Who Wants To Psycho Analyze A Fairytale?

With a slight background on fairytales as well as their relation to familial relationships I think it was interesting that the explanation of Cinderella veered off into something Sigmund Freud could be proud of. All the mentioned versions of Cinderella including Ash Puddle and Ye Shien (The Cat Cinderella) are versions I had to read in my Feminist Fairytales class. If anything this particular reading has been fun, but has also managed to toe into the concept of folklore. Instead of diving right into the telling of Cinderella the fairytale has been flushed out and broken down in every detail.

Freud’s theories however were not meant to be applied to these types of writings but to an actual persons personal problems. Applying them to the stories anthropomorphizes them instead of taking them on as simple tales that teach lesions or values to children. The importance of gender is also crucial in the stories. There is not only competition among the women involved but it is almost as if it is appropriate for the stepmother and stepsisters to behave as they do. There is a early reference in the text to the sibling rivalry of Cain and Abel this gave me the impression that the treatment placed on Cinderella is arguably ordained by God since it has been looked at in a biblical context (238)

The role of a parent becomes interchangeable as it is passed between Cinderella’s Stepmother, her fairy Godmother, her prince (and they left out the mice) but the mice as well. Her Fairy Godmother is the only person available to give her any kind of guidance, to this affect I felt even if in some versions of Cinderella she is dumbed down and passive she had no choice but to endure what went on in her household. Her father (the person she is supposedly projecting her Electra complex es feelings onto) is dead. So while she is later freed from her deplorable lifestyle she has also found a new father figure in her prince to project on. These stories are supposed to be both suitable for children and adults however the earlier versions are doing nothing more than making such ideas as incest and lust after material goods and social status seem appropriate.

The idea of being ‘rescued’ by a prince is glamorized but in the case of poems like Ann Sextons ‘Cinderella’ the protagonist goes from one bad end to another. Here's a link to the poem if anyones interested!
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The place of women in Sexton’s poem as well as the reading is very important, the two symbols I found particularly interesting were the fig tree in “The Cat Cinderella” (244) and the hearth in “Ash Puddle”(248) While the fig tree is able to give Cinderella everything that she wants it also propels her towards a new life, later on in the story the fig tree (that’s described as ‘the size of a woman) is cut in two. The enchantment dissipates and to a certain degree this can be argued as a brutal murder. The heath in comparison to this when it comes to symbols of women can be negated. Even if it does represent the idea of home, warmth and coming back to your mother it can also be associated with the dirtiness that ties in with being a woman. The soot an be looked at as filthy and unattractive (menstruation) but is an indicator of who Cinderella is even if she does end up getting married to the prince the soot is a marker for her real identity.

I wanted to highlight several things I found as themes that popped up in my mind as I was reading also:
Social advancement
Social maturity or puberty (Cinderella re emerges as a young woman eligible for marrige)
Exchange of sexuality (Fur slippers in earlier versions, became silk, then glass. There is speculation that the slippers in their earlier forms were sexualized and supposed to represent a woman's vagina)
Sexuality in Childhood (Little Red riding hood was touched on in the text, the idea that the wolf in bed dressed as the grandmother made the combination of the wolves predatory behavior and the grandmothers familiarity made the incident okay.) I have managed to get away from the discussion here but I am unable to understand how a wolf (sexual desire, unfamiliarity with self, sexual awakenings, the unknown) dressed in your grandmothers clothing is some how more appropriate than being in competition with your mother and the women in your house hold for the affections of men and social status. This raises am even crazier issue. To a certain degree this can even slightly promote bestiality. The main purpose of my feminist fairytales class was to examine different revisions of fairytales from a women's point of view yet the women in all of the material we covered (including the different types of Cin Cinderella stories) All but one Lissar in Deerskin by Robin McKinley is in control of what happens to her (this is all after her father goes mad tries to rape her and succeeds ) She is able to change her identity to Deerskin and finally gains control over herself.