Cinderella

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helpful" (Cline). She must essentially be rescued by a male figure, the prince, in order to have a happily ever after ending to her story. She is powerless on her own, and she can only gain her desires through supernatural powers or through the aid of a man. The reader first sees Cinderella achieve her desires through the aid of her fairy Godmother. After she is aided by her fairy Godmother, she attains even more power by marrying a man. Supernatural powers help bring her to the ultimate happiness of marriage. This notion implies that a woman cannot be happy until her life is fulfilled by marriage. It is one of Cinderella's biggest desires to marry and often dreams of the day she will be rescued by a man. Toward the end of the story, she even helps her stepsisters get married so they too can experience ultimate happiness, but she only has the power to bring others happiness once she is married. Cinderella "arranged for both of them to be married, on the same day, to great ...

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for women is beauty. "Children's fairy tales, which emphasize such things as women's passivity and beauty, are indeed gendered scripts and serve to legitimatize and support the dominant gender system" (Baker-Sperry). The story emphasizes the fact that Cinderella is beautiful, which points to the fact that that is exactly what is expected of women. The story points out that the stepsisters go to great lengths to look their best, spending large amounts of money on clothes, cosmetics, jewelry, and hairdressers. "They sent for a good hairdresser to cut and curl their hair and they bought the best cosmetics...Cinderella helped them to look as pretty as they could" (Perrault 98). ...

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