This is the blog -- the electronic home -- for Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition for the class of two-thousand eleven at Gloucester (MA) High School.
After reading the Brothers Grimm version, watching the Walt Disney spectacular, and reading the revision my Cameron Dokey, I have a lot of thoughts flying around in my head. First of all, how did these artists use a single theme and find a way to twist and tangle a new story in totally different views? The Cinderella we all know and love is somewhat sad at first with the cruel stepmother and stepsisters, but in the end the good girl wins and marries the king. Alongside are some singing birds and cheerful mice, and an arrangement of barn animals that help her highness arrive at the ball. As sweet as Disney made it seem, the original Brothers Grimm was scary and somewhat gruesome. The story began the same, but evolved into the sisters cutting of parts on their feet to squeeze into the shoe, and birds pecking out their eyes because they behaved badly. Ouch. From that same story the author Cameron Dokey found a way to incorporate the cruelty in a different manner, but also changes the scene of Cinderella’s journey from day one, until she meets the prince. When I was reading, or watching, these three versions I could feel that this story is like the basis for a typical love story. The bad guys (or girls in this case) always get their way, but it’s the true honorable girl in the end that wins the most important prize, and that is love. Even though more than 700 different version of this story have been created, there will always be that main point that every author tries to get across to a romantic Casanova, and that is no matter how much money or beauty a person has, the personality will always win in the end.
After reading Kelly’s post I agree with her that though there are many ways different artists can portray fairy tales, there is always one main theme that of a romantic Casanova, that the good person will always triumph in the end. It always seems to be a competition of good versus evil and whether reading a novel by Cameron Dokey or watching the Disney classic Cinderella we see a general theme that the “good girl” always gets what she wants in the end. There are many differences between the Disney classic and the novel Before Midnight. Some of these include that in the movie Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters were always evil but in the book they turned out to be nice and loving, and were pitted together against her evil father. In both versions though Cinderella or Cendrillon ended up with Prince Charming (or Pascal in Before Midnight) and found true love, something they were searching for throughout the entire story. They always got their “happily ever after” which is a common theme in almost all fairy tales. Good must triumph over evil to teach kids a lesson and to give everyone a little hope that their life could end up like a fairytale some day. No matter what version of Cinderella or another fairy tale you read, you will always find the main character going through hard times, falling in love, battling evil, and in the end getting exactly what they want and living happily ever after.
One relationship in the novel Before Midnight that I found to be particularly interesting was the relationship between Cendrillon and her father. Cendrillon’s father, Etienne de Brabant was madly in love with her beautiful mother, Constanze d’ Este. While he was away on official business of the king, Constanze went into early labor with Cendrillon and died. When Etienne came back and discovered this news he was devastated and decided he wanted nothing to do with the child who reminded him of her mother. He blamed her for taking the one thing he ever loved and wished that he would never see her again. He then left her in the care of Old Mathilde and never returned to the old stone house. Cendrillon grew up wondering about her father wishing he might someday return. She felt guilty for causing him so much pain and hatred and wished he could find a way to mourn the loss of her mother and move on. There were so many things she wished to ask him but she saw she might never get the chance. She was always waiting for him, knowing he might never return. She feels hurt when her new stepmother and stepsisters arrive to the big stone house and she realizes that Etienne told them nothing about her at all. She wonders how he could just forget about her, as if she never existed. Later when Cendrillon and her new stepmother and stepsisters attend the Prince’s ball, she see her father for the first time, she realizes that he had closed the door on her a very long time ago and that she could never love him. During there first conversation she is able to make peace with her father by realizing she does not need him. She knows he never wanted her and tells him to not treat her as “one of the pawns in his game”. Etienne realizes he does not want his daughter around court and getting close with Prince Pascal so he kidnaps her and brings her back to the big stone house. There Cendrillon tells him he must try to mourn the loss of her mother and to try to move on and accept her so they can both be happy. When he can not do this he leaves, never to be seen again. Cendrillon realizes that she was never going to have peace with her father. He blames her of robbing him of the one person he ever truly loved and forgiveness is not an option for him. Cendrillon can not make him want her, just as much as she can not make him love her. She must let go of him and move on to the better things in her life.
