This is a paradox: women experience hysterics due to sexual dissatisfaction, but at the same time there can be a lot of sex and attention from men. The connection is, rather, even reverse. If a woman receives male attention, she is more likely to behave like a hysteric than if she does not receive it at all.
That is, the word “underfucked” (as they say about hysterics) contains homespun truth. The key is "under". A woman has sex, but a sexual block (frustration) prevents her from opening up to the flow of libido, so sexual tension accumulates and results in hysteria. The woman seems to be constantly aroused, but not satisfied as she should be. This phenomenon was mentioned by Freud, Reich, and others, but little was written about what exactly to do about it.
I promised to tell a fairy tale about Cinderella, which describes the mechanism for getting out of incomplete frustration (complete frustration is when you don’t want to get close at all, and incomplete is when you want to get close, sometimes even very much, but there is almost no satisfaction from this). Classic fairy tales just like myths always describe some kind of initiation, that is, a way out of some archetypal crisis or conflict. “Cinderella” just describes the way out of incomplete female frustration.
But let's first see how women's frustration differs from men's. Why do men so rarely get hysterical (although it also happens, but much less often), and they try to extinguish the dissonance between ambitions and realization with alcohol or some kind of extreme sports, like fights and wars, or they simply push it deeper inside.
Men's sexual frustration looks different from women's. Women's sexual frustration is almost always associated with feelings of resentment, humiliation, and rejection. Male frustration is associated more with fears and feelings of guilt. This is an important gender difference that stems from the fact that the symbolic role of sex is different for men and women.
For men, sex is an opportunity to “take,” for women, “to give.” It is clear that if you are offended or rejected, “taking” will not hurt you, but “giving” will greatly hinder you.
This is why women are in such strong ambivalence: hidden grievances and a feeling of humiliation (due to the fact that a man does not value them enough) prevent a woman from relaxing and surrendering to a man, she seems to hold back part of herself, does not give everything, it is too humiliating for her like this to open up and give yourself completely to someone who doesn’t value her enough. The more ambition a woman has, the more prone she is to this kind of frustration (which is why modesty really helps).
We can say that a woman willingly makes contact with her beloved man and even intimacy, giving him a chance to prove his love to her, but if she does not see evidence, she frustrates the flow and does not receive full satisfaction, and puts a block. She is “underfucked” because she doesn’t give in completely, she gives in half, and then it doesn’t matter how long and how often she will be “fucked.” I hope that with such simple and crude words I have revealed this subtle gender issue.
The treatment of hysterical women in ancient times, in fact, consisted of forcing the woman to “open all the floodgates,” as Giacomo Casanova bluntly wrote about this, who, by the way, considered himself a master in curing nervous female diseases, but treated without any steam or water tricks, in the primordial way.
Since at the symbolic level, a woman’s sexual satisfaction is clearly associated with the image of “giving,” we can say that incomplete sexual frustration is associated with “clamping,” symbolic “greed,” and a refusal to open oneself completely to someone who does not deserve it.
And how fairy tales earn the princess's favor are generously told to us: that's all - make the fool laugh, wake the dead, guess three riddles, defeat the monster, find the princess from the koshchei, and so on. The knight needs to try and work hard, then yes.
It turns out that a man who wants not a hysterical woman next to him, but a balanced woman, needs to make sure that her grievances and complaints do not accumulate, otherwise there will be no normal sex with her, and hysterics out of the blue - yes. It is useful for any man to remember this.
Unfortunately, sometimes nothing depends on a man. That is, the man behaves normally, no worse than others, but the woman is constantly offended, always feels that he “doesn’t deserve” her, but at the same time does not leave him, giving him a “chance” to improve and deserve it. But a man is also a person, and if he is not given love, but is given only “chances,” he can behave worse and worse. A typical vicious circle.
As with almost everyone psychological problems, a woman can only help herself. And her partner can provide maximum support. The fairy tale about Cinderella describes how to get out of the vicious circle of frustration. I remind you that any fairy tale reflects a symbolic internal picture: internal, not external, that is, what happens inside the person, and not in outside world with her.
