Heidi Anne Heiner's Blog, page 131

Cinderella Type: ATU 510A Cinderella

Today's Cinderella type is ATU 510A. This is the one everyone thinks they know so well. And they do, but only one version. There are over 190 of them in Cinderella Tales From Around the World. The table of contents lists 190, by the way, but there are several more described in the notes to these tales, so the number is higher in the book.

Just to refresh our memory:

ATU 510A Cinderella

Inarguably, the most familiar Cinderella tale is the one published by Charles Perrault in his Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697. When most people think of Cinderella, a version of Perrault’s tale is the one they imagine.

A young woman is mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters, forced to work as their servant, and usually called by a name associated with ashes or dirty labor. When the stepsisters and the stepmother are invited to a ball (or leave to attend church), they assign an impossible task to Cinderella to prevent her attendance. Usually animals complete the task for her while she receives beautiful clothes from a fairy godmother or other magical helper. She attends the ball (or church) incognito where the prince falls in love with her. She must leave early before her magical accoutrements disappear or her identity is discovered. The same occurs a second and third time with Cinderella losing a shoe as she runs away the third night. The prince acquires the shoe and declares he will wed the woman it fits. Everyone unsuccessfully tries the shoe, including the stepsisters who mangle their feet trying to make it fit, until Cinderella is finally discovered and compelled to try on the shoe. When it fits, she and the prince are married.

I'm going to devote a post to Perrault soon, but I didn't comprehend the true power of his version until I worked on this collection. Cinderellas came before his and many Cinderellas came after. His work influenced so many that came after. And it has dominated the popular view of Cinderella for centuries, pretty much since it appeared. Most of Perrault's versions of tales did this, but still not to the same level as Cinderella. Often the Grimms' version, such as of Little Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty, is well known and recognizable. But if you describe the Grimms' Aschenputtle (their Cinderella 510A) or really almost any other version obviously not directly influenced by Perrault to people not overly familiar with fairy tales, they will be surprised. Where's the glass slipper? The pumpkin carriage? The fairy godmother?!?!

That said, Perrault's version of the magical elements is fairly uncommon. Most of the 510A tales involve several trips to Sunday church, instead of balls. Her dresses and carriages come from various sources, rarely a "sparkly" fairy godmother. There is usually no time stipulation although she leaves early so as to beat her family home, wisdom on her part.

When Is It a Cinderella Tale?

While compiling Cinderella Tales From Around the World, I leaned heavily on the work of Marian Roalfe Cox and Anna Birgitta Rooth as well as the ATU classification system. All of these are discussed in much greater detail in my introduction to the book, but I don't want to get too engrossed in those elements here on the blog. In other words, let's get on to the tales, yes?

But first I will spend a few days talking about the different types of Cinderella tales. I admit, when I started the project years ago, I started out thinking Cinderella was boring. And, to be fair, the one we know so well is rather so because we are saturated with her. Perrault's Cinderella dominates all the others in popular culture and while I appreciate his genius in storytelling--even more so after immersing myself in this project--most of us are rather weary of glass slippers and pumpkin carriages, aren't we?

Across her many, many incarnations, Cinderella is a murderess. She is a victim of incest. She is a victim of future spouse abuse. She can be smart. She can be dumb. She can be humble. She can be haughty. One thing she never is, at least anywhere I read, is a cannibal, although sometimes her sisters are. Sometimes she even gets an unhappy ending. I found versions of her I quite enjoyed. And through them all, I detected her power to keep enchanting us as readers despite our preconceptions.

My book focuses on five Cinderella tale types that are surprisingly different and wouldn't even be called Cinderella by someone interviewed on the street. But Cinderella they are.

