Compare & Contrast Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm Cinderella, Ever After and Essay

Compare & Contrast Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm Cinderella, Ever After and Disney's Cinderella - Essay Example The Brothers Grimm, Jakob and Wilhelm, were the first to put the age-old story of a poor little princess turned pauper turned princess to paper as a means of preserving the rich oral history of their German homeland in the early 1800s. Because their original intention was not to write children’s stories, but to preserve folktales, there remain traces within Cinderella that hint of a darker past. Also, because the story was written during a time of strong Christian morality, the stories contain a blatant religious overtone – including the beginning when Cinderella is told by her dying mother that her responsibility in life is to â€Å"be good and pious.† The step-sisters in this version are beautiful to look upon, but the brothers describe them as â€Å"vile and black of heart.† In portraying Cinderella, the Grimm brothers go into great detail regarding Cinderella’s grief over the loss of her mother and include a magical hazel tree in which a white b ird perches and delivers to Cinderella any of the wishes she expresses. It was with the help of the little bird in the hazel tree that Cinderella was able to be outfitted properly for the first of a three day festival and dance. In this case, she was forced to leave the dance three times, once by jumping through a pigeon house, once by climbing a tree and the third time, she finally left behind a golden, rather than a glass, slipper. The prince twice picked up the wrong sister to be his bride after they each had mutilated their own foot in order to fit into the slipper, but the bird at the grave continued to warn him. On her wedding day, the two false sisters were punished by the birds by having their eyes plucked out one at a time, suffering blindness forever afterward. This is a gruesome tale compared to that presented by Walt Disney in 1950. Here the step-sisters have become as unfortunate-looking as they are in spirit, both mean and