Girls who Achieve Their Dreams
...ife and told her to cut of her toe. “Once you’re queen you won’t have to walk any more” (535). However, it didn’t work out the king’s son eventually noticed the blood gushing from the stepsisters foot and took her home. The next stepsister tried but it did fit her either, so the mother told her to just cut off a chunk of her heels. The king then accepted her as his pride to be, until “he looked down at her foot and saw that blood was spurting from her shoe and staining her white stockings all red” (535). This part is pretty violent, but that’s not all in the end the step sisters get their eyes pecked out. The violence in this version of the tale is a lot more bloody and descriptive than some of the other tales. The violence in “Cinderella” by Charles Perrault is mild, and is what most people think of when they think of the story “Cinderella.” The only violence is that Cinderella is mistreated. The step mother and step sister force her to do all the house chores, and treat her rudely. Cinderella doesn’t get all the nice fancy things that her step sisters get, yet she always works her hardest. The violence in this version of Cinderella is fairly mild compared to what we have seen in the other two versions that I have mentioned. In all these three versions that I have mentioned, the fairy godmother character helps the Cinderella character out. The Fairy godmother character in “Oochigeaskw-The Rough-Faced Girl”, A Native Cinderella, is the Invisible Ones sister. The sister in this version of the tale is obviously the fairy godmother of the story, because she helps Oochigeaskw get beautiful before getting married to the Invisible One. After Oochigeaskw sees the invisible one the sister helps her by bathing her and as she does all of Oochigeaskw scars disappear from her body. Her hair grows and “her eyes were now like stars: in all the world there was no other such beauty” (555). After Oochigeaskw is all beautiful, the sister gives her a wedding dress. The sister of this story is important to make Oochigeaskw’s dream come true. The fairy godmother character of “Ashputtle,” is the tree and the two little white doves. Throughout the story, the doves help her out by helping her get her work done quickly, getting her ready for the wedding and making sure the prince doesn’t end up marring the King’s son. When Ashputtle needed a dress for the wedding she ran to the tree and cried: “Shake your branches, little tree, throw gold and silver down on me” (533). After she said this, the birds tossed a beautiful dress down on her, so she was beautiful and ready to go to the wedding. When the stepsisters are riding away with the prince, after they had cut of pieces of their feet, the doves are the ones that cry out from the tree, “Rocco, rocco, there’s blood in the shoe. The foot is too long, the foot’s too wide, that’s not the proper bride” (535). In saying this, the king’s son looks down at the sister’s feet both times and notices the blood. The birds and tree are important in this version of the tale because if it wasn’t for them Ashputtle may not have made it to the ball, and the King’s son may have ended up being married to one of the step sisters. In “Cinderella” there is and actual fairy godmother. She helps Cinderella get a dress and transportation to and from the ball. The fairy godmother notices that Cinderella is crying because she can not go to the ball and say, “...be a good girl and I’ll get you there” (529). Using magic she gets her there using mice, rats, and anything they could find around to turn into coachmen, horses, and so on. The fairy godmother is willing to help Cinderella out because she has always been so kind and worked hard. So Cinderella not only makes it to the ball, but she gets there looking like a princess. The ending in the “Oochigeaskw-The Rough-Faced Girl,” is happy for the most part. The reason it is happy is becaus...