Cinderella lived in a world of hostile, rival women (the evil sisters) and a sadistic parental figure (the evil stepmother), and was betrayed by her father (the protective figure) out of cowardice (possibly from a lack of masculinity).
Cinderella felt like a dirty little rag, forced to do the most humiliating work while her fat and arrogant sisters lived idly. Her stepmother (super-ego, controller, censor, King) scolded her all the time and forced her to work, humiliated her, sometimes even beat her. Cinderella guessed that, in fact, she was sweet and perhaps even beautiful, but she walked around grimy and in rags, so her beauty was always hidden.
Cinderella's acquaintance with the prince (a male figure, her animus) happened thanks to a fairy, that is, a fantastic person (fictional) who helped her create the appearance that she was not a dirty little girl, but a princess. Only the glass slippers were real, and everything else was a ghost, a lie that was supposed to melt and disappear as soon as the clock struck midnight. Therefore, Cinderella danced with the prince at the ball, and when the clock began to strike, she quickly ran away. She was afraid that the prince would see the real her and recoil from her in disgust.
However, the prince, already in love with a beautiful stranger, had a passionate fetish for the glass slipper that Cinderella had dropped, so he found it by searching the whole country. He was not put off by her rags, dirty and wretched appearance, he put a slipper on her and asked her to marry her. So it turned out that the carriage and dress did not have of great importance, and the prince was in love with Cinderella, and not with the surroundings created by the fairy.
The fairy tale describes that a woman prone to sexual frustration (accustomed to running away in the middle of the ball, not allowing herself to have an orgasm) is afraid to open up because she does not trust the male figure (internal), and expects her disappointment and rejection.
If a male figure could prove his love to her, would find her while she was playing hide and seek, would wear down a hundred shoes and erase a hundred staffs while searching for her through the dark forest, would wake her up in her crystal coffin, and generally earn her trust, then the woman could begin to open up and stop running away from “balls.”
If you understand that this should not be done by a man from the outside, but changes must happen inside a woman, because the prince is her inner figure, internal image Men, then you will be able to see the way out.
The solution is to gain confidence from within that you are worthy of love and stop doubting it. This will mean that the Animus has found a woman and confessed his love to her, a happy reunion has occurred, and now she will not constantly worry about her insignificance and uselessness in the eyes of her beloved men in real life, accumulate grievances and complexes, demand endlessly to prove something to her and earn her trust.
Why was Cinderella a mess and not a princess? Because her protector figure (father) betrayed her and chose an evil woman (stepmother). That is, it all starts with the fact that instead of an inner mother (a wise and loving controller, aka self-esteem), a woman receives some kind of evil bitch. Without this bitch, there would be no rags, no ashes, no mocking sisters.
That is, the situation can be globally corrected only by changing the stepmother to the mother, what I wrote about. Become a kind and attentive mother, as kind as a fairy. In this case, Cinderella’s problem will be solved from the beginning, Cinderella will immediately turn into a beauty, she will not have to hide from the princes and show off dust in their eyes, she will already be good enough (primarily in her own eyes, that is, at the level of her self-esteem, which will give her stability is her “shoes”).
Cinderella's second problem is a basic distrust of men. The idea that men don't need women, that women need to pretend and try to look their best in order to get and keep a man's interest, is a misunderstanding of male nature. The prince is in love with Cinderella’s slipper, the very symbol of femininity, and is ready to worship femininity, since this is the essence of masculinity. No masculinity would exist if men did not separate themselves from women and did not recognize them as those whom they should protect and care for, whom they would like to own (yes, the possessive patriarchal feeling is here too, but the attraction is obvious).
If a woman considers herself unnecessary and insignificant in the eyes of men, she has not undergone female sexual initiation (which is described by the myth of Cora and Hades, who stole her, but I have not talked about this in detail yet), and does not understand how strong a healthy man has ( sometimes very strong) attraction to everything feminine. In this case, she will remain Cinderella.