A main theme that I noticed in the novel Before Midnight was the protagonist’s relationships to animate and inanimate objects. Now you’re probably wondering what I mean by inanimate right? Well firstly, her mother’s grave. It may sound creepy and unusual, but there is reason behind it that in part makes up Cindrillon’s identity. When she was brought into the world that first night, her mother had left it and her father was destroyed. When he saw the grave where Cindrillon’s mother as buried, he had so much hate in his heart for his “daughter” for allegedly killing his wife, that he put all his rage into a forceful blow to the grave. From that day on, nothing, not even a blade of grass could grow where Cindrillon’s mother laid. Even though Cindrillon had won her life in the loss of her mothers, she had this sadness in her heart towards her grave. She loved it so much that she tried everything to make it perfect, but every time she attempted to grow something on it, it only perished because the hatred of her father overpowered Cindrillon’s love. To the reader’s surprise, even though she was neglected by her father and forced into a servants life, she still had love in her heart to warm an entire house. With this love, she built a best friend relationship with her “brother” Raoul (he was left in the hands of the person who took after Cindrillon without a reason), an affectionate relationship to her new stepmother who only put on a cold front, and a loving relationship to the price of the country they lived in. She only wanted to build bridges, not burn them. The only one she wanted destroyed, was with her father who loathed her so much for “killing” her mother. I found that this theme was different from the one in the Disney version of Cindrillon and definitely from the Brothers Grimm version. This showed that even if you can’t please one person, at least you can please the majority that actually care about you as much as you do them. That was the moral of the story that Cameron Dokey was trying to get across to the reader, or at least that’s how I saw it.
What significance does prince charming have in all of the versions of Cinderella? I mean in Shrek he is so far opposite of “charming” but in the end he gets the ogre princess. And in “A Cinderella Story” with Hilary Duff, Charming is just a kid that works in a car shop just to get some money to go to his dream college. Even if the story is not along the line of Cinderella’s, there always seems to be a common goal of getting Mr. Right in the end. No one ever had to settle for the kid that smelled funny or the kid that had stalked them since second grade, the fantasy is having that guy (or girl) in the end that is perfect in your eyes, even if they are an ogre. In Cameron Dokey’s version of Cinderella, he made the prince an actual prince that had everything eHarmony would ask for. Cinderillon in Before Midnight, did find that she had love for Prince Pascal, but she needed love from someone else before she gave her heart to him exclusively. All she wanted was love from her father, but he found it nowhere in his heart to forgive her for taking away the one person he ever truly loved. To her, getting closure on his feelings towards her was enough to let his stubbornness go and fall in love with the man that she found to be her Charming. Because after all, everyone should end up with their prince or princess of their dreams. That’s how all the fairy tales choose end their stories.
Similarly to what Kelly said in her first post, I love the way Dokey was able to take a classic fairytale and twist it into his own version. Throughout the book, although you can see where the Brothers Grimm’s Cinderella ties in with Before Midnight, you can also see that it is almost a whole different story altogether. Both stories follow the same basic plot, but there are also many points where Dokey branches off and creates new themes and scenes and out of all of the Cinderella variations I have seen Dokey’s is the most unique. I believe this uniqueness makes it the most interesting because although you think you know what’s going to happen next from what you’ve seen in the classic Cinderella tale, you are occasionally thrown for a few loops. One of the best changes I think Dokey made to the Cinderella tale was the fact that it was much less magical than the original in the way that there were no actual fairy godmothers popping out of nowhere and granting Cinderella all of these things and material objects out of thin air and turning mice into coachmen. This makes the story much more relatable to older audiences. Although the magical aspect is an important part of the Brothers Grimm’s Cinderella story I think it’s major effect is on young children who are learning to believe and fantasize so they can imagine a better world than the one we live in. As we grow older it’s harder for us to believe in this magic because we know it can’t be true, so when Dokey only uses small amounts of the extraordinary we have a better time relating to the story and although we know this magic isn’t possible either it provides us with a form of entertainment because sometimes we are like to be like big children who want to believe in the impossible too.
