Just this week, someone visited What's Wrong Around Us? on the search phrase, "What's wrong with Cinderella?" I'm pretty sure the question related to Cinderella the character, not Cinderella the story. Tough. I can't be sure, so I'm going with what I've got.
Suzy Bogguss had a song fifteen or twenty years ago that challenged Cinderella...seemed to indicate that maybe happily ever after wasn't quite so happy after all and wanted to know what happened next.
A valid question, perhaps, but it PALES IN COMPARISON to the real issue with the Cinderella story. The true, absolute, unavoidable sticking point that brings our suspension of disbelief screeching to a halt and proves that fairy tales are just a lot of hogwash cooked up by wicked stepmothers who wanted to terrorize children into doing their chores.
Here it is.
(Are you ready?)
Why didn't the glass slipper disappear?
Midnight arrived. The clock struck. The carriage turned back into a pumpkin. The footmen turned back into mice. Cinderella's beautiful ball gown turned back into rags. The horse turned back into a dog and the driver turned back into a horse and Cinderella's split ends returned and...the glass slipper lay patiently on the palace steps, waiting for the Prince to find it.
A momentary delay? It was, perhaps, the last to turn? But no. Cinderella slips one into her pocket and the...whatever-you-call-that-guy-who-works-for-the-King...carries the other around the kingdom trying it on various women (because the Prince can't remember what Cinderella LOOKED like or anything, apparently--just her shoe size).
Because I Must Make Sense of Everything, I came up with a theory.
My theory is that the glass slipper remained after midnight because it was wholly created. Every other item was transformed from something else, but Cinderella was BAREFOOT. The glass slippers were conjured out of thin air, and thus had nothing to turn back into at midnight. Sure, they could have vanished, but they were in a slightly different position than the other items, and it MIGHT make sense.
But then why didn't they tell us that?
The Cinderella story is hundreds of years old...am I the only person ever bothered by this? Has no modern author adapting the story or Disney producer thought, "Wait...we should explain that!" Just me? Well, maybe so.
But that's what's wrong with Cinderella, for real. It's much more serious than the suspect nature of the whole "happily ever after" thing.
