Draft 1b:

Survival of the Fairest

                There is no greater satisfaction knowing that as human race we have learned to adapt to our environments. Nonetheless, we have also caused stagnant factors to change and adapt to us, just as fairy tales. With our always-changing world and perceptions, we have forced generations-old fairy tales to evolve and germane in correspondence to our time and our view. But we can attribute to our eagerness of making everything ours and relevant to us that we, as a cultural race, have saved fairy tales from extinction. Just as we apply the idea of “survival of the fittest” to many things, our evolutionary ideologies have encouraged fairy tales to strive for their survival. However the constant fight against extinction has blinded fairy tales from their true roots and their genuine origin.

                Our intuition to save fairy tales has permitted us to reconsider the barbaric descriptions of the original versions. We were aware of their darkness and gruesomeness and this awareness led us to wisely transform them and allow them to coexist with our times, to benefit is us as a society. It’s clear that people, especially parents, didn’t seem comfortable when reading original fairy tales to their children. This led cunning business people, like Walt Disney, to attempt to sanitize these tales in hopes of keeping them alive in our communities. But I believe that there is more to this, that the dog that hasn’t barked could be the explanation as to why the original versions of fairy tales aren’t adequate for their “corresponding” and acclaimed audience: Children.

                Although children are exposed to the violence that has engulfed our world through various sources, such as media, it is rather simplistic to notice that the violence within fairy tales is not as prevalent. This can be due to the vast expansion of technological advances or simply an age limit.  A poll conducted in 2009 revealed that parents weren’t fond of reading how Cinderella’s stepsisters chopped off portions of their foot to fit the glass slipper or how they were pecked by birds until they lost their vision. In this same poll, 3000 parents were asked if they would read fairy tales to their children. 50 percent said no way, 20 percent said they rejected the original tales as “politically incorrect,” and 17 percent simply said that these tales “would give their children nightmares.” But what has caused these parents to perceive fairy tales in such a way? I would like to draw your attention to the dynamical violence and gruesomeness present with fairy tales. The way we define violence has, just like major societal conflicts, evolved and changed. Before violence was the answer to castigate bad behavior. Nowadays, violence isn’t a threat nor God’s punishment for sin. We have ceased to see violence in the same way that we used to.  Original tales like Cinderella, by the brothers Grimm, just don’t seem to fit in the glass slipper that is our society; it seems that they have lost their magic; they have failed to enchant, both, parents and children.

                Even when fairy tales have received a global praise for their eloquence in helping us notice our misfit to the world, they have tried to unite us as one species. But ironically, original fairy tales are eccentric to our world and as a consequence we have relied on modifications to make them adequate and appropriate for our children. The process of sanitation itself proves that original fairy tales wouldn’t be relinquished as they once were. However, corporation who underwent through this process had a fixed mindset: profit. By stereotyping children as the common audience of fairy tales, main corporations who claimed rights to such fairy tales deliberately changed the entire scheme, while simultaneously eliminating the historical and cultural knowledge that they had created over time. So we can blame Disney’s ambition for economic gain for transcribing the focus of fairy tales to the hand of children. They have distorted the original intent of original fairy tales and they have alluded to idea that fairy tales were always meant for children. 

                Fairy tales seem to exist in a paradoxical universe where they are assimilated to open young readers’ (or listeners for that matter) eyes to the unsettling truths of the real world, yet at the same time they create an imaginable world that separates them from the reality in which we exist. In an article published by Libby Copeland, she explains how Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argued that “California shouldn’t be able to ban the sale of violent video games to kids because the games are no more violent than fairy tales.” Equating violent video games with fairy tales optimizes the seriousness of the matter and puts in perspective devastating effects that they can have on the youth. People who are able to clearly detect the inept contextualization of such tales will not worry about violent video games, but instead of the influence that tales have created in the home and the schools. Copeland also tells us how she is always “troubled by reading even the most modernized versions of fairy tales to [her] daughter, who is two years and a half.” This undoubtedly hints at Walt Disney’s unsuccessful attempt to cleanse these tales from their darkness in an attempt to convert them “canonical to western culture.”