Another huge difference in Before Midnight from the Brothers Grimm’s Cinderella was the role reversals. As we know in the original Cinderella the antagonists were Cinderella’s stepmother and her two evil stepsisters whom Cinderella was forced to live with and serve after her father’s untimely death. Conversely, in Dokey’s Before Midnight, Cindrillon’s father is still very much alive, but when it comes to being in his daughter’s life he might as well be dead and buried. As both Kelly and Michelle hinted in their posts Cindrillon’s father abandoned her to the house mother of the house they lived in after Cindrillon’s birth and her mother’s death. Cindrillon’s father hated her from the moment she was born and believed she was the cause of his true loves death and this resulted in his departure from the house for almost all of Cindrillon’s life up until the time when the story takes place. Although Cindrillon’s stepsisters aren’t always the nicest of people to her, in the end they turn out to be the better of her allies as opposed to her father. It’s such a surprising transition that I found myself reading and I actual wanted to hate the stepsisters because of what I had read of them doing to Cinderella in the original version and I kept hoping that Cindrillon’s father would come back home with a valid reason as to why he left and he and his daughter could have been lovingly reunited. It was hard knowing that this wasn’t going to happen, but at the same time it was a nice and refreshing change. Maybe Dokey’s right and although we may have thought Cinderella’s stepsisters were awful people maybe they were actually the good guys, but the way the Brothers Grimm wrote them in made them seem evil and we’ve been giving them the wrong praise this whole time.
One change I wish Dokey would have made would have been the situation with the prince. I know it’s customary that Cinderella marry the actual prince in the end of the story, but Dokey made so many other changes to the story, so why not change this as well to make things even more interesting? What if Pascal hadn’t been an actual prince and Cindrillon could have loved him anyway? It’s times like these when fairy tales bug me. It’s great that the protagonist finds love and that they can lead a happier life with all of their worries behind them, but why does their status have to be raised so heavily too? In all honesty I believe fairy tales berate all other types of lifestyles in the world and that after they are read children feel worse about themselves and their own situations compared to the heroes and heroines in the stories. I believe Cinderella and Cindrillon’s lives alike would have ended up just as well if they had ended up with their own prince charming who wasn’t a prince at all. Although living in a house where they have to do their own cooking and cleaning may not seem like the greatest lifestyle the protagonists never complained about the grueling work they had to do in the stories but only the cruelty they were treated with from their peers. Now that this cruelty was gone and the women were with the men they loved and who would treat them right why did their lifestyle also have to change so drastically? The stories end and leave us to believe that now that these women are princesses they are going to leave their old lives completely behind them and that they are going to take complete advantage of their new situation. Whose to say that their whole viewpoints on life were not drastically changed because of their new statuses and that they didn’t become exactly like the people who put them down in the beginning of the story. To make things more relatable and happier I believe Dokey should have ended the story by pairing Cindrillon with someone who was of a lesser status than the prince or someone like Raoul, just a simple stable boy. We saw that even though he was a poor boy who had a low class job he was still a stand-up guy and one that could be really caring too, so what would have been wrong with pairing Cindrillon with someone like him as well instead of sticking with the generic fairy tale ending?
