Cinderella Syndrome Essay -- essays research papers

Cinderella SyndromeI think the time has come for someone to save up Cinderella The Sequel.How did we get here? In 1697, french writer Charles Perrault updated an age-old pouf tale about a young woman named Cinderella to appeal to his contemporaries, French nobility and bourgeoisie. So many of the early versions of the tale boasted a in truth resourceful young woman who played an active role in her destiny. Perrault, however wrote his Cinderella as a well-mannered, docile, selfless women who would fit seamlessly with the ideal seventeenth century upper-class society. Historically, fairy tales fork up reflected the values of society in which they were written or revised mirroring its preoccupations, obsessions, ambitions, and shortcomings. What do these updates say about our horticultures billet of women and marriage? It was this version that Walt Disney made famous in the 1950s and to which feminists strongly reacted to in the 1960s and 1970s and ultimately co-opting the narra tive to their own needs. What do these updates say about our cultures view of women and marriage?In her famous poem, Cinderella, Ann Sexton mocks the jubilantly ever after. Cinderella and the prince lived, they say, happily ever after, like two dolls in a museum case that was never bothered by diapers or dust.Todays teenage girls have been brought up by women who read Sexton and her peers and who have taught their daughters that they can lack it all, marriage, career, family. But can they have it all? I feel that ...