Cinderella

Cinderella, like so many fairy tale heroines and heroes, is the youngest of the family. Almost always these characters are badly treated, very beautiful and gifted, and after much suffering they triumph over their elders.

I will try to show how the story of Cinderella illustrates some of the special difficulties experienced by the youngest of the family, with special reference to the boy's envy of the girl's genitals and to the search for an ideal combined parent figure.

The traditional Pantomime version of the Cinderella story is the one of over 400 versions (according to Encyclopaedia Britannica) on which my observations are based, as it presents the unconscious dynamics in less disguised form.

Traditional English Pantomime is a return to primeval mummery and a direct descendant of the age-old Saturnalia which always contains the following elements: the wearing of animal skins, with men behaving like animals and animals like men; men wearing skirts and women wearing trousers; virtue spurned and unchastity honored; and servant and master changing places.

In classical Pantomime, the “Principal Boy” is always played by a woman. In former days she was immense of bosom and magnificent of thigh which she slapped like a thunder-clap before singing a popular song in a powerful

contralto voice. Although slimmer today, she wears the traditional garments. She carries a riding-whip or a jewelled cane, and a cocked hat, usually with an erect feather in it. Over her fine bosom falls a cascade of lace ruffles, and nestling in the lace is a large oval diamond the size of a hen's egg. This jewel, as I see it, symbolizes the feminine genital.

Cinderella is the youngest and most beautiful of her family. She usually has a stepmother and, of course, two Ugly Sisters, generally alluded to as “stepsisters.” In Pantomime, as in traditional fairy tales, one can take it that “step” is synonymous with “bad.”

Cinderella's father is rather an ineffectual type called Baron Stoneybroke. He would l