The symbol of the shoe is the key to understanding that a man, if he is not too frustrated, is looking for a woman, looking for love, to have comfort for the heart and inspiration for the soul. But to better understand this clue, one must keep in mind the courtly knightly initiations hinted at by the slipper in this French tale. It is not for nothing that the romantic cult of chivalry originated in Provence. But about these initiations - some other time.
Ministry of Education of Ukraine
Kharkov National University named after. Karazin
on the topic: "Psychological portrait of Cinderella"
Kharkov 2008
We will talk about the heroine of Charles Perrault's fairy tale "Cinderella", which was considered from my point of view (Slavic) understanding of this foreign heroine.
From the beginning of the fairy tale, the heroine of Cinderella appears as a sweet, sociable, empathetic and ready to come to the aid of those in need, a little girl who enjoys life, her parents, and is open to the world around her. A child who can and does freely express his emotions and feelings, his different desires and views. She is significant and respected due by her parents. We can say that as a child, Cinderella played and developed freely, without limiting her creativity and abilities, openly expressed (even if childishly naively) her views on things. At that moment, her life was interesting and full of meaning.
Considering Cinderella's childhood and family, we can assume that the conditions of such good upbringing and the relationship with her: as still small, but already a person, would nurture a holistic personality in the adult Cinderella. But an unexpected blow of fate - the death of her mother and the subsequent marriage of her father to a new wife - an evil stepmother - radically changes Cinderella's life, and subsequently her personality undergoes changes.
How the process of changing Cinderella’s personality took place can only be speculated and fantasized, since in the fairy tale this period of her growing up is briefly described by difficult conditions (including the inaction and helplessness of her father) and numerous responsibilities.
The matured Cinderella is still the same kind, but without showing herself, her character, a patient, forgiving girl. A girl without the right to express feelings, desires, emotions. In this situation, what is terrifying is not the conditions and the constant performance of difficult physical labor, but inaction and Cinderella’s acceptance of the established way of life: having completed all the housework, Cinderella went to a corner near the stove, sat on a pile of ash (hence the nickname “Cinderella”) and waited for the next orders, demands, instructions given by her stepsisters and stepmother. And only in moments when she was alone, she remembered her family and the time when she felt good among loving people. These thoughts take her far into her ideal world, in which there is no evil stepmother and her daughters, but she has her own home, family and a loving prince. Here one can see Cinderella’s idealistic thinking, attempts day after day, over and over again to forget, not to think about what is really happening, about her fear and inability to change anything.
Only with great effort does she do what she wants. In a situation where she is beautiful and elegant, dressed and prepared by the fairy godmother, having arrived at the castle, she doubts and is afraid to do what she wants - to go to the ball. Cinderella has to overcome herself, her doubts, her saving desire to leave (escape), go into the castle, and upon entering the ballroom feel different. And here at the ball, having received what she wanted, she runs away for fear of not being accepted by the prince for who she is. And it’s difficult for her to accept the fulfillment of her desires in an instant, because she’s lost the habit of it.
The manifestation of weak will and self-sacrifice is clearly demonstrated when the sisters try on the glass slipper. Here, Cinderella skillfully puts a shoe on her sister’s foot with her own hands, and at that moment refuses her beloved prince, the opportunity to become a princess: to escape from her home and realize her dreams. She does as her environment wants, hiding and muffling her feelings, pushing herself into the background. I just want to ask the question: “What’s next?” And without hearing the answer, you understand the meaninglessness and uselessness of Cinderella’s life at this stage of life. Perhaps everything would have been so sad if again the will of chance (the broken shoe) and the efforts of the fairy godmother had not given Cinderella a chance to declare herself and her rights (the girl, the owner of that very small foot from which the shoe fell off) to the role of the bride prince.
