THE LADY VARNISHES
From the BBC NEWS website, 22 November 2016…
From the BBC NEWS website, 22 November 2016…
As part of the BBC's 100 Women season, she visited a primary
school in the Cotswolds to discuss ways in which Cinderella is sexist and then
asked the children to come up with their own version."
According to Wikipedia, one of the oldest known variants of
‘Cinderella’ is a Chinese fairy tale, about a young girl named “Ye Xian"
or "Yeh-Shen" or “Yeh-hsien”, first published in a 9th-century compilation. She triumphs over her stepmother and
stepsisters who are killed by flying stones.
Like the Western “Cinderella”, the heroine is a humble
creature, who discharges the household chores and is subjected to humiliating
treatment at the hands of her stepmother and stepsisters.
The form of the tale popular today is due to a retelling of
this ancient tale by Charles Perrault, published in ‘Histoires ou Contes du
temps passé’, published in Paris
in 1697. Wikipedia recounts this version as the story of “a wealthy widower who
married a proud and haughty woman as his second wife. She had two daughters,
who were equally vain and selfish. The gentleman had a beautiful young
daughter, a girl of unparalleled kindness and sweet temper. The man's daughter
is forced into servitude, where she was made to work day and night doing menial
chores. “
In 1878 the Cinderella story was told in Scotland under the name, ‘Rashin
Coatie’. It tells of a king who had one lovely daughter, and whose wife had
died. He married for a second time, an ill-mannered woman with three ugly girls
of her own whose envy of the king’s daughter was matched by their treatment of
her. They made her sit in the kitchen neuk, gave her a garment of rushes to
wear, and allowed her nothing to eat but their leavings.
So... Cinderella’s tormentors are other members of the female persuasion! Am I wrong, or does that not fit the definitions of ‘sexist’?
Don’t get me started on the Wicked Queen in ‘Snow White and
the Seven Dwarfs’, Maleficent in Disney’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’, the Wicked Witch of
the West in ‘The Wizard of Oz’, Miss Hannigan in ‘Annie’, Cruella de Vil, in
‘101 Dalmatians’, the Queen of Hearts in ‘Alice in Wonderland’...
As Rudyard Kipling so neatly put it "The female of the
species is more deadly than the male".
And there's more...
The National Theatre's production of Peter Pan features a female Captain Hook... ooo... what a clever idea, I bet you need at least a First-class honours degree in woolgathering to dream that one up.
What next? 'The Pirettes of
