If You Were a Donkeyskin, What Cinderella Would You Wear?

I am going to take the very controversial view here that expresses the same view as the preeminent scholars and say that the holocaust is bad… I mean that the two tale types are similar-enough to be associated quite closely, but not taken to be the same tale type: hence their labeling in the Aarne-Thompson scheme as 510A and 510B.

Although there are important distinctions between the two types of tales (uh… duh… the focus on incest), in the majority of the tales, there is a very similar flow of events. In the majority of Donkeyskin tales, the second act runs directly parallel to the majority of Cinderella stories. The key distinctions here are that it is the MAJORITY of each of the tale types and that it is a SIMILAR flow of events.

Within each of the tale types there is a great deal of variation, however, and when comparing these outliers with the other tale type it seems almost like a nonsequitur, but this is not very different from seeing these outliers in comparison to the bulk of their own tale type, although there will be notably more relation. For example, when comparing Donkeyskin tales in general to Doralice by Straparola, the two seem quite foreign to each other. In Doralice, when the title character is informed of her father's intention, she is hidden by her nurse in a chest that the father eventually sells. Then she sneaks out of her chest to clean the quarters of the king that later possesses the chest every day. Eventually, she is caught doing this and marries him. Then the father shows back up and kills their children and frames Doralice. She is convicted and tortured until the nurse reveals to the king the whole truth, at which point she is nursed back to health. Then, they go to war and torture her father into confession. This tale is very divergent from the typical Donkeyskin tales where the princess purposefully flees and attends balls or festivals of some kind, thus meeting the prince and eventually being found out, but this difference within a tale type is to be expected since, over the transition of centuries and cultures there is expected to be some large amount of variation. This variation is similarly seen in the Lin Lan version of Cinderella in comparison to the average Cinderella tales. Just as these outliers are completely out of sync with the opposing tale type, they are not directly in sync with their own tale type, which is one of the major issues of creating tale-type categories, along with determining what aspects of a story are important enough to warrant a new tale type. Still, the basic flows of the tales are predominantly the same, and the only real distinction is in the beginning of the stories, which allows for a separation of the two due to the cultural saliency of incest and fact that the divergent beginnings contribute to a slight overall shift in tone and content that becomes the major defining feature between the two, but the distinctions are still not great enough in quantity or quality to warrant an entirely new tale type. This makes the distinction 510A and 510B (a subdivision within a single overarching tale type) appropriate.

These distinctions are very similar to those of race and what constitutes a "valid" difference to "justify" separating humanity into races. I posit that the difference between 510A and 510B is comparable to the difference between black and white people. (This will at least add some interesting controversy to my paper.) Although there is a very noticeable difference between the average of each of the two groups, which can allow for a distinction, they are all still human in both groups and have a sweeping amount of similarities. The differences only appear great when you compare the two groups to each other or themselves. When you compare those difference with the differences between Hans My Hedgehog or Clever Else or The Bright Sun Will Bring It to Light, it becomes apparent just how insignificant these distinctions really are for determining tale type (or else every tale ever told would be its own unique tale type in the ultimate reduction which allows us to learn and understand nothing).

If you do not understand the race analogy or think me small-minded for it or would like more clarification on it, go ahead and comment with your inquiries. I will end here however because I am wont to pretend at the moment that I have some inkling of care for you and your desire to have this ended already.