English 122: Brief Essay
　

Cinderella

     Sexton seems to be a master of poetic sarcasm.  She pokes fun at established fairy tales, but manages to sound lyrical as she does it.  It says a lot about her talent as an author, that she can inject her own unique brand of dark, sardonic realism, into a well-known fairy tale, and still preserve a sense of poetry.

    The differences between this Cinderella story and the original are quite pronounced, depending on what you mean by the question.  Almost every culture has a Cinderella story in one form or another.  This one in particular, seems to stem from the old  Brothers Grimm, complete with self-mutilation, and needless violence. The author obviously chose this version of the story in order to add to her ongoing theme of stark realism. If one wishes to be technical, it can easily be said that the author's story bears no difference from the original.  It is after all, merely an archaic divergence of a story that has been repeated, and recited  all around the world.

    Now, if one wishes to compare it to the wishy-washy technicolor version, immortalized by the creative genius of Walt Disney, then yes, discrepancies abound. For one, there is no murder or blood, in Walt Disney's pasty, sugary-sweet adaptation of the common folk tale.  There is no self-mutilation, no pecking out of eyes. There is nearly the beautiful, plucky main character, and her assortment of inexplicably anthropomorphic common variety  house rats. She defeats her evil stepmother, gets her charming prince, and lives the dream, as they say. Unrealistic to a fault, but thus is the nature of children's stories.

    What people forget all to often, is that stories like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow-White, were never meant for children. Originally, they were folktales, designed to recite to those who would hear it, the dark, twisted way of the world. Their new incarnations, painted-over, and dolled up by the mass media, are laughable, compared to what they used to be.

    Perhaps, in doing this, Sexton is not splitting from the halls of established fairy tale, but returning to it. By separating the sweetness from the narrative, and reintroducing the darker elements of the plot, she portrays Cinderella as it was originally portrayed--a story of an oppressed girl, who gives her step-sisters their horrifically just desserts. She confronts us with the true nature of folklore, the darker nature that it was given by the Brothers Grimm.  

 
    From the beginning, folklore was always meant to terrify us.