Cinderella and Psychology
... the world (575). One example that all children experience in “Cinderella” is sibling rivalry. By “sibling rivalry” it refers to hostility between brothers and/or sisters which manifests itself in circumstances such as the common children’s family fights to much more serious cases as the permanent enmity between adult siblings (Boyle 16). This relates to the dreadful time Cinderella had with her stepsisters. Cinderella is constantly pushed down and degraded by her stepsisters; her interests are sacrificed to theirs by her stepmother; she is expected to do the dirtiest work and although she performs it well, she receives no credit for it; only more demanded of her. This is how a child feels when distressed by the miseries of sibling rivalry (569). Although the term sibling refers to children who are related and living in the same family, the actual brother and sister’s has only incidentally to do with the child. According to Bettelheim, the real source of sibling rivalry is the child’s parents. He says that only temporary feelings of jealousy arouses when a child’s older brother or sister is more competent than he. If another child is being given special attention, it becomes an insult only if the child fears that, in contrast, he being thought little by his parents, or feels rejected by them. Fearing that in comparison to them he cannot win his parents’ love and esteem is what inflames sibling rivalry (570). Or perhaps, according to Schectman, Cinderella’s sisters’ mocking cries and the need to taunt is due to the lack of a mother role. It seems they lacked the love they have never known, since they have only known their mother in her darkness, in the incompleteness of her widow’s grief. Therefore, by destroying this stranger, an alien invader in their home, the love the sisters have always longed for will fully be diverted to them. (579). Besides sibling rivalry, children can also experience incest in “Cinderella”. According to Bettelheim, sibling rivalry takes on an added dimension believing that siblings are competing not only for parental affection but also for parents as hypothetical sexual partners. One example Bettelheim explains this is in the Oedipus story: At the end of the oedipal period, guilt about desires to be dirty and disorderly becomes compounded by oedipal guilt, because of the child’s desire to replace the parent of the same sex in the love of the other parent. The wish to be the love, if not the sexual partner, of the parent of the other sex, . . . . (573). He explains that children are made to feel dirty and bad because they are not clean as their parents want them to be. Therefore, this can make every child identify with Cinderella, who is relegated to sit among the cinders. Since the child has such “dirty” wishes, that is where he also belongs, and where he would end up if his parents knew of his desires (573). For Schectman, he also agrees that incest can be seen in the story of “Cinderella”. However, instead of the child having sexual desire on their parents, he believes in the opposite, the father having sexual desire towards his daughter. He says that reasons why Cinderella’s own father doesn’t seem to see her at all is in an effort to deny the erotic energy he feels. As his daughter grows to be the beauty that her mother was, she becomes the objec...