Tartar May Just Be Right

Maria Tartar suggests that "Cinderella" and "Donkeyskin" tale types should be read together and I would have to agree. I'll have to admit that at first I did not understand why Tartar felt this way and I have recently understood my earlier problem with her statement has come from my personal, drawing on an American context, affiliation with Cinderella. Growing up I had always looked at Disney's Cinderella as this fantastical, and at the same time real, love story. It become a sort of fantasy to one day be like Cinderella and marry my own idealized prince. And this is where my problem arised with reading Donkeyskin with this story: I would have never dreamed of being chased by after my own father. For this blog I made a Venn diagram in order to better express that these two did not belong together, but ended up proving just the opposite.

Let's look at "Cinderella." Her mom dies in the beginning and her father remarries. She then has an evil stepmother and stepsisters. A sort of magical element in the story is that she has animal friends that understand her speech. In the Grimm's version she weeps under a tree where her mother is buried and cries out, "Shake and wobble little tree! Let gold and silver fall all over me." A bird then drops her wishes over the girl and Cinderella has a dress for the wedding her sisters were invited to. Cinderella attends and the prince only dances with her the entire night. The same routine took place for two more nights, and on the third night Cinderella left a slipper behind. After searching for the young lady whose foot would fit the shoe it was finally discovered to belong to Cinderella. She lived happily ever after with the prince and her stepsisters were blinded by birds.

The Grimm's "All Fur" resembles "Cinderella" in some ways, and in others is totally different. The good and beautiful wife dies in the beginning just as in Cinderella, but the man vows to only marry again if the lady be as lovely as his former wife. The king soon realizes that his daughter is the only women in the kingdom that can fill her mother's shoes and declares he will marry his own daughter. She escapes after procuring dresses and a coat made of fur (she said these were necessary to wed her father). She becomes a cook and too goes to a dance as did Cinderella.

Now what are the morals of both stories? For sure in Cinderella we are left to think beauty triumphs ugly, both inside and out. Cinderella, like Donkeyskin, was domestic and another moral of the tale is that hard work pays off. The Grimms also include in their tale that piety is a virtue and will be rewarded. On her death bed the mother tells Cinderella to "Be pious. Then the dear Lord shall always assist you..." (79). And what about All Fur? Her beauty too triumphs the evil of her father and her hard work as a cook pays of in the end. Christian beliefs/morals are also present in this tale because we can understand her escape being motivated from a pre-existing belief that incest is a sin. So really, the two can and should be read together if you really consider how related the two are in their overall message. The Ashliman site for All Fur stories includes a German tale entitled "Cinder Blower." Of course the mother dies and the father "falls in love" with his daughter. She agrees under the condition that she is given three dresses. The magic here is that the daughter can transport herself and by this, she flees just as in traditional Donkeyskin tales. She wears crowskin, but changes into her dress when she goes to the dance. She is given a ring by the prince, and upon being asked to make him soup she drops the ring into his food. He finds it and orders her to look at his scalp because it itches. It is then that she steps up to look at his head when he discovers her dress under the crowskin. He now knows this is the same girl from the dance and they live happily ever after. The main reason I chose this tale is because of its title: it includes the word cinder which automatically makes you think of Cinderella. However, it is read more like a traditional Donkeyskin tale and in this way fuses both tales together. It's title further suggests that Maria Tarter was right when she said that the two tale types be read together.