Cinderella: An Old Favorite

Everybody and their mother has done a retelling of Cinderella. There's a dozen movies, countless young adult novels, picture books, and the like. I wrote a version called Shoperella when my class did a reading section on Cinderella in 4th grade.

Cinderella is definitely a driving cultural force and such a household name that there is hair metal band from the 80s called Cinderella. She is constantly referenced in song, Disney made two sequels to their 1950s film and more. She's pretty much everywhere.

                                                                                   I feel like Cinderella herself could get behind this song.

                                                                                         Also Cinderella III: A Twist in Time gets crazy.

I think the reason behind Cinderella's enduring popularity is to some extend, we all feel like Cinderella. Somebody is the Stepmother, keeping us down, whether it's The Man or ourselves or our bosses or significant others. Most people feel like they're just one great event from striking it rich, and everybody loves an underdog. Cinderella is an underdog who manages to get everything we think she wants, and it's all perfect and amazing. At some base level, it's what most of us wish we could have. (Note: Cinderella is collected in The Blue Fairy Book)

The Bushy Bride

The Bushy Bride comes from Andrew Lang's Red Fairy Book. It is a very similar story to Diamonds and Toads, in which a kind sister is greatly rewarded for her treatment of hidden fairies and an awful, cruel sister is punished. It also contains elements of 3s, like many other fairy tales (the kind sister visits the King she later marries 3 times before she claims she will leave forever and he manages to see her). It's Aarne-Thompson* type 403, which is the black-and-white bride. More after the jump.

An Introduction

The whole purpose of this blog is discuss strange, wonderful, odd, and pretty fairy tales. I have always loved fairy tales and have read many different collections. My favorite, however, and the color fairy books by Andrew Lang. He collected stories from around the world into a huge series of illustrated volumes. However, they have all been digitized and most, if not all, are available online for free at Project Gutenberg!

Here's some cool information about the Andrew Lang books:

• Snow White is referred to as Snowdrop in The Red Fairy Book
• He compiled 12 volumes, collecting a total of around 437 tales.
• Upon rereading some of the volumes, M.M. Kaye was inspired to write "The Ordinary Princess", which is my all time favorite book.
  
• The colors make little sense. In order of publication, they are: Blue, Red Green, Yellow, Pink, Grey, Violet, Crimson, Brown, Orange, Olive, and Lilac.
• They are also referred to as the Rainbow Fairy Books, although the colors don't match up with any rainbow I know of.

For my next post, I will actually talk about a specific fairy tale! Be sure to tune in.