Cinderella

8-10 min read
16 pages

Cinderella, the Brothers Grimm tale to read aloud. No fairy godmother here — what helps her grows on her mother's grave.

A rich man's wife fell ill, and she called her daughter to the bed and said: «Stay good, and I will be near you.» Then she died, and the girl went to her grave every day and cried, and in the winter the snow covered everything.

In the spring her father took a new wife, who brought two daughters of her own. They had fair faces and dark thoughts, and within a week the girl's good clothes were gone, and her bed, and her place at the table.

She slept by the hearth in the ashes and got up before anyone to light the fire, and because she was always grey with ash they stopped using her name and called her Cinderella.

Her father went to the fair and asked the three of them what they wanted. The stepsisters said dresses and pearls. Cinderella said: the first branch that knocks against your hat on the way home.

She planted the branch on her mother's grave. It grew into a tree, and a white bird came to sit in it, and whatever she asked the bird for, the bird brought.

Then the king announced a festival, three days long, so that his son could choose a bride, and every girl in the country was invited.

The stepmother tipped a dish of lentils into the ashes. «Pick them out,» she said, «and you may come.» Cinderella went to the back door and called, and the birds came in through the window and had the lentils out in an hour.

«It makes no difference,» said the stepmother. «You have nothing to wear and you would only shame us.» And they went without her.

So Cinderella went to the tree. «Shake down silver and gold over me,» she said, and the bird threw down a dress of silver and gold and a pair of slippers worked with silk, and she went to the festival, and nobody there knew her.

The prince danced with her all evening and would not dance with anyone else. When it got late she slipped away, and he followed, and she went up into the pigeon house and out the other side before he reached it.

The second night the same, and the third — except that on the third night the prince had the palace steps painted with pitch, and when she ran her left slipper stuck to it and stayed there.

He took the slipper round the whole country. At Cinderella's house the eldest stepsister cut off her toe to get her foot in, and rode away with him — until the two pigeons in the tree called out that there was blood in the shoe.

The second cut off a piece of her heel, and got the same distance, and the pigeons said the same thing.

«Have you no other daughter?» said the prince. «Only a little drudge,» said the father. «She cannot possibly be the one.» But the prince asked for her anyway.

She washed her hands and face, came in, sat down and put the slipper on, and it went on as if it had been standing empty waiting for her. When she stood up the prince looked at her face and knew it at once.

He set her on his horse and rode out through the gate, and the pigeons flew down out of the hazel tree and sat one on each of her shoulders, and they stayed there all the way.

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Text source: Plot by the Brothers Grimm (1812), public domain. The text was written anew for Marytale — it is not a reprint of anyone else's version.

Cinderella characters

Cinderella: The daughter of the house, put to work in it after her mother dies. She is not rescued by luck: what helps her grows from a branch she planted herself.
The hazel tree: Grown on her mother's grave from a twig Cinderella planted and watered. In the Grimm telling this, and not a fairy godmother, is where the dress comes from.
The white bird: Sits in the hazel tree and throws down whatever Cinderella asks for. It is the mother's promise kept, in the plainest possible form.
The stepmother: Sets the impossible tasks — lentils in the ashes, sorted before the ball. She is never explained, because the tale does not explain people.
The two stepsisters: Beautiful and cold. Each cuts a piece off her own foot to force the golden shoe, and each is found out by the blood in it.
The prince: Has the palace steps painted with pitch on the third night, which is the only clever thing he does in the story.
The pigeons: Call out that the shoe is bloody, twice. In the Grimm ending they also blind the sisters at the wedding.

Where «Cinderella» comes from and who wrote it down

What is a fairy tale? Features and structure

Cinderella

Cinderella characters

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