Golden Shoes and Glass Slippers

Cinderella is one of our oldest and most beloved fairy tales.   The tale is a by-word for the triumph of the oppressed over the oppressors.  Cinderella is a daughter who has had her status as first born child destroyed by her Stepmother and Stepsisters.  The Russian Folklorist, Vladimir Propp  categorised fairy tale characters into eight disctinct roles, which he called the spheres of action. (Branston and Stafford, 1996)   According to Propp’s theory Cinderella is both victim and hero at the same time.   Her name indicates more than her place at the kitchen hearth.  ‘Cinderella is a child in mourning for her mother,’ Warner writes, ‘as her name tells us; her potential garb is ash, dirty and low as a donkeyskin or a coat of grasses, but more particularly the sign of loss, the symbol of mortality.’  (1995, p206).   She is in a state of grieving for the woman who is so often absent in fairy tales, her mother, whilst her stepmother makes the perfect villain, who provides the interdictions and struggles that Cinderella has to overcome.

The most important artefact to affect Cinderella is her dropped glass slipper.   Her fairy Godmother assumes the characteristics of Propp’s donor in this tale, providing the shoes that secure Cinderella’s happy-ever-after.  This godmother is in fact the spirit of Cinderella’s dead mother.  In Scottish tales, she is a calf, in Chinese tales, a magic carp, and in Russian tales a birch tree.  Her function is to provide the nurture that Cinderella is denied and to help her secure the best possible marriage.  (Heiner, 2007)

No other foot can fit Cinderella’s slipper, her small dainty feet symbolise her perfection and femininity, as it did in Chinese culture.  (See fig. 1).  Her more masculine Stepsisters are prepared to mutilate their feet in order to be fit for a royal marriage and with the help of their greedy mother lop off their toes and heels.  Shoes not only show our status and wealth but affect the way our bodies move.

Fig 1,  Taber (Date unknown) Little Girl with Bound Feet.

 Aristocratic Chinese women were not expected to walk on their bound feet – they were wealthy enough to be carried.  On the occasions when they did move, they balanced on their crushed feet by acquiring a swaying gait that was seen as feminine and desirable to their husbands.  There are many different versions of Cinderella, but one of the oldest comes from China where a Warlord tries to find the owner of a golden shoe dropped by the heroine Yeh-hsien.   As Warner writes ‘the tiny, precious golden shoe, a treasure among country people who would have gone barefoot or worn bark or straw pattens also reverberates with the fetishism of bound feet.’ (1995, p203).  The photograph of the shoe and plaster cast (see fig. 2) shows how limiting, controlling and painful the process of foot binding was. 

Fig 2 Unknown (date unknown) Lotus shoe and plaster foot

By losing her shoe as the clock strikes Midnight, Cinderella sets a chain of events in motion that will lead to the identification of her worth and beauty by the Prince.  Were she to accept his offer of marriage whilst she was dressed in all her finery, the Prince would never appreciate the struggle and hardships she has had to endure.  Finding the owner of the slipper gives the Prince his own quest to follow, changing his status to that of Propp’s Hero, and Cinderella’s to that of the prize.  By the end of his quest, the Prince looks outside of his own social class but still finds a bride worthy to be a queen.  As Bettelheim  writes, ‘By handing her the slipper to put her foot into, the prince symbolically expresses that he accepts her the way she is, dirty and degraded.’ (1991, p270)  Cinderella’s slipper becomes a symbol of her betrothal to the prince, as binding as a wedding ring on her finger.

Word Count 634