Personally Responsible for a Happy Ending

In “Send Her to the Ash Heap” (Opinion, May 9), Karen Stabiner argues that Cinderella stories are culturally outdated because they rest upon a plot of “boy saves girl” that is not consistent with our current view of women as the controlling agents in their own lives. Cinderella stories may well be outdated, but Stabiner has seriously misread “Cinderella,” as originally penned by Charles Perrault and immortalized in the Disney film. In the story, the prince does not save Cinderella. Rather, the prince and the royal life are Cinderella’s reward for her kindness, obedience and long suffering. It is through her own choices and actions that Cinderella realizes her dream and escapes her oppression, not through the actions of the prince.

We can argue whether a prince is an appropriate reward for virtue in today’s society and whether Cinderella exemplifies virtue, but to ascribe passive victimhood to Cinderella is to commit a serious injustice to this classic tale. Now, “Sleeping Beauty,” on the other hand....

Peter Marston

Glendale