The class conflict element is actually highly variable. Fairy tales traditionally reflect the values of the society in which they come from and they reflect the major struggles people have. I have always felt that the Cinderella stories are one of the best reflections of this, because the story has morphed from one moral to its complete opposite as the values of the societies telling it have changed.
Early tales in the Cinderella line were always pretty much along these lines. There was a couple of high rank with a daughter. The mother dies. The new step-mother starts treating Cinderella as someone of low rank, while giving preferential treatment to her daughters. But she ends up getting the prince to fall in love with her and she is restored to a position of high rank. Those who attempt to upset the class system are punished and those who belong to high rank will be restored to it.
They were fundamentally about the importance of maintaining the status quo of class.
In many modern Cinderella stories she is of low rank/class from the start and it's about how the prince falls for a good person as who you are matters more than your class and that socioeconomic status is flexible and changeable.
I strongly support the creation of new fairy tales and the modification of old ones. I don't want to lose the old versions. I just don't see why we should suddenly stop changing them when we've been adapting fairy tales to what our culture wants for centuries. I love to read old fairy tales and also modern stories in the fairy tale structure or reworkings of classic tales in creative ways.
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chiming
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Date: 2009-09-02 09:47 pm (UTC)From:Early tales in the Cinderella line were always pretty much along these lines. There was a couple of high rank with a daughter. The mother dies. The new step-mother starts treating Cinderella as someone of low rank, while giving preferential treatment to her daughters. But she ends up getting the prince to fall in love with her and she is restored to a position of high rank. Those who attempt to upset the class system are punished and those who belong to high rank will be restored to it.
They were fundamentally about the importance of maintaining the status quo of class.
In many modern Cinderella stories she is of low rank/class from the start and it's about how the prince falls for a good person as who you are matters more than your class and that socioeconomic status is flexible and changeable.
I strongly support the creation of new fairy tales and the modification of old ones. I don't want to lose the old versions. I just don't see why we should suddenly stop changing them when we've been adapting fairy tales to what our culture wants for centuries. I love to read old fairy tales and also modern stories in the fairy tale structure or reworkings of classic tales in creative ways.