Another interesting relationship that Dokey included in his version of Cinderella is the relationship between Raoul and Cendrillon. Raoul grew up with Cendrillon ever since she was two weeks old and her father brought him to the great stone house after doing official business of the king. His father said he was to grow up their and was too never leave the estate. Where he came from remained a mystery until the end of the novel. It is interesting that Dokey chose to include Raoul in the story since he is not included in the more traditional versions of Cinderella. Cendrillon and Raoul grew up together and spent everyday together. They even shared the same birthday, because Raoul was allowed to pick his birthday and he picked the same day as hers. At first this annoyed Cendrillon but when she realize his reasoning, that he did because she had everything he wanted so he needed to take it from her, she was ok with it. It was this kind of childish philosophy that carries them through their adolescent years. They grew up as best friends, almost like brother and sister and no one else knew each others story as well as they did. When they are sixteen we are watching them try to discover if they could ever be more than friends. They both admit that the idea has crossed their mind and realize how easy it would be if they married each other. They both loved each other very much, even if they were not in love with each other. When Anastasia, Cendrillon’s stepsister arrives, Cendrillon begins to unravel the truth, that Raoul is in love with her. When this does not upset her deeply she also realizes that she does not love him for anything more than who he is. This is a significant point in the story because we are able to see that Cendrillon believes in true love, the kind she finds with Prince Pascal and that her and Raoul will never be more than really good friends. I believe Dokey placed Raoul in the story as Cendrillon’s childhood campaign to allow us to see the transition she makes from childhood to adulthood when she fell in love with the prince. Because Raoul fell in love with Anastasia, Cendrillon realized that her plans had changed and she must now look for the true love she believes is awaiting her.
I agree with Megan how fairytales have a too unrealistic approach and fare fetched ending and Dokey’s work was no exception to this. Sometimes you really have to wonder can things really work out that good for the main protagonist? Dokey portrayed Cendrillon as a hard working girl, who was the abandoned daughter of a lord in a high court. She was down to earth and was even mistaken for a servant by her stepmother and stepsisters. Is it just way to convenient that she gets to leave this life behind after meeting her “Prince Charming”? While this makes for a great ending, especially in children’s versions, it may be sending the wrong message. It is not ok to just cast away your old life when you run into luck or fortune. It is important to always remember where you came from and your roots. Though the ending for Cinderella is very heartwarming, it may give people too much hope that someday they might just get to throw their old life away and marry a noble man. We all want a “happily ever after” but for some people this may just include a normal and healthy life, not being whisked away by Prince Charming.
After all the comparisons I made with Cameron Dokey’s version, to the brothers Grimm, or to Walt Disney, I never really touched on what I didn’t like about Dokey’s interpretation. Yes she had a similar outline of how Cindrillon journeyed to the ball and married the prince, but the version wasn’t the same one I remembered when I was sitting on my couch, dressed up in my princess outfit, singing magnificently along with the other mice. I wanted more magic and love and cute animals being transformed into professional horsemen. In Dokey’s version I felt how she was trying to make it out to be a coming of age story more than anything else. She kept narrating how Cindrillon wanted to do things that were far beyond her age of only 16, and never gave her the mystical appearance that I knew and loved when I was only 6. Don’t get me wrong, the book was very through and interesting with many connections to life lessons, but I couldn’t really call it a Cinderella story after having the movie by Disney imprinted into my mind. I think the story she produced was a good story all in all, but it just didn’t lift my heart as much as my favorite fairy tale did as a kid. That’s the problem with taking an age old story for little kids, and trying to turn it into an adult version. The reader can never really love the new version as much as the original they read. So in the process of her writing she may have lost the childhood memories, but she created a whole new story that was focused at an older group and gave them new ideas of how a Cinderella story can work.
While I agree with Kelly that this is a coming of age story and that there are many differences between Before Midnight and the Brothers Grimm’s Cinderella I don’t think that the coming of age aspect is one of them. In every Cinderella variation I’ve seen Cinderella has been a young woman who is confused about her past and looking towards her future. She has been a person that was faced with many hardships at the beginning of her life what with her father situation whatever it may be and the situation with her stepmother and sisters. With these issues Cinderella was a young woman who had to learn from a young age to do things for herself and this caused her to grow up very quickly. No matter how magical a variation may be the story is always relatively the same and Cinderella growing up into a woman who can stand up against the odds and learn to forgive those who do her wrong while remaining the independent she has always been is always an important part of the story and I don’t believe it should be removed from any Cinderella story because if that happened then that surely wouldn’t be an actual Cinderella story.
