to her father’s spirit in the garden after the Stepmother insults her following the ball:
“Father, I know I promised that I’d never leave here, but after tonight, I don’t see how I can stay. If you only knew how she’s changed, you’d understand. I deserve better, Father. I deserve to be loved. And that’s what I found out tonight, and that’s all that really matters.”
BROTP: Her Fairy Godmother, and in the Disney version the mice and birds.
OTP: The Prince.
NOTP: Her Stepmother, or. in the case of the opera La Cenerentola, her stepfather Don Magnifico.
Random Headcanon: As a princess and later a queen, she’ll always respect her servants, employees and subjects as equals to herself, and be renowned for her fair, generous treatment of them. She’ll also be a particular advocate for orphans and other children in need.
Unpopular Opinion: The Cinderella of the Disney version and other traditional retellings deserves all the defense in the world; to disparage her as a weakling for “letting” her stepfamily abuse her and being “helpless” without her Fairy Godmother is victim-blaming. That said, retellings like Three Wishes for Cinderella, Ella Enchanted, Ever After, Cinder, Mechanica, et al, that feature a feistier, less conventionally sweet and more proactive Cinderella are welcome too. There’s room for both types of Cinderella, just like there’s room for both types of women in the real world.
Song I Associate With Them:
Disney’s classic, "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes.”
“In My Own Little Corner” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical. (Actually I’m tempted to list every song from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s score.)
“Non piú mesta accanto al fuoco” (”No longer sad beside the fire”) – her triumphant final aria from La Cenerentola.
The title song from the 1935 Betty Boop cartoon Poor Cinderella:
Favorite Pictures of Them:
This illustration by Edmund Dulac:
This illustration by Arthur Rackham:
This illustration of the Grimms’ Aschenputtel by Elen Abbot:
Disney’s Cinderella:
Yanina Zhejmo in the 1947 Russian film version:
Leslie Caron’s scrappy gamine Ella from 1955’s The Glass Slipper:
This illustration by Kinuko Craft:
Brandy Norwood’s 1997 Rodgers and Hammerstein Cinderella, with Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother:
Laura Osnes in the Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical, 2013:
