"Cinderella, the Legend"

In an essay from her book "Kiss Sleeping Beauty Goodbye," Madonna Kolbenschlag analyzes the symbolic elements of the fairy tale to determine why it is so popular across cultures and time.

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 12 Unit 2's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: Pygmalion and the Statue, Pygmalion, Talkin' 'bout a Revolution, Cinderella, the Legend, Why Women Always Take Advantage of Men, The Giving Tree, A Rose for Emily, The Story of an Hour, The Chaser
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. iconic
    relating to a symbolic figure
    The iconic focus of the tale on the lost slippers and Cinderella's "perfect fit" suggest that the story may have originated in the Orient where the erotic significance of tiny feet has been a popular myth since ancient times.
  2. motif
    a recurrent element in a literary or artistic work
    The basic motifs of the story are well-known: an ill-treated heroine, who is forced to live by the hearth; the twig she plants on her mother's grave that blossoms into a magic tree; the tasks demanded of the heroine; the magic animals that help her perform the tasks and provide her costume for the ball; the meeting at the ball; the heroine's flight from the ball; the lost slipper; the shoe test; the sisters' mutilation of their feet; the discovery of the true bride and the happy marriage.
  3. mercantile
    relating to or characteristic of trade or traders
    The Horatio Alger quality of the story helps to explain its special popularity in mercantile and capitalistic societies.
  4. aspiration
    a will to succeed
    As a parable of social mobility it was seized upon by the writers of the new "literature of aspiration" in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a basic plot for a new kind of private fantasy--the novel.
  5. subliminal
    below the threshold of conscious perception
    It is a tale of sibling rivalry (and subliminally, of sex-role stereotyping)--a moral fable about socialization.
  6. enmesh
    entangle in or as if in a net
    Very few themes could be closer to the inner experience of the child, an emerging self enmeshed in a family network...
  7. affiliation
    a social or business relationship
    The personality of the heroine is one that, above all, accepts abasement as a prelude to and precondition of affiliation.
  8. menial
    relating to unskilled work, especially domestic work
    That abasement is characteristically expressed by Cinderella's servitude to menial tasks, work that diminishes her.
  9. paradigm
    a standard or typical example
    This willing acceptance of a condition of worthlessness and her expectation of rescue (as reward for her virtuous suffering) is a recognizable paradigm of traditional feminine socialization.
  10. transition
    an event that results in a transformation
    Her sojourn among the ashes is a period of grieving, a transition to a new self.
  11. docility
    the trait of being agreeably submissive and manageable
    The traditional connotation would, of course, associate it with the paternal mandate of obedience, and a threat: if the heroine does not return to domesticity and docility at regular intervals she may lose her "virtue" and no longer merit her expected one.
  12. excursion
    a journey taken for pleasure
    Like the old conduct manuals for ladies, the moral of the tale warns against feminine excursions as well as ambition.
  13. conformity
    compliance with accepted standards, rules, or norms
    On another level, the slipper is a symbol of power--with all of its accompanying restrictions and demands for conformity.
  14. variant
    something a little different from others of the same type
    In the Norse variant of the tale, Aslaug, the heroine, marries a Viking hero, bears several sons, and wields a good deal of power.
  15. vague
    not clearly understood or expressed
    But in most tales Cinderella disappears into the vague region known as the "happily ever after."
Created on Thu Mar 05 13:39:09 EST 2015 (updated Fri Mar 06 12:21:29 EST 2015)

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