To summarize the above, turning to the typology of personality pathologies of Professor A.K. Dusavitsky, we can say that psychological portrait Cinderella is a portrait of a "Stoic":
with the main life principle- patience,
with a secondary, self-sacrificing attitude towards oneself,
with a personality type that was shaped by the environment (in the case of Cinderella, this is the stepmother and her daughters),
with acceptance of the priority of others,
with idealistic thinking and muted feelings,
with a lack of will and making great efforts to realize their desires,
with a memory that refuses to remember everything that happens and
resulting in a senseless waste of life.
Coming to the end of the Cinderella story, you believe that thanks to the positive upbringing received in early childhood, “magical” circumstances, the support of the fairy godmother, the prince and, finally, her efforts and purposeful development, this young girl will become a complete person: creative, with a vivid manifestation of worthy self-respect, realizing her desires, feeling and remembering every moment of her meaningful , purposeful life.
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Fairytale therapy for children and adults
Transactional, scenario analysis of the fairy tale Cinderella
The teachings that Charles Perrault accompanied the story of Cinderella were, in the opinion of Eric Berne, the founder of transactional and scenario analysis and therapy, Parental instructions (the fairy acted as the parent) which became the basis for programming the life script.The author spoke of a happy gift that is more than facial beauty; the charm of this gift surpasses all others. This is exactly what the fairy gave Cinderella. She mentored her so carefully and taught her noble manners so much that Cinderella became a queen.
Now let's look at the idea of Cinderella from the point of view of a transactional, scenario analyst, as she looks in Perrault's fairy tale, which almost all children know, and discuss the various contents contained in the fairy tale life scenarios, many of which are easily detected in real life.
Good afternoon, dear fairy tale lovers! I welcome you again to my website. Today I will try, together with Charles Perrault, to penetrate deep meaning his fairy tales "Cinderella".
Brief summary of the tale.
Once upon a time there lived a venerable and noble man. He had a wife and daughter. But as soon as the daughter turned 16 years old, the wife died. My father married someone else. The stepmother had two daughters of her own, whom she loved and protected from work. The stepmother hated her stepdaughter and entrusted all the dirty, unpleasant housework to her and did not allow her a moment of rest.
The stepmother dressed her daughters in beautiful outfits, and the stepdaughter was wearing an old, dirty dress. The stepdaughter was beautiful girl, and the stepmother’s daughters were not beauties, but were proud, vain and tried in every possible way to humiliate their half-sister; they could not forgive her for her beauty and kindness. The stepmother was formidable and aggressive, the father was depressed by his wife’s power and did not dare to protect his daughter.
Duality of the world
I think that we are talking about two types of people here: some are down-to-earth, they think only about benefits, convenience, wealth for their loved ones, they do not notice the suffering of the people around them. Even if they have any surplus clothes, food, money, they will not share it with anyone. They are down to earth because they are only interested in everything earthly, they are like children of mother matter (in fairy tales - stepmothers), not thinking that there is a Heavenly world and there are other values there. There is another type of people: from birth they are already, as it were, children of the Heavenly Father (in fairy tales, children of the father, stepdaughters, stepsons). Respectful, hardworking, talented, always providing help and support to others, but inevitably suffering insults and ridicule from their “stepmother’s” children.
It would seem such an injustice. But in every fairy tale, good ultimately wins. In this fairy tale, the stepdaughter marries the prince; in other fairy tales, Ivanushki and other brave heroes receive a princess as a wife and half a kingdom in addition, etc.
Formation of the Family Tree
At the beginning of the tale there is a very important message: the girl lived with her parents until she was 16 years old. Loving mother managed to teach my daughter very important life principles:
“Mommy taught me: no, water does not flow under a stone,
And you can’t light a fire in the stove if it’s not filled with wood.
And if you want to sleep sweetly, do not rely on God's mercy,
You need to lay the straw down and make sure it doesn’t get tangled.
Don’t you dare - don’t take someone else’s! Keep yours. How can you?
And dry your tears, don’t cry, you become weaker from self-pity.
Don’t ask God for much, but believe that the land will come and help.
Extinguish unreasonable anger, and don’t be angry with fate, it’s no good.
Don’t wait for someone to bring it, just go and take it, because your legs will hold you up.
