Cinderella: Family Pathology, Identity-Sculpting and Mate-Selection

Analytic essays on Cinderella illustrate the inattention paid to the interlocking of the family as a system and the child's psyche. Cinderella, viewed as coming from an average expectable family, is interpreted as having retained the split images of the mother: she has impulses to soil along with a need to defy the legitimate tasks asked of her. She is seen as being in the self-pitying throes of sibling rivalry and oedipal jealousies, all of which lead to a sense of malevolence which in turn is projected on sibs and parents, as having an arrogant wish to be far better than sibs and family, and as holding on to the fantasy that she has a penis and was not castrated by the mother as her sisters were. Analysts tend to assume that the story indicates Cinderella's resolution of these problems and her consequent readiness for marriage. (Cf. 4, 14, 16, 18.) Heuscher [25, 26], an existentialist, sets forth the same belief. Only Huckel [12] goes a different direction. She teasingly raises the question as to whether Cinderella, exposed to damaging life experiences, could indeed remain outgoing and friendly. The author then presents an abused patient with Cinderella-like fantasies whose early experience rendered her distrustful, cold, and feeling hopeless.

Such an approach to Cinderella is in line with customary psychoanalytic essays at understanding fairy tales in terms of the protagonist's underlying wishes, conflicts, defenses—especially as they are expressed in primitive, alogical thought processes, and the still fanciful plans for problem resolution (1, 16, 16A, 20). This is a significant and often completely valid frame of reference. We only question whether this singular tack is invariably the one most productive of veridical insights.

With a slight change of focus that brings us closer to the manifest content of Cinderella, there spring before us the bitter, survival-oriented exchanges between family members