Cinderella

The noble's daughter was set to do all the drudgery of the house, to attend the kitchen fire, and had naught to sleep on but the heap of cinder raked out in the scullery; and that is why they called her Cinder Maid.

~from "The Cinder Maid" by Joseph Jacobs

Cinderella is perhaps the most universal of fairy tales, one that has variations in many cultures over the course of several centuries. The experience of having a stepmother was not uncommon in the days when women sometimes died in childbirth and so the story of the "Cinder Maid" resonated deeply with past generations. Today, with the high rate of divorce and remarriage, young people often find themselves living in the same house with a step-parent, which even in the best situations can offer challenges for everyone involved.

On the most basic level, Cinderella is a tale of injustice and suffering inflicted upon an innocent by an older person whose job should have been to nurture and protect. The innocent is aided by forces from beyond this world, leading to final vindication; in this manner the story fulfills the very natural hope of those who have endured any type of material misery or abuse. As is the case with other fairy tales, the older versions are darker and much, more violent, with the triumph of the heroine being the result of struggle, not merely handed to her on a platter. The wicked stepsisters are grotesquely punished in the older tales whereas in the newer renditions they are shown mercy. According to Heidi Anne Heiner of Sur La Lune:

Although a reference to the story exists in 16th century German literature, the next written version of the story comes from Charles Perrault in his Contes de ma Mere L'Oye in 1697. From this version, we received the fairy godmother, the pumpkin carriage, the animal servants, and the glass slippers. Perrault recorded the story that was told to him by storytellers while adding these touches for literary effect. Some scholars think Perrault confused "vair" (French for "ermine or fur") with "verre" (French for "glass") to account for Cinderella's admittedly uncomfortable footwear. This theory has been widely discredited now. Most scholars believe Perrault intended glass slippers as Cinderella's footwear. Perrault's version has a more humane ending than many versions of the tale with Cinderella finding husbands for her sisters. The sisters are left poor, blind, maimed, or even dead in many versions of the tale.

The Grimm Brothers' German version, known as Aschenputtel, or Ash Girl, does not have a fairy godmother. The heroine plants a tree on her mother's grave from which all of the magical help appears in the form of a white dove and gifts. At the end, the stepsisters' eyes are pecked by birds from the tree to punish them for their cruelty. Perrault's version is considerably more forgiving than this version.

The concept of having a fairy godmother calls to mind good friends who have intervened in times of serious need in my own life. In Cinderella the maiden's helper, be it the fairy godmother or the tree on her mother's grave, always has supernatural connotations, suggesting the Divine intervention behind the scenes. Among the many films that have been made based upon the Cinderella fairy tale, my two favorites are the Czech version made in the 70's, and The Glass Slipper starring Leslie Caron.

(Artwork from Art Passions) Share

Perfect Answers

 

From The Daily Wire:

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) slammed ABC News host Martha Raddatz during an interview over the weekend for down playing the seriousness of illegal alien crime in the U.S. The exchange happened Sunday on the network’s “This Week” show when Raddatz suggested that it was not a big deal that a “a handful of apartment complexes” were taken over by criminal illegal alien gangs from Venezuela.

“Senator Vance, I’m going to stop you because I know exactly what happened,” Raddatz claimed. “I’m going to stop you. The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes and the mayor said our dedicated police officers have acted on those concerns. A handful of problems.”

Vance fired back: “Martha, do you hear yourself? Only a handful of apartment complexes in America were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem, and not Kamala Harris’s open border?”

“Americans are so fed up with what’s going on and they have every right to be and I really find this exchange, Martha, sort of interesting because you seem to be more focused with nitpicking everything that Donald Trump has said rather than acknowledging that apartment complexes in the United States of America are being taken over by violent gangs,” he continued. (Read more.)

 

From The Western Journal:

GOP vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance would not take the bait when a New York Times journalist continually pressed him to answer whether former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.

“In the debate, you were asked to clarify if you believe Trump lost the 2020 election. Do you believe he lost the 2020 election?” Lulu Garcia-Navarro, host of “The Interview” podcast, asked in a clip posted on Friday.

“I think that Donald Trump and I have both raised a number of issues with the 2020 election, but we’re focused on the future. I think there’s an obsession here with focusing on 2020. I’m much more worried about what happened after 2020,” Vance answered, bringing up the Biden administration’s open border and inflationary policies. (Read more.)

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Ana Finat

 From Catholic World Report:

The Spanish influencer and aristocrat Ana Finat, a descendant of St. Francis Borgia, has just published the story of her conversion where she describes how she went from worldliness and being afraid of God to regaining freedom by trusting in his mercy.

In the Spanish-language book “When I Met the God of Love: How the Love of Christ Freed Me from the Chains of the World,” Finat shares the story of her life, quite distinct from that of ordinary mortals because of her family environment — especially during her childhood — but, at the same time, very similar in terms of worldliness and alienation from the faith like the majority of her generation.

“When I grew up, I distanced myself from God, because it was bothersome to me and because I was rebellious,” she admitted in a conversation with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. During that time, she lived like so many young people of her generation: “I smoked my first cigarettes, I experienced my first joints, we went out drinking a lot, and I spent more time on the street playing hooky than at school,” she explains in the book.

