A common thread I read in my peers’ previous blogs answering this question —  “Why another Cinderella?”— suggests our continuous obsession with this masterplot. (By “our” here I am referring to the human race; as Smith points out there are variants found around the world. The variants are so prolific that we have yet to truly point to an ur-text. The amount of scholars who have taken this task up again and again, the task of identifying, counting, and documenting the Cinderella-type, speaks to the fascination it holds.) This common thread seems to be the ability of this masterplot to adaptation. Ted suggests Robocop as a variant. Barbara Hernstein Smith notes how often we assign the Cinderella-type to celebrities, “Read the Real-Life Cinderella-Story of Sylvester Stallone” (142). Holli celebrates an identity for Cinderella beyond the Euro-centric blue-eyed, blonde. Why do we need to keep bringing her back though? Why can Cinderella not have remained the character she was in her fairy tale beginning? Why do we, as human race, want to see her in different ways, played by different actors, in different gendered spaces, over and over and over again, adaptation after adaptation?

I feel that part of our fascination is that Cinderella doesn’t have an origin. However, and here is the part I find fascinating, the masterplot’s origin is everywhere and anywhere.  The Cinderella tale, for me, operates much like the creation masterplot. As communities, we create and promulgate creation stories, creation myths, creation tales, creation constructs. Is there a single community/civilization/society that is missing one? My point is that Cinderella is malleable. Cinderella can be anyone. She/he/they can operate within any gender. She can operate within any age. Now, we happen to be obsessed with youth. So, she is, all too often, a teenager. But there are variants that play with age as well.

In some of the earlier fairy-tale types, like the “Donkeyskin” tale, she was younger. This is uncomfortable for us, so we adapted, revised, and forgot. I will end here noting though that the amount of adaptation and memory loss depends on the social mores of a community. For example, for those unfamiliar with Perrault’s “Donkey Skin,” the story of this Cinderella has little to do with a stepmother and stepsisters and more to do with a father, the king, wanting to marry his daughter, the princess. In France, there was a film made as late as 1970, not really that long ago, titled Peau d'Âne. Catherine Deneuve played both the dying queen and Peau d'Âne, the princess.  Maybe the real question is what is the Cinderella-type we are choosing and why do we continue to clamour for the same damned Cinderella over and over again?