Surely we are all familiar with the story of Cinderella. But did you know there are much darker, grimmer versions than the ones recorded by the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault? Many famous poets have written their own take on the tale. Here are two of the most famous, one written as pure feminist criticism, one as humorous parody.
Cinderella
by Roald Dahl
published 1982 in Revolting Rhymes
I guess you think you know this story.
You don’t. The real one’s much more gory.
The phoney one, the one you know,
Was cooked up years and years ago,
And made to sound all soft and sappy
just to keep the children happy.
Mind you, they got the first bit right,
The bit where, in the dead of night,
The Ugly Sisters, jewels and all,
Departed for the Palace Ball,
While darling little Cinderella
Was locked up in a slimy cellar,
Where rats who wanted things to eat,
Began to nibble at her feet.
She bellowed ‚Help!‘ and ‚Let me out!
The Magic Fairy heard her shout.
Appearing in a blaze of light,
She said: ‚My dear, are you all right?‘
‚All right?‘ cried Cindy .’Can’t you see
‚I feel as rotten as can be!‘
She beat her fist against the wall,
And shouted, ‚Get me to the Ball!
‚There is a Disco at the Palace!
‚The rest have gone and I am jealous!
‚I want a dress! I want a coach!
‚And earrings and a diamond brooch!
‚And silver slippers, two of those!
‚And lovely nylon panty hose!
‚Done up like that I’ll guarantee
‚The handsome Prince will fall for me!‘
The Fairy said, ‚Hang on a tick.‘
She gave her wand a mighty flick
And quickly, in no time at all,
Cindy was at the Palace Ball!
It made the Ugly Sisters wince
To see her dancing with the Prince.
She held him very tight and pressed
herself against his manly chest.
The Prince himself was turned to pulp,
All he could do was gasp and gulp.
Then midnight struck. She shouted, ‚Heck!
I’ve got to run to save my neck!‘
The Prince cried, ‚No! Alas! Alack!‘
He grabbed her dress to hold her back.
As Cindy shouted, ‚Let me go!‘
The dress was ripped from head to toe.
She ran out in her underwear,
And lost one slipper on the stair.
The Prince was on it like a dart,
He pressed it to his pounding heart,
‚The girl this slipper fits,‘ he cried,
‚Tomorrow morn shall be my bride!
I’ll visit every house in town
‚Until I’ve tracked the maiden down!‘
Then rather carelessly, I fear,
He placed it on a crate of beer.
At once, one of the Ugly Sisters,
(The one whose face was blotched with blisters)
Sneaked up and grabbed the dainty shoe,
And quickly flushed it down the loo.
Then in its place she calmly put
The slipper from her own left foot.
Ah ha, you see, the plot grows thicker,
And Cindy’s luck starts looking sicker.
Next day, the Prince went charging down
To knock on all the doors in town.
In every house, the tension grew.
Who was the owner of the shoe?
The shoe was long and very wide.
(A normal foot got lost inside.)
Also it smelled a wee bit icky.
(The owner’s feet were hot and sticky.)
Thousands of eager people came
To try it on, but all in vain.
Now came the Ugly Sisters‘ go.
One tried it on. The Prince screamed, ‚No!‘
But she screamed, ‚Yes! It fits! Whoopee!
‚So now you’ve got to marry me!‘
The Prince went white from ear to ear.
He muttered, ‚Let me out of here.‘
‚Oh no you don’t! You made a vow!
‚There’s no way you can back out now!‘
‚Off with her head!‘ The Prince roared back.
They chopped it off with one big whack.
This pleased the Prince. He smiled and said,
‚She’s prettier without her head.‘
Then up came Sister Number Two,
Who yelled, ‚Now I will try the shoe!‘
‚Try this instead!‘ the Prince yelled back.
He swung his trusty sword and smack
Her head went crashing to the ground.
It bounced a bit and rolled around.
In the kitchen, peeling spuds,
Cinderella heard the thuds
Of bouncing heads upon the floor,
And poked her own head round the door.
‚What’s all the racket? ‚Cindy cried.
‚Mind your own bizz,‘ the Prince replied.
Poor Cindy’s heart was torn to shreds.
My Prince! she thought. He chops off heads!