Throughout these versions, five primary motifs appear over and over, signifying a Cinderella tale:

1) Persecuted heroine, usually by family
2) Help or helper, usually magic
3) Meeting the prince, usually with true identity disguised
4) Identification or penetration of disguise, usually by means of an object
5) Marriage to the prince

As Marian Roalfe Cox wrote in her own Cinderella:

In compiling this collection of variants the difficulty has not been in tracing resemblances, but rather in determining what degree of family likeness or relationship shall constitute eligibility. Numerous “as the sand and dust” are the stories which have received their share of a family heritage. A particular folk-tale incident may recur in an endless number of permutations and combinations with other sets of incidents, and hopeless is the task of comprehending a series whose term is infinity.

For this reason, this collection is focused upon the female Cinderellas and does not include the Cinderlads which often follow a similar pattern of elements. Quite simply, there was neither space nor time for them.

So over the next five days, I'll discuss these five tale types. And then I'll start sharing individual tales themselves, the ones I fear may get lost in the deluge of tales found in the book. The ones that will hopefully inspire you to want to read more about Cinderella under all her names.

What is the Cinderella Cycle?

What is the Cinderella Cycle? No, it's not Huffy Disney Cinderella Bike (Starlight/Magical Blue, Medium/16-Inch). Sorry, I couldn't resist! That bicycle is one of the top search engine results when you search for Cinderella Cycle on the web.

But our Cinderella Cycle is a term popularized by Anna Birgitta Rooth in her book of the same name, The Cinderella Cycle, first published in 1951. It is long out of print and somewhat rare, but very useful book in understanding the breadth and depth of Cinderella tales.


From my introduction to Cinderella Tales From Around the World:

While there is no official count of Cinderella tales—finding an exact number is virtually impossible—the general consensus is that well over 1,000 variants, with a conservative estimate of over twice that amount, have been recorded as part of literary folklore. In the past few decades, no scholar has apparently taken on the task of tallying them all, presumably due to the vastness of the project. In the end, more countries around the world have at least one, if not several Cinderellas, in their folklore than do not, whether it was created independently or borrowed from another culture.

During the 1800s, many folklorists were focused on finding the genesis tale, the original Cinderella that birthed all the others. Influenced by the scientific principles of evolution as well as language development, many theories were posited and the search for the evolution and genealogy of the tale inspired much research, scholarly papers, and heated debate. The most popular theories centered around India and China origins with a migration towards Europe, but the search and its accompanying theories have mostly fallen into disfavor, or at least a lack of interest, in current times.

First, a definition of a Cinderella tale has to be agreed upon. The Cinderella Cycle, as it was termed by Anna Birgitta Rooth, or the family of Cinderella tales to oversimplify the term, is surprisingly diverse and at first glance appears to be a hodgepodge of tales only barely related. But when the collection is viewed in its entirety, the tales reveal similar plots, themes and events that demonstrate their unity under the Cinderella label. These days we have The Types of International Folktales, a system developed by Anti Aarne, Stith Thompson and Hans-Jorg Uther (ATU System), to categorize the Cinderella tales although some tales defy an easy identification. Since it is the system most used by folklorists today, and also the simplest for cataloging the different Cinderellas, we will use it here without being restricted by it, for some tales fit more than one type or none of the types very comfortably.

For the rest of this week, I will be sharing more of the history of Cinderella scholarship as well as the Cinderella Cycle itself, offering the definition of a Cinderella tale I settled upon to compile my book.

Call for Help: Beauty and the Beast Submissions

Beauty and the Beast Tales From Around the World will be released later this year, and I am finalizing the content. While the book is dominated by ATU 425: The Search for the Lost Husband and its subtypes, including Beauty and the Beast, Cupid and Psyche, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, there will be other Animal Bridegroom tales within it. With little or no exception there will not be Animal Brides. There just isn't book space or time for those. (But they are tempting. Fascinating stuff, these animal spouses. Perhaps someday... And a Swan Maiden collection is in my future whether or not it expands to all Animal Brides.)