                By setting fairy tales in the same plane of existence as contemporary video games we can draw a line skepticism and mysticism. These both branches of children entertainment start in the home, sometimes supervised by parents and others without their remote suspicion. When children are overflown by feelings of anguish or anxiety, they no longer try to sooth such feeing by simple forms of expression and instead they externalize it by violent responses. The American Psychological Association had declared that playing such video games correlates with behaviors of carelessness and/or aggressive patterns. While video games of violent nature attack children externally, fairy tales attack them internally. This means that while fairy tales synthesizes theoretical scenarios that are rare in our physical world, they affect the mental psychology of how the world really appears to be. Take “Cinderella” by the Brothers Grimm who create a world of evil, servitude, lack of courage to stand up against intolerance, and the fortunate arrival of prince. Through these type of scenarios children are only limited to a narrow number of solutions, that is live happily ever after or simply you don’t. Just think for a second what our children are being taught by this. They are engulfed by the false idea that passivity condones flourishing effects; that waiting for their prince is well worth. But is it really? It seems that by pushing this mentality, we are isolating our children to inherent suffering, a suffering that emanates from the children’s attempt to conquest the “they lived happily ever after” title and their unsuccessful attempt to live up to these portrayed standards.

                Fairy tales don’t only close the mind of children by providing limited models of life, they are also being deprived from self-compassion. It’s obvious that fairy tales are fictional works that delineate creativity and non-existing circumstances, but this can lead them to a void of humanly emotions for one another. By representing unrealistic scenarios, children are pushed away from the sympathetic emotions that are shared between people who live through similar troubles. It has been widely proclaimed that fairy tales can help children deal with troubles and teach them how to react and find a resolution. The side effect of this is that children are taught to react to processed and inorganic situations that they might never live through. Why instead of teaching kids that “… they lived happily ever after,” we teach them that “they lived happy, sometimes sad, others angry, and others even frightened.” Vanessa Loder, an expert on women’s leadership and mindfulness explores why fairy tales are bad for our kids (which happens to be the title of the article). She defines self-compassion as the ability to recognize that we are not alone in our suffering. She doesn’t negate the fact that fairy tales have factors that can help children, but instead hint at the idea that fairy tales only have two colors: white and black, eliminating the entire spectrum of greys that lie within these two.

While the complexity of thematic harshness outlaws the darkness that comprise fairy tales, their historical significance cannot be eradicated. While the classical tales might not be adequate for the culture that surrounds us today, they truly teach us the globalization of fairy tales. Many adaptation throughout the world have been made. It useless to try to count how many versions of Cinderella there are because many nation have adopted them to fit their culture and current times. They can doctrine humans about the power of literature and how it has evolved over time. However after further examination it can be detected that these fairy tales are symbols of nationalist pride and tools for propaganda. Donald Haase better explains these mechanisms of cultural ownership in his essay titled “Yours, Mine, or Ours?’’ where he claims that fairy tales have displayed modern German nationalism which can be linked with the creation of fascism. Since the Grimm tales reflect social characteristics such as “respect for order, belief in the desirability of obedience, subservience to authority,” to name a few, they can propagate national identity that destroys what fairy tales had once accomplished: globalization. Furthermore, the Grimm collection of fairy tales was created as “intellectual resistance” of Napoleonic expansion. The game of tug of war between who owns fairy tales managed to break down what the common people had created over the time: folklore that shares common humanity under the umbrella simplicity.

It’s clear that fairy tales didn’t begin to breathe with the intention of targeting children as the primary audience. Although certain aspects can resonate with them others are too severe and harsh for their reasoning. Reading fairy tales are like hammering nails into a wall. Analyzing fairy tales for morals is like removing that nail; then you realize that there are always holes left behind.

