Things You May Not Have Known About Cinderella
The tale of Cinderella is older than you think. It was first told in Ancient Greece, in the 1st Century B.C. In this version of the tale, set in Egypt, a bird drops a slipper made of roses into the Pharaoh’s lap, who orders his servants to find whoever the shoe fits, and he will make her his Queen.
Another tale from China called Ye Xian is one of the oldest variants of the Cinderella story. The story first appears during the 9th Century in the “Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang” and is set in the 3rd century BC. Here the hardworking and lovely girl befriends a fish, which is killed by her stepmother. Ye Xian saves the bones, which are magic, and they help her dress appropriately for a festival. When she loses her slipper after a fast exit, the king finds her and falls in love with her.
In the German version of the story, the evil stepsisters are punished for their deception by having their eyes pecked out by birds. In other versions, they are forgiven, and made ladies-in-waiting with marriages to lesser lords.
The glass slipper is unique to one version, written by Charles Perrault; in other versions of the tale it may be made of other materials (in the version recorded by the Brothers Grimm, for instance, it is gold) and in still other tellings, it is not a slipper but an anklet, a ring, or a bracelet that gives the prince the key to Cinderella’s identity. In Rossini’s opera “La Cenerentola” (“Cinderella”), the slipper is replaced by twin bracelets to prove her identity. Interpreters unaware of the value attached to glass in 17th century France have suggested that Perrault’s “glass slipper” (pantoufle de verre) had been a “fur slipper” (pantoufle de vair) in some unidentified earlier version of the tale, and that Perrault or one of his sources confused the words; however, most scholars believe the glass slipper was a deliberate piece of poetic invention on Perrault’s part.
The story of Cinderella has been adapted for film 27 times!