And if there is trouble, who will save you? At least do something yourself first.
Even if you’re afraid, even if you can’t do it, others can do it - just try.
Fear has big eyes, but everything will work out - try.
And don’t hold on to grievances, forgive them. If I knew..."
Mother taught, and life confirmed her science (poems by A. Oparina).
It is very important that it is the parents who teach the child the basic concepts of life - this is the spiritual core that will make it possible to survive all the difficulties of life. The cartoon “Ratibor’s childhood” very well shows how mother and father taught their son to be strong, strong, and smart. The child carries the instructions of his parents throughout his life and passes them on, multiplying them with his experience, to his children, grandchildren, etc. This is how the Family Tree is formed.
Cinderella's Dreams
The word Cinderella means a diminutive term for ash. Ash is the black remains of burnt wood. We were born into this world, the world of “leather clothes” or “wooden men” (in the fairy tale “The Golden Key”), not knowing how to master our capabilities, which the Heavenly Father laid in us at Creation. He created us “in His image and likeness,” that is, we have the ability to create and spiritualize what has been created so that it is alive.
The fairy in the fairy tale shows a few miracles: she makes a carriage out of a pumpkin, turns mice into horses, a rat into a coachman, with one wave of her magic wand she changes Cinderella’s old dirty dress into a beautiful ball gown, which was the envy of all the ladies at the prince’s ball.
The world is not simple
So how can we find “the likeness of God” in ourselves? Oddly enough, those who force us to be creative in any work (in order to earn more, you need to be able to do something better than other people: sew more beautifully, cook tastier, build better, achieve better results in sports, design better cars, airplanes, rockets, etc.) are the tests of our character. Endurance, endurance, the ability to make a wise decision, empathy, co-joy, patience and humility are not developed all at once - this is the result of the long labor of the human soul. Each generation of the family develops something of its own during its life and passes it on to its children by genes, and the children pass it on to their children, etc. The clan in which the ancestors worked better achieves better results in each subsequent generation. At school, from the very first grade, it is clear that all children are different in abilities and in the depth of perception of information. Initially, every family on earth was given one talent - the very first, and then the Lord said that people should develop their talents and not “bury them in the ground,” that is, laziness is excluded - a bad companion in life. From generation to generation, some profession was passed on from father to son, from son to grandson, etc. If you were able to do one thing well, other abilities developed along the way, for example: a rich harvest had to be sold in order to purchase something else needed on the farm. Learned the craft of trade, trade psychology, learned languages different nations to trade with them. That is, a person who lives actively has always developed his talents.
This important point in a person’s life, but not the main one. We try to protect ourselves and our loved ones from everyday difficulties. But here’s a paradox: if a person has not suffered himself, he does not know how to empathize with the pain of others, he does not find it necessary to help those in need, even if there is such an opportunity.
Finding Your Real Self
“We say that suffering should not exist, but it does, and we must find ourselves in its fire. Grief is one of the the most important factors life, and therefore it is useless to say that it should not have existed. Sin and suffering and sorrow exist and it is not our place to say that God was mistaken when he allowed them. Grief burns a lot of little things into our souls, but it does not always make a person better.
It is impossible to find yourself in success. Success only makes you dizzy.
It is also impossible to find yourself in monotony. In monotony we can only grumble.
You can find yourself only in the fire of suffering. Suffering either gives me myself or destroys my self. Based on the Holy Scriptures and human experience, this is known to be the case in people's lives. You always know when a person has gone through the fire of suffering and found himself (that is, the likeness of God in himself), and you are sure that you can turn to him in trouble and find that he has time for you. If you find yourself in the fire of suffering, God will make you useful to other people” (O. Chambers).
The stepmother and sisters left for the ball, and Cinderella was ordered to sort out the mixed grains, and she completed this task. This is an image of the fact that we cleanse ourselves of everything unnecessary in the soul: the wheat from the chaff, and all the forces of physical nature (birds) and the subtle world (angels) help us in this. Quantity turns into quality with constant effort; by our will, we develop patience and humility when necessary to withstand some tests in fate.
