That Cinderella story...

[butterfly]

I'm in love with the Cinderella story. I've never actually seen a version of it that I didn't adore. The Disney version with the talking mice? Love it. Rodgers & Hammerstein's version? I've enjoyed all three versions that I've seen (I just saw Julie Andrew's version for the first time today, which is why I'm thinking about it -- and a post about how much I adore Julie Andrews would take all day to read, I think). I absolutely loved Ever After: A Cinderella Story.

Something about the story speaks to me. In part, it has to do with the power of wishing. Everything starts with a wish -- that's what the fairy godmother tells Cinderella. Hard work is often required, but the wish always comes first.

For me, the entirety of the Cinderella story is about Cinderella, of course. The prince is mostly an icon, a representation of a wish. The person in the story, the one with all the edges and desires and humanity, is Cinderella. There's a little bit of Cinderella in all of the characters that I love, because Cinderella is that aching, yearning part of the human soul that reaches out and says, "I want more." Buffy looked at what Giles and the Watchers told her that her life was destined to be and said, "No. I want more than just being a Slayer." Rose wanted to be more than 'just' a shopgirl. Daniel is the constant reaching out for knowledge, the hunger to learn more than he already knows.

This is not all I am. That's what all my Cinderellas think when confronted with the world's expectations of them. She's the girl who won't stay in her appointed place, who looks at the limitations placed on her and believes that imagination and hope can give her a miracle. He's the boy who refuses to believe in the word 'impossible'. That willingness to leap is what gives them such strength -- the same kind of strength that I'm working on trying to get for myself.

"Because the world is full of zanies and fools,
who won't believe in sensible rules
and won't believe what sensible people say,
and because these daft and dewy-eyed dopes keep building up impossible hopes
impossible things are happening every day."

Comments

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Thank you kindly!

I do find that many of the things that I loved as a child still apply to the things that I love now, and there are few things that I find as enjoyable as mixing together all the ideas from all the things that I've loved to find out how they reflect on each other. There's a reason that I love Cinderella and not Sleeping Beauty, and that reason is part of why I love Buffy and Rose (Lois Lane, Elizabeth Swann, etc.) so much.