However, I wanted to ask for your favorite or even relatively unknown Beauty and the Beast tales, folkloric tales, not modern retellings, but tales that fit in a collection like this, such as the ones found on the Tales Similar to Beauty and the Beast page and the Tales Similar to East of the Sun and West of the Moon page on SurLaLune.

If you offer a tale that I haven't discovered yet and that I use in the collection, I will send you a copy of the book when it is released. Those of you well-read in the folklore of other countries will have a greater chance at suggesting something that has eluded me so far. The more obscure the collection, the better. Grimms and such need not apply! And, no, the tale need not be in English.

If you submit a tale and I already have it, I will add your name to a list for a drawing of a copy of the book when it is released. And, yes, you are guessing at this point because my list is much more extensive than any list on the web, including my own. I have found some unusual and rare ones! This is going to be a fun collection for all of us. I have been working on it for years. I tell my family and friends that while Cinderella is the most popular fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast is perhaps the most beloved. It always wins the "What is your favorite fairy tale?" question. It is mine, too, so despite myself there is extra love going into this one. All of my collections receive my devotion, but this one is special to me, too.

Please submit the tale, the source, and even an online link if one is available, through a comment to this post or a private email to me.

The book will be another 828 page tome like my Cinderella, Mermaid and Bluebeard collections. These tales are inherently longer--those questing searches have high word counts--but there will be well over 150 tales, way more than any other collection to date, although there aren't very many collections of this tale beyond the wonderful work of Betsy Hearne in Beauties and Beasts: (The Oryx Multicultural Folktale Series) and Beauty and the Beast: Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale as well as Jerry Griswold's The Meanings of "Beauty & The Beast" A Handbook.

Cinderella: Our Journey Begins

As I worked to refresh my memory and double check some secondary and primary sources while completing my Cinderella Tales From Around the World, I reread the following passage from Alan Dundes’ introduction to “The Study of the Cinderella Cycle” by Archer Taylor in Cinderella: A Casebook:

In correspondence with Professor J. W. Hassell, Jr. of the University of Georgia, Professor Taylor wrote in April, 1970: “I began to write last November and have perhaps another day’s work. I must not let my grip of this confused subject slip or I shall be another month on this job.” He added in a marginal note, “She took two days more but she is now ready for public appearance.” In a later letter dated April 30, Professor Taylor commented as follows on his own paper “Cinderella was only 12 pp., but I never had the troubles in writing anything that I had with this. And it is, alas, a dull job, when finished. But it does contain much information, and I learned a lot.”

Eureka! I understood this completely. My Cinderella book has been years in the compiling, with fits and tantrums all around while life and my own limitations got in the way again and again. About six months after starting the manuscript, I was seriously sick, the worst in my adult life, but thankfully a temporary ailment in the long run. Cinderella went on the backburner during my months of illness and recovery. My brain simply couldn’t wrap itself around the massive wealth of information on the tale. When I finally was well enough to work on a manuscript again, I tried to return to Cinderella. I couldn’t. So I decided to pick an easier tale to get myself used to the work again. That resulted in Bluebeard Tales From Around the World (Easy? Ha! Easier than Cinderella? Yes….) followed by my mermaids collection.

After completing those, I was finally ready to return to Cinderella. So I did. And for months I worked on it, borrowing time from other projects, reading, translating, searching and searching again.

Then life got in the way again in the form of a house move and renovation. I was about six weeks from completing the manuscript at that point but my life went into overdrive quite unexpectedly and I couldn’t return to it for about six months. When the house was livable and my office workable, I had to practically start all over again for all but a few of the tales were completely blurred and merged in my brain. Cinderella is a slippery slut—not my name for her, that’s one she is often given in the tales!—and I was tempted too many times to give her up. But I had come so far and I was determined to finish.

How did Marian Roalfe Cox and Anna Birgitta Rooth manage their pivotal, groundbreaking works on Cinderella? Before computers, no less! I respected them previously but practically worship them now. That lack of a computer also helped me forgive the slight flaws in their works. Cox, in particular, was amazing and since I couldn’t improve her work, I had to borrow a goodly portion of it for the new book, but more about that later.