Draft 2:

Survival of the Fairest:

                There is no greater satisfaction knowing that as a human race we have learned to adapt to our environments in order to survive. Nonetheless, we have also caused SOCIETAL factors that once seemed unchangeable to change and adapt to us, just as fairy tales. With our always-changing world and perceptions, we have forced generations-old fairy tales to evolve and germane in correspondence to our time and world views. But we can attribute to our eagerness of making everything ours and relevant to us that we, as a cultural race, have saved fairy tales from extinction. Just as we apply the idea of “survival of the fittest” to many things, our evolutionary ideologies have encouraged fairy tales to strive for their survival. However the constant fight against extinction has blinded fairy tales from their true roots and their genuine origin.

                Our intuition to save fairy tales has permitted us to reconsider the barbaric descriptions of the original versions such as in Cinderella, written by the Brothers Grimm. We were aware of their darkness and gruesomeness and this KNOWLEDGE led us to wisely transform them and allow them to coexist with our times, to benefit us as a society(HOW). It’s clear that people, especially parents, don’t seem comfortable when reading original fairy tales to their children. This led cunning business people, like Walt Disney, to attempt to sanitize these tales in hopes of keeping them alive and relevant for our times. But I believe that there is more to this, that the dog that hasn’t barked could be the explanation as to why the original versions Cinderella isn’t adequate for their “corresponding” and acclaimed audience: Children.

                One cultural idea that has pushed incipient forms of Cinderella away from our bookshelves is the fact that they are inundated by violent and horrific acts. Although children are exposed to the violence that has engulfed our world through various sources, such as media and video games, it is rather simplistic to notice that the violence within Cinderella is just as prevalent. A poll conducted in 2009 revealed that parents weren’t fond of reading to their children how Cinderella’s stepsisters chopped off portions of their foot to fit the glass slipper or how they were pecked by birds until they lost their sight. In this same poll, 3000 parents were asked if they would read fairy tales to their children. 50 percent said no way, 20 percent said they rejected the original tales as “politically incorrect,” and 17 percent simply said that these tales “would give their children nightmares.” What attributes have caused these parents to perceive fairy tales in such a way? I would like to draw your attention to the dynamical violence and gruesomeness present within fairy tales. The way we define violence has, just like major societal ideas, evolved and changed over time. Before violence was the answer to castigate bad behavior, but now we have ceased to see violence in the same way that we used to. Nowadays, violence is not a threat nor God’s punishment for sin. The original Cinderella possess violent aspects that endow not only physical pain, but also mental suffering. Quite frankly, these aspects don’t seem to fit in the glass slipper that is our society today nor appropriate for young audiences. Cinderella seems to have lost its magic; it has failed to enchant, both, parents and children.

                Even when Cinderella has received global praise for its eloquence in helping us notice our unity as one species, it has also helped us notice our misfits in the world. Ironically, Cinderella is an eccentric and outdated tale to our world and as a consequence we have relied on modifications to make them adequate and appropriate for our children. The process of sanitation itself proves that Cinderella wouldn’t be relinquished as it was originally crafted. However, corporations that underwent through this process did so with a fixed mindset: profit. By stereotyping children as the common audience of fairy tales, main corporations who claimed rights to such fairy tales deliberately changed the entire scheme, while simultaneously eliminating the historical and cultural knowledge that they had acclaimed over time. In essence, we can blame Disney’s ambition for economic gain and for altering the focus of fairy tales to the heads of children. Through copious alterations like the removal of obscene violence, Disney has distorted and alluded to idea that fairy tales were always meant for children. 

                Cinderella seems to exist in a paradoxical universe where it has assimilated to open young readers’ eyes (or listeners for that matter) to the unsettling truths of the real world, yet at the same time they create an imaginable world that separates them from the reality in which they exist. In an article published by Libby Copeland, she explains how Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argued that “California shouldn’t be able to ban the sale of violent video games to kids because the games are no more violent than fairy tales.” Equating violent video games with fairy tales optimizes the seriousness of the matter and puts in perspective devastating effects that they can have on the youth. People who are able to clearly detect the inept contextualization of such tales will not worry about violent video games, but instead of the influence that these tales creates in homes and schools. Copeland also tells us how she is always “troubled by reading even the most modernized versions of fairy tales to [her] daughter, who is two years and a half.” This undoubtedly hints at Walt Disney’s unsuccessful attempt to cleanse these tales from their darkness in an attempt to convert them “canonical to western culture.”

