Analysis Of Cinderella Story

Over the years, many versions of Cinderella have been written, each one is unique in itself but, they share just enough characteristics with the original tale that they can still be called a Cinderella story. One of the key characteristics of a Cinderella story is that there is a stepmother and stepchild. But it is deeper than that, throughout the history of this story the stepmother is always shown as being cruel towards her stepchild. Not only will the nature of the stepmothers’ cruelty be discussed but also the motivations behind them. This will be done through the analysis of three versions of the Cinderella story, “Yeh-Hsien”, “The Story of the Black Cow”, and “Lin Lan”.
The first story that this is evident in is Yeh-Hsien. In this story …show more content…
The Brahmin’s wife then dies, and lives for a few years alone with just his son. The Brahmin eventually remarries to a woman who already has a daughter of her own. This is where the role of the cruel stepmother comes into play, for example, “the cakes made for her stepson were of ashes, with just a little flour to give it the appearance of food” (Norton 125). The stepmother is purposefully feeding her stepson ashes. When everyone else at the dinner table is eating a fine feast. It is not because there is not enough food for the son, or that the son has misbehaved and the ashes were some sort of punishment. The stepmother only did this to be mean to her stepson. This scene is what establishes the plot and the main conflict in the story, the stepmother versus the stepson. This is very important to the story because it not only shows that the stepmother mistreats the stepson, but it is what drives the stepson to go to the cow for help. This is when the role of magic comes into play and the plot is furthered through the cow. But none of this would have been possible if the stepmother was not mean to her stepson, then he would not tell all his problems to the cow and the stepmother would not eventually kill the …show more content…
In “The Story of the Black Cow” she puts flour into the food just so it appears like food, when it really was ash. She didn’t do it to make it more palatable for her stepson, but she did it to hide the fact that he was being served ashes. Then in “Yeh-Hsien” the stepmother waits until her husband has passed away to begin to mistreat her stepdaughter. It seems that both of these women are taking deliberate actions to prevent their husbands to find out about their cruel