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Essay: Life isn't a fairy tale.

By Mariana Flores and Romina Rocco

Since Cinderella’s release, the Disney film based on the fairy tale by Charles Perrault, we have been idealizing her happy ending. However, Cinderella is a clear example of people’s resignation to their belonging class. Our construction about reality as regards this story does nothing but maintaining and reproducing a discourse about the relationship between classes based on domination and degradation. Behind this fairy tale, a fantastic world where everything is possible, there is an important social construction that must be analyzed and revealed.

Although Cinderella belongs to the nobility, she ends working as a servant under her stepmother’s domination. So, she has to be good, obedient, well behaved and submissive, as she has promised to her father. As a consequence, we can see that she develops a passive role, tolerating all kinds of mistreatments from her stepmother and her stepsisters, who enjoy the wealth Cinderella’s father has left.   Cinderella show us how lower classes obey social mandates, such as sacrifice, duties, hard work and fate, which have been built in the higher sector of society - those who hold the power and the cultural capital - in order to justify these notions, not for them, but for the popular classes.

In this film, doing the housework is shown as a punishment. The evil stepmother disciplines Cinderella through these labors. The conception created in the audience’s mind through the years, results in the incorporation of the belief that the house chores are a degrading and a humiliating work. This kind of work is considered incorrect for high society and it has to be done by the lower class. According to this, we can see how higher classes define which is an honorable job.

Another thing to say about this Walt Disney film is that, in order to triumph in life, Cinderella has to reach absolute beauty. She must have the most beautiful clothing, carriage and - of course – she must be charming. Only with this, she would be able to obtain the prince love. This is another classic conception built in the higher classes. Someone from a lower class will be happy only if she is beautiful enough to obtain someone’s love, which comes from a higher class. Cinderella could go to the royal ball because she is helped by a godmother. For that reason, she has the possibility to be immersed in high society again and to be chosen by a prince.

As a conclusion, we can say that although Cinderella has a passive role, she is able to restore her position in the nobility, not only by being a good and obedient girl, but also thanks to her beauty. The discourse of the higher classes is so well constructed and naturalized that the other classes unconsciously accept the abuse, reproducing it over and over again.  Nowadays, people from different strata of society are becoming more aware of the tension between classes and they are able to understand that Cinderella is just a fairy tale.