Cinderella

 Sorry, my brain has just not been cooperating today or yesterday. Yesterday, it was racing at 100 miles an hour trying to figure out how to set up a goat range to keep them safe and contained and what I needed for that, because my Mom wants goats and someone nearby apparently had some goats that they needed rehomed. Then they found a way to keep their goats, so I don't need that research, but my brain still wanted to run off and plan how much it would cost, immediate set up, monthly food, future costs, etc. 

Then today, I was trying to figure out something to tell you about that goes with Halloween coming up, since I haven't talked about any of that but it is Halloween soon. My brain didn't want to do that though, because instead it wanted to run around thinking of Cinderella, which is easily explained because I was gifted a painted pumpkin that looks like a Cinderella Carriage, so I've been making the frame, wheels, horse, and coachman to go along with it. It's all a lot less pretty than the pumpkin, but I'm having fun with it. 

So...I guess you get to hear about Cinderella today. 

The history of the story goes back...a lot further than you think. 

A lot of people know that Cinderella is older than Disney and goes back to the Brothers Grimm at least. Where, exactly, it starts is up for debate though. Some would say sixth century Greece, 6-8th century China, or 1st century Egypt. The point of all those stories is that a woman marries up because of a guy searching for the owner of a shoe. 

Considering shoe sizes and people, it would probably only take about 20 or 30 young women to find one that fits the shoe well enough, unless actual magic is involved, or the lovely damsel has extremely weird shaped feet, like tiny or giant or very narrow or wide. Considering the usual standards of beauty, I'd say tiny or narrow are more likely than wide or giant, but still. 

The wicked stepmother thing doesn't appear until the 17th century in Italy, but it does involve a rather horrible twist of the girl not wanting to marry the king but being forced to. Eek. 

Around the same time comes the 'glass' part of the slipper, possibly because it was misheard and someone wrote it down as verre instead of vair. Not a big difference in that language, but a big difference when you consider what would happen if you actually tried to walk in an actual glass slipper. If, for some reason, you're not convinced by the danger, there have been actual studies on it and how bad it would be, and how dangerous even breathing in those shoes could be. That's all assuming you can put them on and stand in them, which is very unlikely. 

All told, there are over 100 stories that could probably be recognized as a variant of Cinderella. A lot of them, especially the older ones, are a bit, ah, grimmer than you'd think. The sources below have some of those, but I'll leave that to you to investigate if you're actually worried. They also have a lot of the names of historic 'Cinderella's, if you're curious. 

I'm going to stop here though, because there's alot of information I could share and I'm starting to get a little lost in it, so I'll be back later with something else. I hope you learned something interesting from this though, and I'll see you again soon. 

Sources:

Radio Times-- The Science of Cinderella's Slippers

Metro Opera-- A Brief History of Cinderella

Vox-- A history of Cinderella

Pook Press- Cinderella's History

PNB--- Cinderella

NPR-- A Girl, A Shoe, A Prince; The Endlessly Evolving Story of Cinderella (This one talks about a 150 year old book with 345 variations on the Cinderella story.)

Book Riot-- History of Cinderella

Lit Reactor-- The Strange History of Cinderella

Eden Valley Enterprises-- Cinderella Around the World

University of Rochester-- Cinderella Bibliography (This is a compilation of everything Cinderella that the authors could find, including some things that are just paintings or something.)