We're doing Before Midnight by Cameron Dokey
ReplyDeleteKelly
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After reading the Brothers Grimm version, watching the Walt Disney spectacular, and reading the revision my Cameron Dokey, I have a lot of thoughts flying around in my head. First of all, how did these artists use a single theme and find a way to twist and tangle a new story in totally different views? The Cinderella we all know and love is somewhat sad at first with the cruel stepmother and stepsisters, but in the end the good girl wins and marries the king. Alongside are some singing birds and cheerful mice, and an arrangement of barn animals that help her highness arrive at the ball. As sweet as Disney made it seem, the original Brothers Grimm was scary and somewhat gruesome. The story began the same, but evolved into the sisters cutting of parts on their feet to squeeze into the shoe, and birds pecking out their eyes because they behaved badly. Ouch. From that same story the author Cameron Dokey found a way to incorporate the cruelty in a different manner, but also changes the scene of Cinderella’s journey from day one, until she meets the prince. When I was reading, or watching, these three versions I could feel that this story is like the basis for a typical love story. The bad guys (or girls in this case) always get their way, but it’s the true honorable girl in the end that wins the most important prize, and that is love. Even though more than 700 different version of this story have been created, there will always be that main point that every author tries to get across to a romantic Casanova, and that is no matter how much money or beauty a person has, the personality will always win in the end.
After reading Kelly’s post I agree with her that though there are many ways different artists can portray fairy tales, there is always one main theme that of a romantic Casanova, that the good person will always triumph in the end. It always seems to be a competition of good versus evil and whether reading a novel by Cameron Dokey or watching the Disney classic Cinderella we see a general theme that the “good girl” always gets what she wants in the end. There are many differences between the Disney classic and the novel Before Midnight. Some of these include that in the movie Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters were always evil but in the book they turned out to be nice and loving, and were pitted together against her evil father. In both versions though Cinderella or Cendrillon ended up with Prince Charming (or Pascal in Before Midnight) and found true love, something they were searching for throughout the entire story. They always got their “happily ever after” which is a common theme in almost all fairy tales. Good must triumph over evil to teach kids a lesson and to give everyone a little hope that their life could end up like a fairytale some day. No matter what version of Cinderella or another fairy tale you read, you will always find the main character going through hard times, falling in love, battling evil, and in the end getting exactly what they want and living happily ever after.
ReplyDeleteOne relationship in the novel Before Midnight that I found to be particularly interesting was the relationship between Cendrillon and her father. Cendrillon’s father, Etienne de Brabant was madly in love with her beautiful mother, Constanze d’ Este. While he was away on official business of the king, Constanze went into early labor with Cendrillon and died. When Etienne came back and discovered this news he was devastated and decided he wanted nothing to do with the child who reminded him of her mother. He blamed her for taking the one thing he ever loved and wished that he would never see her again. He then left her in the care of Old Mathilde and never returned to the old stone house. Cendrillon grew up wondering about her father wishing he might someday return. She felt guilty for causing him so much pain and hatred and wished he could find a way to mourn the loss of her mother and move on. There were so many things she wished to ask him but she saw she might never get the chance. She was always waiting for him, knowing he might never return. She feels hurt when her new stepmother and stepsisters arrive to the big stone house and she realizes that Etienne told them nothing about her at all. She wonders how he could just forget about her, as if she never existed. Later when Cendrillon and her new stepmother and stepsisters attend the Prince’s ball, she see her father for the first time, she realizes that he had closed the door on her a very long time ago and that she could never love him. During there first conversation she is able to make peace with her father by realizing she does not need him. She knows he never wanted her and tells him to not treat her as “one of the pawns in his game”. Etienne realizes he does not want his daughter around court and getting close with Prince Pascal so he kidnaps her and brings her back to the big stone house. There Cendrillon tells him he must try to mourn the loss of her mother and to try to move on and accept her so they can both be happy. When he can not do this he leaves, never to be seen again. Cendrillon realizes that she was never going to have peace with her father. He blames her of robbing him of the one person he ever truly loved and forgiveness is not an option for him. Cendrillon can not make him want her, just as much as she can not make him love her. She must let go of him and move on to the better things in her life.