                By setting Cinderella in the same plane of existence as contemporary video games we can analyze the physical consequences of violence in Cinderella. These both branches of children entertainment start in the home, sometimes supervised by parents and others without their remote suspicion. When children are overflown by feelings of anguish or anxiety, they no longer try to sooth such feeing by simple forms of expression and instead they externalize it through violent responses. The American Psychological Association had declared that playing such video games correlates with behaviors of carelessness and/or aggressive patterns. While video games of violent nature attack children externally, Cinderella attack them internally. This means that while Cinderella synthesizes theoretical scenarios that are rare in our physical world, they affect the mental psychology of how the world really appears to be. Examine how Cinderella creates a world of evil, servitude, lack of courage to stand up against intolerance. Psychoanalyst claim that these scenarios can help children grapple with their fears. However Usha Goswami and Peter Bryant who research children’s cognitive development and learning say that children learn best from “Communicative interactions,” imitation, and analogies.  Through these type of scenarios children are only limited to a narrow number of solutions, that is live happily ever after or you don’t. They are engulfed by the false idea that passivity condones flourishing effects; that waiting for their prince is well worth. But is it really? It seems that by pushing this mentality, we are isolating our children to inherent suffering, a suffering that emanates from the children’s attempt to conquest the “they lived happily ever after” title and their unsuccessful attempt to live up to these portrayed standards.

                Cinderella doesn’t only close the mind of children by providing limited models of life, they are also being deprived from self-compassion. It’s obvious that fairy tales are fictional works that delineate creativity and on a large scale, non-existing circumstances, that can lead them to a void of humanly emotions. By representing unrealistic scenarios, children are pushed away from the sympathetic emotions that are shared between people who live through similar troubles. It has been widely proclaimed that fairy tales can help children deal with troubles and teach them how to react and find a resolution. The side effect of this is that children are taught to react to processed and inorganic situations that they might never live through. Why instead of teaching kids that “… they lived happily ever after,” we teach them that “they lived happy, sometimes sad, others angry, and others even frightened.” Vanessa Loder, an expert on women’s leadership and mindfulness explores why fairy tales are bad for our kids (which happens to be the title of the article). She defines self-compassion as the ability to recognize that we are not alone in our suffering. She doesn’t negate the fact that fairy tales have factors that can help children, but instead hint at the idea that fairy tales only have two colors: white and black, eliminating the entire spectrum of greys that lie within these two.

                I am not advocating that Cinderella should be withdrawn from bookshelves or exempted from school curriculums, I just want to disperse how original Cinderella is brutal and carry misconceptions that harm the integrity of children. On the other hand contemporary Cinderella models only serve as a basis for economic profitability. We must realize that fairy tales are unrestrainedly clawing the innocence of our children. It’s not only self-compassion and humanly emotions nor detachments from the reality, they crumbling the patrimony that makes children who they are; they are snatching their childhood just like snatching a candy from them. It is selfish to take away the lessons that tales express, however this lessons can be so complex that they can reveal the harshness and reality of the real world. I’m sure that a four year old wouldn’t like to know about rape or that being a consequence for straying from path. Most of the morals of the story are extreme and sensitive for a child’s ear. By promoting such severity tales that are in the reach of children, we gamble with a dice that only has one side. But isn’t selfish that we allow children to learn of the cruel nature of humanity at such an early age. It’s inherent that they learn about themselves and enjoy their childhood before they do of the world. Even if fairy tales make children more aware of the reality that sustains our world, what can they do about it? Sure they’ll know that there are bad wolves out there, but the bad wolves won’t change their plans because of their awareness. In essence, fairy tales open their eyes, but they don’t armor them with the appropriate equipment required when actually facing such events. It like the duality of particles, the fact that we are aware of how they behave is not going to change their behavior. Similarly, just because children are aware of the behaviors of the world, that is not going to change how the world behave.

