We're big fans of Fairy Tales here at Review Me Twice (as we showed you when we did that post about fairy tales). This week, we're reading Cinder by Marissa Meyer, a fun, unique take on the Cinderella story. It's a story that we all know and love, but where did it come from?
Probably the two most famous Cinderella stories are Perrault's (that chauvinistic jerk we all know and love), and the Brother's Grimm (the slightly less masochistic jerks we love.)
You can find a pretty good copy of Perrault's version here. It's what we typically think of when we think the Cinderella story. An evil stepmother, two evil stepsisters, and everyone getting their comeuppance at the end. It's actually a fairly tame version of the story, but propagates the idea the women are only worth how beautiful they are.
Why do animals always come to help princesses?
The Brother's Grimm had their own version, and was much bloodier than Perrault's. The sisters cut of their body parts to fit their foot in the shoe, and then had their eyes pecked out to pay for their wickedness. However, their was no Fairy Godmother in this version. In both Perrault and the Grimm's version, the step mother is conspicuously left out of the equation. They focus more on the evil sisters that she has.
One of the earliest known versions is Rhodopis, an Egyptian Cinderella. Like the Grimms, her salvation is given to her by animals, as opposed to a Fairy Godmother. But, she was ill-treated by her peers and had slippers that the Pharaoh found her with, so it's very obviously a Cinderella story.
Cinder falls into this line very well, but puts an incredibly modern twist on it (Cinderella is a cyborg!). We still get the main elements, however, missing "slipper", evil stepmother, and the stepsisters.
What other fairy tales do you know that have great modern twists?
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