ReplyDeleteKelly Benson
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A main theme that I noticed in the novel Before Midnight was the protagonist’s relationships to animate and inanimate objects. Now you’re probably wondering what I mean by inanimate right? Well firstly, her mother’s grave. It may sound creepy and unusual, but there is reason behind it that in part makes up Cindrillon’s identity. When she was brought into the world that first night, her mother had left it and her father was destroyed. When he saw the grave where Cindrillon’s mother as buried, he had so much hate in his heart for his “daughter” for allegedly killing his wife, that he put all his rage into a forceful blow to the grave. From that day on, nothing, not even a blade of grass could grow where Cindrillon’s mother laid. Even though Cindrillon had won her life in the loss of her mothers, she had this sadness in her heart towards her grave. She loved it so much that she tried everything to make it perfect, but every time she attempted to grow something on it, it only perished because the hatred of her father overpowered Cindrillon’s love. To the reader’s surprise, even though she was neglected by her father and forced into a servants life, she still had love in her heart to warm an entire house. With this love, she built a best friend relationship with her “brother” Raoul (he was left in the hands of the person who took after Cindrillon without a reason), an affectionate relationship to her new stepmother who only put on a cold front, and a loving relationship to the price of the country they lived in. She only wanted to build bridges, not burn them. The only one she wanted destroyed, was with her father who loathed her so much for “killing” her mother. I found that this theme was different from the one in the Disney version of Cindrillon and definitely from the Brothers Grimm version. This showed that even if you can’t please one person, at least you can please the majority that actually care about you as much as you do them. That was the moral of the story that Cameron Dokey was trying to get across to the reader, or at least that’s how I saw it.
Kelly Benson
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What significance does prince charming have in all of the versions of Cinderella? I mean in Shrek he is so far opposite of “charming” but in the end he gets the ogre princess. And in “A Cinderella Story” with Hilary Duff, Charming is just a kid that works in a car shop just to get some money to go to his dream college. Even if the story is not along the line of Cinderella’s, there always seems to be a common goal of getting Mr. Right in the end. No one ever had to settle for the kid that smelled funny or the kid that had stalked them since second grade, the fantasy is having that guy (or girl) in the end that is perfect in your eyes, even if they are an ogre. In Cameron Dokey’s version of Cinderella, he made the prince an actual prince that had everything eHarmony would ask for. Cinderillon in Before Midnight, did find that she had love for Prince Pascal, but she needed love from someone else before she gave her heart to him exclusively. All she wanted was love from her father, but he found it nowhere in his heart to forgive her for taking away the one person he ever truly loved. To her, getting closure on his feelings towards her was enough to let his stubbornness go and fall in love with the man that she found to be her Charming. Because after all, everyone should end up with their prince or princess of their dreams. That’s how all the fairy tales choose end their stories.
Similarly to what Kelly said in her first post, I love the way Dokey was able to take a classic fairytale and twist it into his own version. Throughout the book, although you can see where the Brothers Grimm’s Cinderella ties in with Before Midnight, you can also see that it is almost a whole different story altogether. Both stories follow the same basic plot, but there are also many points where Dokey branches off and creates new themes and scenes and out of all of the Cinderella variations I have seen Dokey’s is the most unique. I believe this uniqueness makes it the most interesting because although you think you know what’s going to happen next from what you’ve seen in the classic Cinderella tale, you are occasionally thrown for a few loops. One of the best changes I think Dokey made to the Cinderella tale was the fact that it was much less magical than the original in the way that there were no actual fairy godmothers popping out of nowhere and granting Cinderella all of these things and material objects out of thin air and turning mice into coachmen. This makes the story much more relatable to older audiences. Although the magical aspect is an important part of the Brothers Grimm’s Cinderella story I think it’s major effect is on young children who are learning to believe and fantasize so they can imagine a better world than the one we live in. As we grow older it’s harder for us to believe in this magic because we know it can’t be true, so when Dokey only uses small amounts of the extraordinary we have a better time relating to the story and although we know this magic isn’t possible either it provides us with a form of entertainment because sometimes we are like to be like big children who want to believe in the impossible too.
