Unit 2: Vocabulary from Readings

The iconic focus of the tale on the lost slipper 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.

The Horatio Alger quality of the story helps to explain its special popularity in mercantile and capitalistic societies.

Most Anglo-American novels, early and late, are written in the shadow of Pamela and the Cinderella myth. Even Franklin's Autobiography, the seminal work in the success genre, owes much to the myth.

The personality of the heroine is one that, above all, accepts abasement as a prelude to and precondition of affiliation.

The personality of the heroine is one that, above all, accepts abasement as a prelude to and precondition of affiliation.

That abasement is characteristically expressed by Cinderella’s servitude to menial tasks, work that diminishes her.

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.

Her sojourn among the ashes is a period of grieving, a transition to a new self.

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.

Like the old conduct manuals for ladies, the moral of the tale warns against feminine excursions as well as ambition. Too much time spent “abroad” may result in indiscreet sex or unseemly hubris, or both.

Historically, the virulence of its significance is born out in the twisted horrors of Chinese foot binding practices.

On another level, the slipper is a symbol of power—with all of its accompanying restrictions and demands for conformity.

So de woman wouldn’t trade wid ’im and de man had to mortgage his strength to her to live. And dat’s why de man makes and de woman takes.

The name itself conjured up images of watery cabbage, rapacious landladies, and a powerful smell of kippers in the living-room.

The name itself conjured up images of watery cabbage, rapacious landladies, and a powerful smell of kippers in the living-room.

After dithering about like this in the cold for two or three minutes, Billy decided that he would walk on and take a look at The Bell and Dragon before making up his mind.

“Please come in,” she said pleasantly. She stepped aside, holding the door wide open, and Billy found himself automatically starting forward into the house. The compulsion or, more accurately, the desire to follow after her into that house was extraordinarily strong.

There is nothing more tantalizing than a thing like this which lingers just outside the borders of one’s memory.

Now and again, he caught a whiff of a peculiar smell that seemed to emanate directly from her person.

“Seventeen!” she cried. “Oh, it's the perfect age! Mr. Mulholland was also seventeen. But I think he was a trifle shorter than you are, in fact I’m sure he was, and his teeth weren’t quite so white. You have the most beautiful teeth, Mr. Weaver, did you know that?”