Abuse In Grimm's Cinderella

In “ Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper” by Charles Perrault and in the Grimm Brothers tale of Cinderella as well, Cinderella endures abuse from her stepmother and stepsisters as she is required to do all the housework, deprived love and moral support. In “ Little Snow-White” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, another envious and beauty- preoccupied queen begrudges little Snow-White’s beauty and attempts various and unscrupulous tricks to kill her to win the beauty contest, eliminate competition held by men. Beauty deprives these women of moral and ethical values, allowing them to use men who value only female beauty and associate it with moral goodness. External beauty is a weapon for women to seduce vain but powerful men. On this reading, …show more content…
The daughters do not love the prince rather he is only a step to power. Cinderella knows she is powerless at the house and the only way to get out from her family is to use her advantage of being beautiful. Beauty becomes an asset to use in order to attract the man who is his turn, only wants the prettiest girl ever: “ A fine meal was served up, but the young prince ate not a morsel, so intently was he busied in gazing on her” (Perrault 3). Cinderella realizes that she is success of catching the attention from the prince so the next step is to make the prince becomes hers. At the ball the prince sees how pretty she is and he is immediately falling for her. His love is more of lust than the soulmate connection:“ What they said was very true, for a few day later, the king’s son had it proclaimed, by sound of trumpet, that he would merry her whose foot this slipper would just fit in” (5). He does not care who the person is as long as she fits the glass slipper then he believe she is the prettiest one who he meets in the ball. In the article, Bettelheim describes how “Cinderella” is the feeling of siblings’ rivalry (Bettelheim 1). This is because every sibling is trying to show off that she is the best by comparing to each other in order to fulfill her satisfaction. This leads people lost their morality by getting the wants only: “Cinderella, who was not less good than beautiful, gave her two sisters lodgings in the palace, and that vey same day matched them with two great lords of the court” (5). Cinderella finally wins the game as she obtain the prince and become powerful that she is able to give something to her stepsisters. This shows that no one can bully Cinderella anymore as she is on the top of her family