How could I marry anyone
Who does that sort of thing for fun?
The Prince cried, ‚Who’s this dirty slut?
‚Off with her nut! Off with her nut!‘
Just then, all in a blaze of light,
The Magic Fairy hove in sight,
Her Magic Wand went swoosh and swish!
‚Cindy! ’she cried, ‚come make a wish!
‚Wish anything and have no doubt
‚That I will make it come about!‘
Cindy answered, ‚Oh kind Fairy,
‚This time I shall be more wary.
‚No more Princes, no more money.
‚I have had my taste of honey.
I’m wishing for a decent man.
‚They’re hard to find. D’you think you can?‘
Within a minute, Cinderella
Was married to a lovely feller,
A simple jam maker by trade,
Who sold good home-made marmalade.
Their house was filled with smiles and laughter
And they were happy ever after.
Cinderella
by Anne Sexton
published 1971 in Transformations
You always read about it:
the plumber with the twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.
Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son’s heart.
from diapers to Dior.
That story.
Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
From homogenized to martinis at lunch.
Or the charwoman
who is on the bus when it cracks up
and collects enough from the insurance.
From mops to Bonwit Teller.
That story.
Once
the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed
and she said to her daughter Cinderella:
Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile
down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.
The man took another wife who had
two daughters, pretty enough
but with hearts like blackjacks.
Cinderella was their maid.
She slept on the sooty hearth each night
and walked around looking like Al Jolson.
Her father brought presents home from town,
jewels and gowns for the other women
but the twig of a tree for Cinderella.
She planted that twig on her mother’s grave
and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.
Whenever she wished for anything the dove
would drop it like an egg upon the ground.
The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.
Next came the ball, as you all know.
It was a marriage market.
The prince was looking for a wife.
All but Cinderella were preparing
and gussying up for the event.
Cinderella begged to go too.
Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils
into the cinders and said: Pick them
up in an hour and you shall go.
The white dove brought all his friends;
all the warm wings of the fatherland came,
and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.
No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,
you have no clothes and cannot dance.
That’s the way with stepmothers.
Cinderella went to the tree at the grave
and cried forth like a gospel singer:
Mama! Mama! My turtledove,
send me to the prince’s ball!
The bird dropped down a golden dress
and delicate little slippers.
Rather a large package for a simple bird.
So she went. Which is no surprise.
Her stepmother and sisters didn’t
recognize her without her cinder face
and the prince took her hand on the spot
and danced with no other the whole day.
As nightfall came she thought she’d better
get home. The prince walked her home
and she disappeared into the pigeon house
and although the prince took an axe and broke
it open she was gone. Back to her cinders.
These events repeated themselves for three days.
However on the third day the prince
covered the palace steps with cobbler’s wax
and Cinderella’s gold shoe stuck upon it.
Now he would find whom the shoe fit
and find his strange dancing girl for keeps.
He went to their house and the two sisters
were delighted because they had lovely feet.
The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on
but her big toe got in the way so she simply
sliced it off and put on the slipper.
The prince rode away with her until the white dove
told him to look at the blood pouring forth.
That is the way with amputations.
They just don’t heal up like a wish.
The other sister cut off her heel
but the blood told as blood will.
The prince was getting tired.
He began to feel like a shoe salesman.
But he gave it one last try.
This time Cinderella fit into the shoe
like a love letter into its envelope.
At the wedding ceremony
the two sisters came to curry favor
and the white dove pecked their eyes out.
Two hollow spots were left
like soup spoons.
Cinderella and the prince
lived, they say, happily ever after,
like two dolls in a museum case
never bothered by diapers or dust,
never arguing over the timing of an egg,
never telling the same story twice,
never getting a middle-aged spread,
their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.
Regular Bobbsey Twins.
That story.
While Cinderella / Aschenputtel is hardly my favorite, I have always been partial to fairy tales of all kinds. And much as I appreciate the ‚originals‘, I am more intrigued by the revisionist versions produced by feminists, satirists and deconstructionists of post-modern and contemporary generations. We musn’t forget that not only Walt Disney has reason to reimagine the tales of old, which indeed were never set in stone until they were set down on paper! I hope you enjoyed these poetic rewritings as much as I did. If you have one you enjoy, please do share in the comment box below!
