Cinderella: Or, On the Virtues of Shutting Up and Sitting Down

There are many ways of critiquing folktales. However, they all agree on one central point: the tale is told to children so that they will behave. In less coercive terms, one might say the story is that so that the child will grow up to be a functional part of society. Either way, it boils down to the same thing. These stories are finely tuned propaganda pieces designed to inculcate into children the basic "virtues" needed to make them obey and keep to their place in the world. Among the many stories that for centuries now has been teaching children, especially the young girls at which it is aimed, to be meek and quiet beneath the command of their superiors and elders has been Cinderella.

One the face of it, this folktale may seem almost subversive. After all, Cinderella...
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