Iām tired of hearing people sayĀ āDisneyās Cinderella is sanitized. In the original tale, the stepsisters cut off parts of their feet to make the slipper fit and get their eyes pecked out by birds in the end.ā
I understand this mistake. Iām sure a lot of people buy copies of the complete Grimmās Fairy Tales, see their tale of AschenputtelĀ translated asĀ āCinderellaā, and assume what theyāre reading is the āoriginalā version of the tale. Or else they see Into the Woods and make the same assumption, because Sondheim and Lapine chose to base their Cinderella plot line on the Grimmsā Aschenputtel instead of on the more familiar version. Itās an understandable mistake. But Iām still tired of seeing it.
The Brothers Grimm didnāt originate the story of Cinderella. Their version, where there is no fairy godmother, the heroine gets her elegant clothes from a tree on her motherās grave, and where yes, the stepsisters do cut off parts of their feet and get their eyes pecked out in the end, is not theĀ āoriginal.ā Nor did Disney create the familiar version with the fairy godmother, the pumpkin coach, and the lack of any foot-cutting or eye-pecking.
If you really want theĀ āoriginalā version of the story, youād have to go back to the 1st century Greco-Egyptian legend of Rhodopis. That tale is just this:Ā āA Greek courtesan is bathing one day, when an eagle snatches up her sandal and carries it to the Pharaoh of Egypt. The Pharaoh searches for the owner of the sandal, finds her and makes her his queen.ā
Or, if you want the first version of the entire plot, with a stepdaughter reduced to servitude by her stepmother, a special event that sheās forbidden to attend, fine clothes and shoes given to her by magic so she can attend, and her royal future husband finding her shoe after she loses it while running away, then itās the Chinese tale of Ye Xian youāre looking for. In that version, she gets her clothes from the bones of a fish that was her only friend until her stepmother caught it and ate it.
But if you want the Cinderella story that Disneyās film was directly based on, then the version you want is the version by the French author Charles Perrault. His Cendrillon isĀ the Cinderella story that became the best known in the Western world. His version features the fairy godmother, the pumpkin turned into a coach, mice into horses, etc, and no blood or grisly punishments for anyone. It was published in 1697. The Brothers Grimmās Aschenputtel, with the tree on the grave, the foot-cutting, etc. was first published in 1812.
The Grimmsā grisly-edged version might feel older and more primitive while Perraultās pretty version feels like a sanitized retelling, but such isnāt the case. Theyāre just two different countriesā variations on the tale, French and German, and Perraultās is older. Nor is the Disney film sanitized. Itās based on Perrault.
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