“Once upon a time there lived an unhappy young girl. Her mother was dead and her father got married a widow who has two daughters”. Are there two sentences familiar for you? I know your answer is YES!!! This is the Cinderella story (or Cenerentola in Italian) a very common and told tale for kids. Cinderella is a beautiful and ancient record from the German tradition which has been narrated by mothers to daughters during more than three hundred years. However, this beauteous tale has two different faces: the magical and the dark. These two different versions were written by Walt Disney and the other by The Grimm Brothers. This essay focuses on analyzing those aspects of these two sides that make different and mysterious this intriguing child fairy tale.
The first aspects to discuss in this essay are the characters. In the Walt Disney animation, Cinderella was a delicate, blond and blue eyed girl. As well, she had a cruel step-mother and two bad looking and dull step-sisters. An important role was played by the mice who always sang with Cinderella and of course, the absentminded fairy Godmother that made the Cinderella’s wish possible. On the contrary, in the Grimm’s tale, Cinderella had a beautiful and white step-mother and step-sisters but with an inhuman heart with the frail and blondish girl. In this story, Cinderella is always assisted by sparrows and doves; there is no Godmother and mice in that version, all the magical events are provided by the birds.
Secondly, I will talk about the plot of both tales. For Walt Disney, the story starts with a lovely father who died and his sweet orphan was taken care by her merciless step-mother who obligates to do unjust household chores every day, until one day distracted appeared to her and turned a pumpkin into float, mice into horses and the Cinderella’s drag into crystal dress and slippers. Finally, Cinderella met the handsome prince in the dancing, but she lost one slipper. Thus, the prince asked each princess of the kingdom to wear the slipper until he found the dirty owner and got married with. On the other hand, The Grimm Brothers said that Cinderella was a child whose mother died and her father abandoned her for a young woman and her two good looking daughters. They treated like a servant and the gorgeous girl always went to cry on her mother’s tomb and talk with her bird friends. One day, Cinderella and her step-sisters were invited to the prince’s dancing and the birds gave her a golden dress and she could go with the prince. Cinderella suddenly escaped and lost a slipper. The prince decided going to each house of the high society’s families in order to find his future wife. When he arrived to Cinderella’s’ house, the step-sisters cut their toe and heel, but the birds warned him that Cinderella was his future wife.
The last item to converse is the origin of both stories. The most recent adaptation was provided by Walt Disney, an American businessman, and it was an animation released on February 15th, 1950. This cartoon became popular immediately and today is cataloged as a Disney classical movie. This version was taken from Charles Perrault, a French man who re-wrote the Grimm stories and included the pumpkin and the fairy Godmother, next Walt Disney introduced the talkative mice and the goofy step-mothers.In contrast, Jacob and Whilhelm Grimm, two brothers born in the 19th century, picked up the German oral tradition of three hundred years and engraved Aschenputtel, the bloody and cruel story about an “ashery” girl who suffers abuse. The first edition was sold just in Germany and Austria; but Jacob and Whilhelm took their tale to different regions of the world and it was translated to many languages. Even thought, because of the excessive violence written on the pages of this story, it was banned and later changed to permit the children read it.As a final point, Cinderella is not just a pink tale about princesses and fairy Godmothers, this medieval story tells us about the shady way of living and thinking that European people had in the middle age. Most people believe that Walt Disney spoiled this teuton folk tale, and other group claim that the Grimm’s brother were a crazy men who wrote brutal legends for kids. I believe that both narrations are valuable and achieve their own goals: getting money and to transmit an olden German portrait.
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