#4 - Fairytale Facade
Cinderella, originally authored by Brothers Grimm and adapted by Walt Disney, is the ideal fantasy of every girl’s heart in either version. Being of great significance in any girl's memories, Cinderella inculcates in us her “happily ever after” notion since we were young. Having fashioned our own dreams about finding Prince Charming after Cinderella’s, we ought to ponder for a moment if her story is all sweet and dandy as it seems.
The all too familiar tale tells of how beautiful Cinderella goes against all odds to meet her Prince Charming who will eventually marry her and live happily ever after. However, upon closer scrutiny, you will wonder how the two protagonists can fall in love and hastily decide upon marriage after just three dances together (or just one, in Disney’s adaptation). This is an amazing phenomenon, and for the average romance layman, sharing a first dance usually does not earn you a perfect spouse in two weeks’ time.
Racking my brains for possible explanations for the two lovebirds’ hasty marriage, I wonder if Cinderella could have been a typical materialistic girl. For all the readers may know, Cinderella could have been eyeing the Prince’s riches and not his heart. Or perhaps she could have been driven to desperation by her poverty and mistreatment in her step-mother’s care, to be less harsh on the materialism hypothesis. After all, only the Prince could rescue her from her miserable life, then. Under such circumstances, Cinderella may have focussed more on the prospects and benefits of marrying the Prince rather than her feelings for him, if she even had any.
Besides Cinderella’s moment of greed, the Prince might have been quite superficial and be captivated by Cinderella’s charming appearance. As we all know, women’s looks fade away with age and men are generally fickle. Ten years down the road of ‘happily ever after’ life and Cinderella may have grown grossly fat because of the endless deluge of delicacies in the palace. The Prince may then, despise his wife and decide to turn his affections unto another girl. Such a marriage should not be the ideal kind girls all over the world have been dreaming about.
There can be a thousand and one other feasible theories about why Cinderella and her Prince may have committed a mistake in rushing into marriage with each other. Hasty decisions are known to end in tragedy, and it should be no exception for Cinderella and her Prince, I suppose. If their feelings for each other were to last only for a decade after they exchanged vows because they were blinded by a moment of greed or superficiality, this brilliant fairytale will be flawed. We ought to question the practicality of such flawed fairytale fancies, and I presume the answer will be obvious.
Fairytales can be a facade, too.
The all too familiar tale tells of how beautiful Cinderella goes against all odds to meet her Prince Charming who will eventually marry her and live happily ever after. However, upon closer scrutiny, you will wonder how the two protagonists can fall in love and hastily decide upon marriage after just three dances together (or just one, in Disney’s adaptation). This is an amazing phenomenon, and for the average romance layman, sharing a first dance usually does not earn you a perfect spouse in two weeks’ time.
Racking my brains for possible explanations for the two lovebirds’ hasty marriage, I wonder if Cinderella could have been a typical materialistic girl. For all the readers may know, Cinderella could have been eyeing the Prince’s riches and not his heart. Or perhaps she could have been driven to desperation by her poverty and mistreatment in her step-mother’s care, to be less harsh on the materialism hypothesis. After all, only the Prince could rescue her from her miserable life, then. Under such circumstances, Cinderella may have focussed more on the prospects and benefits of marrying the Prince rather than her feelings for him, if she even had any.
Besides Cinderella’s moment of greed, the Prince might have been quite superficial and be captivated by Cinderella’s charming appearance. As we all know, women’s looks fade away with age and men are generally fickle. Ten years down the road of ‘happily ever after’ life and Cinderella may have grown grossly fat because of the endless deluge of delicacies in the palace. The Prince may then, despise his wife and decide to turn his affections unto another girl. Such a marriage should not be the ideal kind girls all over the world have been dreaming about.
There can be a thousand and one other feasible theories about why Cinderella and her Prince may have committed a mistake in rushing into marriage with each other. Hasty decisions are known to end in tragedy, and it should be no exception for Cinderella and her Prince, I suppose. If their feelings for each other were to last only for a decade after they exchanged vows because they were blinded by a moment of greed or superficiality, this brilliant fairytale will be flawed. We ought to question the practicality of such flawed fairytale fancies, and I presume the answer will be obvious.
Fairytales can be a facade, too.
posted by Lady Lazarus at 8:16 PM
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