Confessions Of An Ugly Stepsister Essay

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is a novel based off Cinderella. The story departs from the original in many ways and follows the stepsisters, Iris and Ruth for a majority of the book, later introducing Clara van den Meer or Cinderella and her family. The characters and narrator are constantly bringing up beauty as a curse. The author also shows a lot of changes in the form of Clara and the household in general. Possibly the biggest difference from the classic Cinderella story and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is that the characters are neither evil or good, the stepsisters are not antagonists and Clara is not a perfect human. Every character in the story has issues, problems, and shortcomings along with their proficiencies and good qualities. Another notable difference is the lack of magic, magical elements such as the bird that brings Clara her dress and the pumpkin carriage with mice drivers were fabricated by Clara to hide the truth of how she got to the ball from her stepmother. …show more content…
In the book it is said Clara’s beauty is an error and that it belongs in Luykas Schoonmaker’s “Gallery of God’s Mistakes”, it may not seem like beauty is a curse, but it makes more sense when you think about what Clara went through just because of her beauty, such as her Dad using her to sell tulips. relative to that Luykas is also cursed by beauty because he knows he’ll never be able to live up to his painting “Young Girl with Tulips” a portrait of Clara. In the chapter “Midnight” luykas says “There’s no escaping the torment of having painted young woman with tulips, and having it dog me for the rest of my life.” From the time that he paints it he suffers from knowing this and wishes it were destroyed or he had never painted it at all, until the end when Ruth lights the painting on