Cinderella

5 Pages 1188 Words

In reviewing the transition of Cinderella’s tale, an apparent difference arises from entertainment and optimism replacing didactics and morals. This is due to the changing view of childhood throughout the centuries; much like the aspect of romanticizing the child became a plague in children’s literature during the time of the Grimm brothers. Now the modern child in the twenty-first century may not have the similar life experiences, that is death, slavery or amputation is not common to see, but they are certainly made aware of those events through television. The setback to that is the explicit presentation of the media ceases the use of imagination. Since the events that children are familiar too shift, therefore, literature must also make an adjustment to spark the interest of a child. Another change present is the length: the modern version is one page (without illustrations) while the nineteenth century version is five. In view of this, two probable reasons of such shortage are that children have a short attention span, and the other is that there is room for the use of imagination. Instead of a child reading that Cinderella wore “splendid silver dress…silver slippers” from the later version, “wonderful ball dress” allows the child to think of a dress and shoes with a color of his/her choice. It is also evident that the tale is set in the children’s viewpoint: where the setting is in the “big house”, characters are good or evil, themes are not depressive.

The removal of a large portion of the Grimm version is due to the depressive and traumatic events within it. Some of the tale’s characters were eliminated. The young readers fail to notice the removal of a mother’s role or in this case a mother “lying on her deathbed”. In perceiving the view of a child the presence of a mother’s character is not missed, because they have a protagonist that brings climax to the story. Furthermore, the real mother cha...