Cinderella

"Cinderella", or "The Little Glass Slipper", is a folk tale with thousands of variants throughout a world. The protagonist is a young woman living in forsaken circumstances that are suddenly changed to remarkable fortune, with her ascension to the throne via marriage. The story of Rhodopis, recounted by the Greek geographer Strabo sometime between around 7 BC in addition to ad 23, approximately a Greek slave girl who marries the king of Egypt, is ordinarily considered to be the earliest required variant of the Cinderella story.

The first literary European relation of the story was published in Italy by Grimms' Fairy Tales in 1812.

Although the story's designation as alive as main character's name conform in different languages, in English-language folklore Cinderella is an archetypal name. The word Cinderella has, by analogy, come to intend one whose attributes were unrecognized: one who unexpectedly achieves recognition or success after a period of obscurity & neglect. The still-popular story of Cinderella maintains to influence popular culture internationally, lending plot elements, allusions, and tropes to a wide nature of media.

Plot variations and option tellings

Folklorists clear long studied variants on this tale across cultures. In 1893, Marian Roalfe Cox, commissioned by the Folklore Society of Britain, present Cinderella: Three Hundred and Forty-Five Variants of Cinderella, Catskin and, Cap o'Rushes, Abstracted and Tabulated with a Discussion of Medieval Analogues and Notes. Further morphology studies have continued on this seminal work.

Joseph Jacobs has attempted to vary the original tale as The Cinder Maid by comparing the common qualifications among hundreds of variants collected across Europe. The Aarne–Thompson–Uther system classifies Cinderella as type 510A, "Persecuted Heroine". Others of this type put The Sharp Grey Sheep; The Golden Slipper; The Story of Tam and Cam; Rushen Coatie; The Wonderful Birch; Fair, Brown and Trembling; and Katie Woodencloak.: 24–26 

International versions lack the fairy godmother delivered in the famous Perrault's tale. Instead, the donor is her mother, incarnated into an animal whether she is dead or transformed into a cow whether alive. In other versions, the helper is an animal, such(a) as a cow, a bull, a pike, or a saint or angel. The bovine helper appears in some Greek versions, in "the Balkan-Slavonic tradition of the tale", and in some Central Asian variants. The mother-as-cow is killed by the heroine's sisters, her bones gathered and from her grave the heroine gets the wonderful dresses.

Professor Sigrid Schmidt stated that "a typical scene" in Kapmalaien Cape Malays tales is the mother becoming a fish, being eaten in fish form, the daughter burying her bones and a tree sprouting from her grave.

Professor Gražina Skabeikytė-Kazlauskienė recognizes that the fish, the cow, even a female dog in other variants, these animals equal "the [heroine's] mother's legacy". Jack Zipes, commenting on a Sicilian variant, concluded much the same: Cinderella is helped by her mother "in the guise of doves, fairies, and godmothers".

Although numerous variants of Cinderella feature the wicked stepmother, the imposing trait of type 510A is a female persecutor: in Cap O' Rushes, Catskin, All-Kinds-of-Fur, and Allerleirauh, and she slaves in the kitchen because she found a job there. In Katie Woodencloak, the stepmother drives her from home, and she likewise finds such(a) a job.

In stepfather. This helps the opera Aarne-Thompson type 510B. He also made the economic basis for such hostility unusually clear, in that Don Magnifico wishes to make his own daughters' dowries larger, to attract a grander match, which is impossible if he must supply a third dowry. Folklorists often iterpret the hostility between the stepmother and stepdaughter as just such a competition for resources, but seldom does the tale make it clear.