She also did not live chastely, which led her to getting unexpectedly pregnant at age 20. In addition, she would later use assisted reproductive technologies that are contrary to the magisterium of the Catholic Church.

Fortunately, she didn’t yield to the temptation to abort her child: “I never considered having an abortion. The pregnancy made me anxious; I knew perfectly well that it wasn’t going to be easy, because our relationship [with her then-boyfriend] wasn’t good, but I was excited about the life that was coming. From the beginning, I welcomed [the child] with great enthusiasm. For me it was a gift, because I knew what was coming to me, to begin with, because I was also very immature,” she explained. (Read more.)

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Fairy Godmothers

This godmother of hers, who was a fairy, said to her, "You wish that you could go to the ball; is it not so?"

"Yes," cried Cinderella, with a great sigh.

"Well," said her godmother, "be but a good girl, and I will contrive that you shall go." Then she took her into her chamber, and said to her, "Run into the garden, and bring me a pumpkin."

~from Charles Perrault's Cinderella or The Little Glass Slipper

The idea of good and bad fairy godmothers has always intrigued me, so after the post on Cinderella I decided to investigate. The concept of fairy godmothers is relatively new to the world of fairy tales, being introduced mainly by Charles Perrault, as well as by Madame d'Aulnoy and other précieuses. In older tales, fairies did not by nature give aid to humans, and were usually seen as mischief makers, even as bringers of trouble. They would occasionally help from a mere whim, but they were not seen as benevolent. It was always better for mortals not to offend the fairy folk, and in this they were rather like the pagan gods and goddesses, impetuous and unpredictable.

There are many theories about fairy godmothers, that they are based upon the précieuses themselves, or that they are modeled upon the Three Fates of classical mythology, especially the "wise women" who appear in Sleeping Beauty. The Fates were rather indifferent to humans and did not care to intervene the way the fairy godmothers did. The Brothers Grimm chose to use the term "wise women" rather than "fairy" to describe the godmothers of the Sleeping Beauty, deeming it to be more Germanic.

The most famous fairy godmothers are those who appear in Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. However, they were not introduced into those stories until 1697 when Charles Perrault made the addition. Cinderella was helped by her mother's spirit rather then by a fairy godmother in earlier renditions. The oldest versions of Sleeping Beauty, called Perceforest and Sun, Moon and Talia, did not have fairy godmothers at all.

Perrault also introduced the evil fairy godmother of Sleeping Beauty, she who places the curse upon the baby princess at the christening. The idea of a wicked fairy cursing a child at a christening goes back to a tale of the chansons de geste. Many people nowadays laugh at the idea of curses, but in past times and in other cultures they have been seen as being real. From primitive times, Christians saw sacramentals as ways of not only conferring blessing but of warding away evil.


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Kama Kamala Chameleon

 

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Ancient Petroglyphs of Japan

 From LBV:

Located in the small fishing town of Yoichi, on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, is Fugoppe Cave, an archaeological site that contains over 800 petroglyphs carved into its walls, making it a unique location in all of Japan. The discovery of the cave dates back to 1950, when two young brothers, drawn by stories of ancient texts engraved on the walls of a cave, decided to search for the place. After a brief exploration, they found Fugoppe Cave, named after the old name of the nearest village, on the slope of a hill called Maruyama. (Read more.)

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A Glittering Masterpiece With a Dark History

 
The Peacock Room. (I have posted on it before.) From ArtNet:

American painter James McNeill Whistler and English architect Thomas Jeckyll created the room, which Whistler titled Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room. With Prussian blue walls, copper-green overglazing, and Dutch metal designed to look like gold leaf, the room is symphonic in its overall effect. Created from 1876 to 1877, the room was designed as the dining room of British shipping magnate Frederick Richards Leyland for his Kensington townhouse. Architect Richard Norman Shaw was hired to lead the renovation and Shaw brought on fellow architect Thomas Jeckyll to design the dining room. Jeckyll conceptualized the room as a Porzellanzimmer (porcelain room) to display Leyland’s collection of blue and white porcelain, dating primarily from the Qing dynasty. (Read more.)

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Kamala Harris's Vibe Spiral

 From The Transom:

A campaign that can be reduced to “I am not physically the same person as Joe Biden” is a campaign in desperate need of a message. The problem for Kamala is that time’s a-wasting — and she seems to be tracking not toward finding her footing, but toward new speed-bumps, including ones set up by the very media figures who very much want her to win.

Check the Univision town hall for another example of this. This should be cupcake, a lay-up to a friendly audience. Instead, Harris gets bogged down with meandering answers about what she’ll do as president motivated by some aggressive restraint to taking any solid positions, while also sounding too far left for much of the country. Her policy plans include a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegals to turn them into voters. And she treated a voter with a totally straightforward question about her abrupt path to the nomination as if it wasn’t a concern. The approach toward dismissal is consistent with the Biden White House’s approach — see Secretary Mayorkas, who has turned being an irresponsible jackass into an artform during his tenure — but it’s exactly the wrong note for her to be sounding right now.... (Read more.)

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