Cinderella: A Child’s Role Model?

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her own home. She is depicted as a helpless child who simply waits to be rescued and suggests that, as many other fictitious heroines, she wishes to be accepted. She humbly assumes the role of the victim and does chores that lessen her true qualities.
This is where Cinderella fails compared to a woman of today. Very few women of the 90’s would patiently wait for a prince charming to fall into their lap. They are expected to stand firm and make a path for themselves. They can no longer be meek and passive and still survive in the 20th century. In her article, “A Feminist’s View of “Cinderella””, Madonna Kolbenschlag believes that Cinderella accepts her condition too graciously and is a “paradigm of traditional feminine socialization” (Kolbenschlag, 534).
These ideals of “Cinderella” can easily be argued as misconceptions. Take for instance “Ashputtle”, where Cinderella allows her step-sisters to mutilate their feet while she hides with the mate and allows the birds to ...

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see good and evil.
Another good quality of “Cinderella” is its attention to the issue of sibling rivalry that occurs in several households across the globe. At one time or another in a child’s life they will feel left behind by a sibling or less loved than a sibling and this can cause great resentment toward a parent or a brother or sister. Bruno Bettelheim covers this topic well in his article titled, ““Cinderella”: A story of Sibling Rivalry and Oedipal Conflicts”. He explains “Cinderella” as a story of a debased heroine overcoming her sibling’s abuse. Bettelheim also believes that this fairy tale siblings with stepsiblings to “explain and make acceptable an animosity which ...

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