Cinderella

In The Glass Slipper, the theme of jealousy is placed in cultural context. Beauty and grace were incredibly important parts of women in 16th century France and the importance of them are stressed through the new stepmother's physical jealousies of Cinderella. Because "she could not bear the good qualities of this pretty girl; and the less, because they made her own daughters so much the more hated and despised", Cinderella's stepmother displays her "ill humor" by employing the child "in the meanest work of the house". Thus with her jealousies, the step-mother is seen as wicked, and ungraceful and tries to diminish Cinderella's beauty and grace through housework, which was stressed as a work for the poor. In you term paper, you may opine that in the 20th century, audiences could not relate at all to a stepmother full of such shallowness, that the producers of ever after have provided a legitimate excuse for the stepmother's bitterness towards her stepdaughter. In this version, the storytellers emphasize the girl's great love for her father. When the father dies, his new bride cries out, "You cannot leave me here." This shows us that the stepmother's distress is enormous as a man she barely knew brought her to a new place with her daughters - and left her.

Her only connection to this life was the man who has now abandoned her and it is helpful to realize that the stepmother's hostility has some legitimacy. She is in a tough situation as a single mother with a household to run, and three girls to rise. Still, Cinderella hardly deserves the fall from the good life she had with her father. Example to consider when writing an essay: When the girl appears ungrateful for the life as a servant, the stepmother says wearily, "After all that I do, after all that I have done." It is one of those moments when the oppressor twists things around to feel like the victim. The film doesn't imply that the stepmother is correct, but provides a justification for her being a victim in the story. Grace was an equally important attribute to beauty, perhaps even more, in 16th Century France and Perrault stresses this in the moral of his story. His moral however is written down, and not suggested throughout his story, as this was normal in fairy-tales back then.