And so the book is done. Or at least abandoned and thus made officially done in that way. For Cinderella never ends and I will be thinking about her for the rest of my life, I imagine.

Over the coming weeks, I will be sharing some of the Cinderella knowledge and tales I acquired during this process. I hope you enjoy the journey with me!

Bargain Hardcover: Cloaked by Alex Flinn

 

Cloaked by Alex Flinn is $6.80 in hardcover on Amazon until it is sold out. The paperback book is $4.00 at Cloaked.

Book description:

I'm not your average hero. I actually wasn't your average anything. Just a poor guy working an after-school job at a South Beach shoe repair shop to help his mom make ends meet. But a little magic changed it all.

It all started with a curse. And a frognapping. And one hot-looking princess, who asked me to lead a rescue mission.

There wasn't a fairy godmother or any of that. And even though I fell in love along the way, what happened to me is unlike any fairy tale I've ever heard. Before I knew it, I was spying with a flock of enchanted swans, talking (yes, talking!) to a fox named Todd, and nearly trampled by giants in the Everglades.

Don't believe me? I didn't believe it either. But you'll see. Because I knew it all was true, the second I got cloaked.

Her next book, Towering (Kendra Chronicles), is due out in May 2013. Looks like it is inspired by Rapunzel, yes?

Bargain Books for Friday 1/4/2013

Once Upon A Curse (Tales of the Frog Princess) by E. D. Baker is $1.99 today only in ebook format. This is part of the Frog Princess series that inspired the Disney film.

Book description:

Many years ago a slighted fairy placed a curse on a beautiful young princess-a curse that caused her and all her female descendants to turn into mean, ugly witches if they ever touched a flower after turning sixteen. Now, Princess Emma, who is about to turn sixteen herself, is determined to break the spell once and for all. Emma travels back in time to the day the curse was placed on her ancestor in the hope of preventing the curse from being cast. Unfortunately she isn't successful in her efforts, but she does learn how to break it. Armed with this knowledge, Emma returns to her own time full of hope. But disaster ensues and Emma is about to give up completely-until true love shows itself in the most unexpected place of all.

With a bit of courage, a pinch of luck, and of course, a healthy dose of magic, Princess Emma charms her way through the third hilarious adventure in the Tales of the Frog Princess series.

The Woodcutter by Kate Danley is also marked down today only to $1.99. This has been on my wishlist to look at more closely. The cover is great!

Book description:

Deep within the Wood, a young woman lies dead. Not a mark on her body. No trace of her murderer. Only her chipped glass slippers hint at her identity.

The Woodcutter, keeper of the peace between the Twelve Kingdoms of Man and the Realm of the Faerie, must find the maiden’s killer before others share her fate. Guided by the wind and aided by three charmed axes won from the River God, the Woodcutter begins his hunt, searching for clues in the whispering dominions of the enchanted unknown.

But quickly he finds that one murdered maiden is not the only nefarious mystery afoot: one of Odin’s hellhounds has escaped, a sinister mansion appears where it shouldn’t, a pixie dust drug trade runs rampant, and more young girls go missing. Looming in the shadows is the malevolent, power-hungry queen, and she will stop at nothing to destroy the Twelve Kingdoms and annihilate the Royal Fae…unless the Woodcutter can outmaneuver her and save the gentle souls of the Wood.

Blending magic, heart-pounding suspense, and a dash of folklore, The Woodcutter is an extraordinary retelling of the realm of fairy tales.

Another bargain book today is The Duke Is Mine (Happily Ever After) by Eloisa James, part of her romance series inspired by fairy tales. This title draws from the Princess and the Pea. A rarity for any novel, romance or not. This price may last more than a few days, but I'm not sure.