While the complexity of thematic harshness outlaws the darkness that comprise fairy tales, their historical significance cannot be eradicated. While the classical tales might not be adequate for the culture that surrounds us today, they truly teach us the globalization of fairy tales. Many adaptation throughout the world have been made. It useless to try to count how many versions of Cinderella there are because many nation have adopted them to fit their culture and current times. They can doctrine humans about the power of literature and how it has evolved over time. However after further examination it can be detected that these fairy tales are symbols of nationalist pride and tools for propaganda. Donald Haase better explains these mechanisms of cultural ownership in his essay titled “Yours, Mine, or Ours?’’ where he claims that fairy tales have displayed modern German nationalism which can be linked with the creation of fascism. Since the Grimm tales reflect social characteristics such as “respect for order, belief in the desirability of obedience, subservience to authority,” to name a few, they can propagate national identity that destroys what fairy tales had once accomplished: globalization. Furthermore, the Grimm collection of fairy tales was created as “intellectual resistance” of Napoleonic expansion. The game of tug of war between who owns fairy tales managed to break down what the common people had created over the time: folklore that shares common humanity under the umbrella simplicity.

It’s clear that Cinderella didn’t begin to breathe with the intention of targeting children as the primary audience. Although certain aspects can resonate with them others are too severe and harsh for their reasoning. Reading fairy tales are like hammering nails into a wall. Analyzing fairy tales for morals is like removing that nail; then you realize that there are always holes left behind. So with all the information provided about how Cinderella’s darkness and potential psychological effects, is it safe that our children are still exposed to these type of stories?

Draft 3:

Survival of the Fairest: The Other face of Cinderella

            There is no greater satisfaction knowing that as a human race we have learned to adapt to our environments in order to survive. Nonetheless, we have also caused societal factors that once seemed unchangeable to change and adapt to us, just as fairy tales. With our always-changing world and perceptions, we have forced generations-old fairy tales to evolve and germane in correspondence to our time and worldly views. But we can attribute to our eagerness of making everything ours and relevant to us that we, as a culturally inspired race, have saved fairy tales from extinction. Just as we apply the idea of “survival of the fittest” to many things, our evolutionary ideologies have encouraged fairy tales to strive for their survival. However the constant fight against extinction has blinded fairy tales from their true roots and their genuine origin.

            Our intuition to save fairy tales has permitted us to reconsider the barbaric descriptions of the original versions such as in Cinderella, written by the Brothers Grimm. We were aware of their darkness and gruesomeness and this knowledge led us to wisely transform them and allow them to coexist with our times, to benefit us as a society. It’s clear that people, especially parents, don’t seem comfortable when reading original fairy tales to their children. This led cunning business people, like Walt Disney, to attempt to sanitize these tales in hopes of keeping them alive and relevant for our times. But I believe that there is more to this, that the dog that hasn’t barked could be the explanation as to why the original versions Cinderella isn’t adequate for its “corresponding” and acclaimed audience: Children.