ReplyDeleteAnother huge difference in Before Midnight from the Brothers Grimm’s Cinderella was the role reversals. As we know in the original Cinderella the antagonists were Cinderella’s stepmother and her two evil stepsisters whom Cinderella was forced to live with and serve after her father’s untimely death. Conversely, in Dokey’s Before Midnight, Cindrillon’s father is still very much alive, but when it comes to being in his daughter’s life he might as well be dead and buried. As both Kelly and Michelle hinted in their posts Cindrillon’s father abandoned her to the house mother of the house they lived in after Cindrillon’s birth and her mother’s death. Cindrillon’s father hated her from the moment she was born and believed she was the cause of his true loves death and this resulted in his departure from the house for almost all of Cindrillon’s life up until the time when the story takes place. Although Cindrillon’s stepsisters aren’t always the nicest of people to her, in the end they turn out to be the better of her allies as opposed to her father. It’s such a surprising transition that I found myself reading and I actual wanted to hate the stepsisters because of what I had read of them doing to Cinderella in the original version and I kept hoping that Cindrillon’s father would come back home with a valid reason as to why he left and he and his daughter could have been lovingly reunited. It was hard knowing that this wasn’t going to happen, but at the same time it was a nice and refreshing change. Maybe Dokey’s right and although we may have thought Cinderella’s stepsisters were awful people maybe they were actually the good guys, but the way the Brothers Grimm wrote them in made them seem evil and we’ve been giving them the wrong praise this whole time.
ReplyDeleteOne change I wish Dokey would have made would have been the situation with the prince. I know it’s customary that Cinderella marry the actual prince in the end of the story, but Dokey made so many other changes to the story, so why not change this as well to make things even more interesting? What if Pascal hadn’t been an actual prince and Cindrillon could have loved him anyway? It’s times like these when fairy tales bug me. It’s great that the protagonist finds love and that they can lead a happier life with all of their worries behind them, but why does their status have to be raised so heavily too? In all honesty I believe fairy tales berate all other types of lifestyles in the world and that after they are read children feel worse about themselves and their own situations compared to the heroes and heroines in the stories. I believe Cinderella and Cindrillon’s lives alike would have ended up just as well if they had ended up with their own prince charming who wasn’t a prince at all. Although living in a house where they have to do their own cooking and cleaning may not seem like the greatest lifestyle the protagonists never complained about the grueling work they had to do in the stories but only the cruelty they were treated with from their peers. Now that this cruelty was gone and the women were with the men they loved and who would treat them right why did their lifestyle also have to change so drastically? The stories end and leave us to believe that now that these women are princesses they are going to leave their old lives completely behind them and that they are going to take complete advantage of their new situation. Whose to say that their whole viewpoints on life were not drastically changed because of their new statuses and that they didn’t become exactly like the people who put them down in the beginning of the story. To make things more relatable and happier I believe Dokey should have ended the story by pairing Cindrillon with someone who was of a lesser status than the prince or someone like Raoul, just a simple stable boy. We saw that even though he was a poor boy who had a low class job he was still a stand-up guy and one that could be really caring too, so what would have been wrong with pairing Cindrillon with someone like him as well instead of sticking with the generic fairy tale ending?