Book description:

Tarquin, the powerful Duke of Sconce, knows perfectly well that the decorous and fashionably slender Georgiana Lytton will make him a proper duchess. So why can't he stop thinking about her twin sister, the curvy, headstrong, and altogether unconventional Olivia? Not only is Olivia betrothed to another man, but their improper - albeit intoxicating - flirtation makes her unsuitability all the more clear. Determined to make a perfect match, he methodically cuts Olivia from his thoughts, allowing logic and duty to triumph over passion ...until, in his darkest hour, Tarquin begins to question whether perfection has anything to do with love. To win Olivia's hand he would have to give up all the beliefs he holds most dear, and surrender heart, body and soul - but it may already be too late.

Highly Recommended by Leighton: The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healy

The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healy was on my shelf and ended up in Leighton's hands soon after she finished In a Glass Grimmly by Adam Gidwitz during her visit last weekend. This wasn't a gift, but it ended up being one since she loved it so much. I have to acquire a new copy and finally read it.

Book description:

Prince Liam. Prince Frederic. Prince Duncan. Prince Gustav. You've never heard of them, have you? These are the princes who saved Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, and Rapunzel, respectively, and yet, thanks to those lousy bards who wrote the tales, you likely know them only as Prince Charming. But all of this is about to change. Rejected by their princesses and cast out of their castles, Liam, Frederic, Duncan, and Gustav stumble upon an evil plot that could endanger each of their kingdoms. Now it's up to them to triumph over their various shortcomings, take on trolls, bandits, dragons, witches, and other assorted terrors, and become the heroes no one ever thought they could be.

Debut author Christopher Healy takes us on a journey with four imperfect princes and their four improbable princesses, all of whom are trying to become perfect heroes—a fast-paced, funny, and fresh introduction to a world where everything, even our classic fairy tales, is not at all what it seems.

And the giggles commenced from about page two, I think. She adored it, especially Prince Duncan, if my memory is working. She was so immersed that when I tried reading over her shoulder to learn what was so funny, she was oblivious to my presence. And she didn't really want to discuss it. She wanted to finish reading it. I understand the impulse and let her forge ahead.

She was ecstatic to learn a sequel is coming out this year, The Hero's Guide to Storming the Castle (The League of Princes), in April. I think I will have to be a wonderful aunt and send a copy to her.

High Recommendation by Leighton: In a Glass Grimmly by Adam Gidwitz

Leighton received her stack of gift books from me during her visit last weekend. Her first pick to read? In a Glass Grimmly by Adam Gidwitz. Although it has been a year since we read A Tale Dark and Grimm together, she was eager to jump right into this one. Alas, we didn't get to read it together due to time constraints and quite simply her eagerness to read it right away and finish it in a matter of hours. Which resulted in her finishing another book or two, so I will report on those, too.

But the result? She loved it. Her favorite chapter, "The Wonderful Mother," referenced The Emperor's New Clothes, which we got to discuss briefly. Yes, her only memorable exposure to it previously was The Emperor's Cool Clothes by Lee Harper.

But beware that it is dark. There was no giggling girl in the backseat or in the bed or on the couch while she read this one. It didn't bother Leighton and most kids will adore it, but some parents and children will want to steer clear. But I doubt they read here since many of the original tales we discuss all the time at SurLaLune are dark, too, aren't they?

And the book appeared on many best lists for 2012--including Kirkus--so we can only hope there will be more from Gidwitz in the future!

Bargain Ebook: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (Author), Jim Kay (Illustrator), based on an idea by Siobhan Dowd has appeared on many "best lists" this past year, including as a Cybils Finalist honor. The book has consequently been on my alert list. It has dropped, probably temporarily, to $3.49 for ebook format, so I grabbed it myself.

Book description:

At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting— he’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It’s ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth. From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd— whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself— Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined.

No, not folklore, but obviously has some folklore flavor and sounds stunning even if it requires some fortitude to begin to read it.