            It is with great certainty that today’s fairy tales have stained their original audience and thus stereotyped children as the recurring audience, when in reality fairy tales were not prominently prearranged for children. In the article “sex and violence,” Maria Tatar explicitly tells us that Grimm never wrote with the intention of addressing children, instead “the Brothers proclaimed [that] their efforts as collectors were guided by scholarly principles, and therefore implied that they were writing largely for academic colleagues” (Tatar, 370). Tatar reinforces that our global idea that Cinderella was always meant for children is simply a false dichotomy. This idea arose from our current times, in efforts of attempting to reintroduce Cinderella in our modern society, while contextualizing values and morals that are relevant to our always changing society. The Brothers Grimm create parameters of physical violence and gruesomeness that is heavy in severity for a child’s mind. The grim images of one of the stepsister slicing off her toe while the other sliced her heel in hopes to fit the shoe and fool the prince is horrific and genuinely disturbing. The inclination of the Grimm Brothers to incorporate such details can also be associated with ambition of “adding or intensifying violent episodes.” (Tatar, 365). Their intensification of such violence is evident at the end of Cinderella when two doves pecked the stepsister “and so they were punished for their wickedness and malice with blindness for the rest of their lives.” (Tatar, 122) The incorporation of violence is not as problematic for children, what is problematic is in the context which is presented. When they cut off part of their foot we can conclude their ambition to be married to a prince pushed them to do it, corrupting them for desiring wealth. On the hand, the loss of their sight was brought upon revenge for their corruption as humans. This sort of ideas are severe for the young and early developing minds of children.

            As the brothers Grimm faced economic restlessness, they realized that they had to ample their audience and so they cleanse some aspects but they poisoned Cinderella with their nationalistic views and steroetypes. Jack Zipes informs us through his book “Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion” that “critics gradually came to regard the Grimm’s fairy tales as ‘secret agents’ of an education establishment that introduces children to learn fix roles and functions within bourgeois, thus curtailing their free development” (Zipes 60). This poison then hinders children from molding an autonomy and encloses them to a patriarchal superiority. Often times this poison comes in the form of patriarchy—or in this case matriarchy! This is an insisting theme that elucidates from Cinderella especially when “Cinderella did as she was told” all in hopes of a false promise of going to the dance. After Cinderella’s mother dies, her stepmother snatches her freedom and she’s forced into rags and a slave-like life. The idea of matriarchy comes into light when Cinderella remains submissive and tamed under this “authoritive figure.” This undermining idea shouldn’t be presented to children in such a raw way because within the society that we reside, we must learn to confront injustice and speak against intolerance and authority that harms our integrity as a person and community. 

            Another poison that transfuses within the pages of Cinderella is sexism and its ruthless acquisition to maintain such ideas covered under its simplistic language. With the same example from the previous paragraph we can deduct that Cinderella’s inability to speak out against her stepmother and stepsisters only creates and reinforces stereotypes. For instance her passivity contributes to the creation of the ideology of femininity. Under this ideology, principles of beliefs, values, and ideas delineate women as fragile and weak and thus create incipient forms of stereotypes and myths that still affect our society. Although the Grimm Brothers speak of this idea in a subtle way, exposing children to this passivity only strengthens the abundancy of such mentality. Zipes explains in his book how critiques noticed that “essentially pertinent questions on sociopolitical functions reflect on and seek to understand how the message in fairy tales tend to repress and constrain children rather than set them free to make their own choices” (Zipes, 60). If the Brothers Grimm are trying to make a claim about sexism, why do it in a way that encourages their audience to participate in such ideas? By rewarding Cinderella’s passivity with the coming of her prince, they are emanating a positive connotation that submissiveness and a lack of voice is always rewarded at the end. If we try to teach children this delicate ideas through the medium of Cinderella, children are going to be conflicted with the belief of what is morally right.

            There is another primary component—embedded in subtlety— to the grim formula of poison: the metaphysical transformation from manhood to chattelhood. The mere act of the stepmother and the stepsisters taking away “her beautiful clothes, dressed her in an old grey smock, and gave her some wooden shoes” is the first step of stripping Cinderella from her persona and identity, turning her into a slave. The idea of Cinderella’s transformation from a subject to an object is exemplified by her daily routine where “every day, she got up before daybreak to carry water, start the fire, cook, and wash” (Tatar, 117). At this moment in the tale, the Grimm Brothers have exiled Cinderella from her human aspects and shackled her to slavery. And once again, her disposition of submissiveness reaffirms the audience that this behavior is acceptable and will be rewarded at the end. The objectification of Cinderella causes her to create a secretive identity. When her stepmother prevents her to go to the dance, Cinderella waits until everyone is gone and then wore a beautiful dress, making her unrecognizable. This molds the idea of duality which leads us to believe that you must cover up who you really are and hide from society. In reality, this audience should be armored by weapons that will guide them to restrict such behaviors. In other words, children who are exposed to this version of Cinderella are being indoctrinated with antiquated stereotypes that seem to be portrayed in a positive way.