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting relationship that Dokey included in his version of Cinderella is the relationship between Raoul and Cendrillon. Raoul grew up with Cendrillon ever since she was two weeks old and her father brought him to the great stone house after doing official business of the king. His father said he was to grow up their and was too never leave the estate. Where he came from remained a mystery until the end of the novel. It is interesting that Dokey chose to include Raoul in the story since he is not included in the more traditional versions of Cinderella. Cendrillon and Raoul grew up together and spent everyday together. They even shared the same birthday, because Raoul was allowed to pick his birthday and he picked the same day as hers. At first this annoyed Cendrillon but when she realize his reasoning, that he did because she had everything he wanted so he needed to take it from her, she was ok with it. It was this kind of childish philosophy that carries them through their adolescent years. They grew up as best friends, almost like brother and sister and no one else knew each others story as well as they did. When they are sixteen we are watching them try to discover if they could ever be more than friends. They both admit that the idea has crossed their mind and realize how easy it would be if they married each other. They both loved each other very much, even if they were not in love with each other. When Anastasia, Cendrillon’s stepsister arrives, Cendrillon begins to unravel the truth, that Raoul is in love with her. When this does not upset her deeply she also realizes that she does not love him for anything more than who he is. This is a significant point in the story because we are able to see that Cendrillon believes in true love, the kind she finds with Prince Pascal and that her and Raoul will never be more than really good friends. I believe Dokey placed Raoul in the story as Cendrillon’s childhood campaign to allow us to see the transition she makes from childhood to adulthood when she fell in love with the prince. Because Raoul fell in love with Anastasia, Cendrillon realized that her plans had changed and she must now look for the true love she believes is awaiting her.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Megan how fairytales have a too unrealistic approach and fare fetched ending and Dokey’s work was no exception to this. Sometimes you really have to wonder can things really work out that good for the main protagonist? Dokey portrayed Cendrillon as a hard working girl, who was the abandoned daughter of a lord in a high court. She was down to earth and was even mistaken for a servant by her stepmother and stepsisters. Is it just way to convenient that she gets to leave this life behind after meeting her “Prince Charming”? While this makes for a great ending, especially in children’s versions, it may be sending the wrong message. It is not ok to just cast away your old life when you run into luck or fortune. It is important to always remember where you came from and your roots. Though the ending for Cinderella is very heartwarming, it may give people too much hope that someday they might just get to throw their old life away and marry a noble man. We all want a “happily ever after” but for some people this may just include a normal and healthy life, not being whisked away by Prince Charming.
ReplyDeleteAfter all the comparisons I made with Cameron Dokey’s version, to the brothers Grimm, or to Walt Disney, I never really touched on what I didn’t like about Dokey’s interpretation. Yes she had a similar outline of how Cindrillon journeyed to the ball and married the prince, but the version wasn’t the same one I remembered when I was sitting on my couch, dressed up in my princess outfit, singing magnificently along with the other mice. I wanted more magic and love and cute animals being transformed into professional horsemen. In Dokey’s version I felt how she was trying to make it out to be a coming of age story more than anything else. She kept narrating how Cindrillon wanted to do things that were far beyond her age of only 16, and never gave her the mystical appearance that I knew and loved when I was only 6. Don’t get me wrong, the book was very through and interesting with many connections to life lessons, but I couldn’t really call it a Cinderella story after having the movie by Disney imprinted into my mind. I think the story she produced was a good story all in all, but it just didn’t lift my heart as much as my favorite fairy tale did as a kid. That’s the problem with taking an age old story for little kids, and trying to turn it into an adult version. The reader can never really love the new version as much as the original they read. So in the process of her writing she may have lost the childhood memories, but she created a whole new story that was focused at an older group and gave them new ideas of how a Cinderella story can work.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree with Kelly that this is a coming of age story and that there are many differences between Before Midnight and the Brothers Grimm’s Cinderella I don’t think that the coming of age aspect is one of them. In every Cinderella variation I’ve seen Cinderella has been a young woman who is confused about her past and looking towards her future. She has been a person that was faced with many hardships at the beginning of her life what with her father situation whatever it may be and the situation with her stepmother and sisters. With these issues Cinderella was a young woman who had to learn from a young age to do things for herself and this caused her to grow up very quickly. No matter how magical a variation may be the story is always relatively the same and Cinderella growing up into a woman who can stand up against the odds and learn to forgive those who do her wrong while remaining the independent she has always been is always an important part of the story and I don’t believe it should be removed from any Cinderella story because if that happened then that surely wouldn’t be an actual Cinderella story.
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