            The innocence portrayed by the use of simplistic language and fairy tales conventions create a duality of meaning which helps us conclude that Cinderella was neglected as a daughter and a human. Since the Grimms had to adapt their fairy tale to the ears and comprehension of children, they sugar coated Cinderella by befriending her with two little white doves and the help of magical tree. But the doves nor the lighthearted lines that Cinderella sings are enough to opaque the darker ideas that are present in Cinderella. Instead, her loneliness leads her to a lack of human interaction and subdues her to an absence of love and self-compassion. This then allows us to analyze parental neglect which directly correlates with child abuse. It’s surprising to see that devastating effects didn’t break Cinderella down mentally because of her father’s minimal support and understanding. After Cinderella’s mother died, her father disappeared from her life and whenever he made an appearance he only degraded her. This happens when the Prince is looking for the rightful owner of the shoe and he wants Cinderella to try it on. The Prince asks the King if he has another daughter and he replies by saying, “no, there’s only puny little Cinderella, my dead wife’s daughter, but she can’t possibly be the bride” (Tatar, 121). The king seems to almost have forgotten that Cinderella was once a princess and daughter of his first love and that she’s not worthy of the shoe nor marrying the prince.  In Tatar’s article, she highlights that the Grimm fairy tales intensify violence, but she also failed to include the physical violence that the protagonist undergoes.

            In their indisputably dark version of Cinderella, the Grimm Brothers emanate an idea that fairy tales only teach what to think instead of how to think. To correlate with Haase’s idea that “the tales were thought to contain the scattered fragments of ancient Germanic myth, which –when collected—would provide the German people with a magic mirror in which they could discern and thus reassert their national identity” (Tatar, 355). As the Grimm Brothers underwent through the process of sanitizing fairy tales, they left all sublet details in order to implement their own views and those of the culture that surrounded them. At a nationalistic level the Brothers Grimm reflect German superiority through the stepmother who takes over and imperializes Cinderella. This is why the Grimms leave ambiguity as to what exactly happened to the stepmother. We see that the stepsisters violently pecked by doves, but we are never reaffirmed of the whereabouts of the stepmother. Similarly Cinderella (alongside other fairy tales), became a “political weapon in the Grimm’s intellectual resistance to the Napoleonic occupation of their Hessian homeland” (Tatar, 355). In other words, the brothers Grimm built a wall of resistance and attacked Napoleonic imperialism; it was a literary war between the French and the German folklore. To represent this idea, the Grimm brothers metamorphosed the stepsister as France who try to “conquest” Cinderella, but at the end they end up punished. Through small details and careful examination, the puzzle can be put together and elucidate this “reservoir and model of national character” (Tatar, 355).

            It is with eloquent simplicity that we can conclude that the Brother Grimms had the tool to craft lessons that could be relinquished by a myriad amount of audiences ranging from children to adults. Instead, the brothers encourage behaviors that lead us to believe that they are encapsulating nationalistic views and part of a shattered society that doesn’t accept such poisonous behaviors. Or where the Brothers simply trying to intensify such poisonous behaviors to helps see what’s wrong with the world? And if so, are these behaviors presentable to a young audience? One thing is clear and that is that Cinderella didn’t begin to breathe with the intention of targeting children as the primary audience. Although certain aspects can resonate with them others are too severe and harsh for their reasoning. Reading fairy tales is like hammering nails into a wall. Analyzing fairy tales for morals is like removing that nail. After removing that nail, then you realize that there will always be holes left behind. So with all the information provided about how Cinderella’s darkness, Nationalistic patriarch, sexism, and slavery is it safe that our children are still exposed to these types of folklore?