Sometimes in our actions or in our dreams we rise above the ordinary - we are at a prince’s ball. But soon this state passes: the carriage again turns into a pumpkin, the ball gown into an old ugly dress, and only the glass slipper betrays our finding ourselves as heavenly. The difficulties of life that we have overcome refine our psyche, as if making our tread on the earth easier. In the fairy tale, this is reflected in the change in shoes: the Fairy replaced Cinderella’s rough shoes with elegant crystal slippers and they did not disappear.
Those who are not very comfortable in the earthly world suffer; they are transformed and after life in the earthly world, they go to the Higher Light Worlds. We subsequently call them Saints.
The joy of meeting
“The world is not simple, not simple at all. You can’t hide in it from storms and thunderstorms, you can’t hide in it from winters and blizzards, and from separations, from bitter separations.” But for all these trials there is a reward ahead - the joy of meeting Love - our Lord. And Cinderella is the heart of every person on our planet who has managed to subordinate the body to the soul, and the soul to the spirit. This is the transformation from Ash to Cinderella.
This is how I understood the meaning of this seemingly simple fairy tale. But in fact, it reflects the whole meaning of our life: do good and it will return to you, “what you put out into the world is what you get out of it; how you want people to treat you, so you treat them; With the same judgment you judge, you will also be judged” (Gospel).
“Where are the sacrifices, and especially the cannibalism?” - you will be surprised. The tale is about a kind and meek girl who picked through the ashes until her time struck. The thing is that the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault are fairy tales written down already in the 18th-19th centuries. Ekah, that is, close to our time.
The original, mythological context in later adaptations can be greatly distorted. The mythological elements present in the earlier versions of the tale are forgotten, because the myth is not always logical and understandable. The myth is much more archaic and frightening, and the fairy tale is an attempt to rationalize it.
“Cinderella” is one of the most popular “vagrant stories”, which has over a thousand incarnations in the folklore of different peoples of the world.
Where is Cinderella's mother? She was eaten!
One of the most important images in the fairy tale “Cinderella” is the image of the deceased mother. The reader does not question why the unfortunate woman could have died. The appearance of the good fairy godmother in Charles Perrault's version is also not surprising. And few people realize how closely these two images are related to each other.
So, at the very beginning of the fairy tale, Cinderella’s own mother dies, and her father, having grieved, finds himself another wife. Why does death occur? In most fairy tales this is not covered, but is given as a given, but there are still fairy tales that have preserved the most ancient motifs that answer this question.
In the Greek version of "The Wench on the Roost" (Edmund Martin Geldart, Folk-Lore of Modern Greece: The Tales of the People, Little Saddleslut), a mother suffers death at the hands of her own daughters:
One day three sisters were sitting and spinning flax. And they said: “Whose spindle falls to the ground, we will kill and eat.” Their mother's spindle fell first, but they did not touch her, but sat down to spin further. And again mother’s spindle fell, and again, again... “Well! - they said. “Now we’ll eat it.” But Cinderella stands up for her mother, although to no avail: “No!” - said the youngest of the sisters. - Don't eat it. Since you want meat so much, eat it better than me.” But the sisters refused; two of them killed and then cooked the mother.
This is how the daughters brutally dealt with their own mother. Cinderella refuses the meal and will subsequently be rewarded for this.
From the text it can be assumed that the mother deliberately drops the spindle to save her children. Subsequently, in the fairy tale Little Saddleslut, it is the mother who becomes the magical giver for the youngest daughter, whom the sisters mocked:
Then the youngest, who was called the Girl on the Roost [after the death of her mother, the girl sat all the time on the chicken roost, for which her sisters gave her this nickname], collected all her mother’s bones and buried them under the hedge. For forty days the girl fumigated them with incense, and then wanted to take them to another place. As soon as she lifted the stone, rays of light blinded her. She found there a beautiful robe, as if woven from the sky and stars, from spring and sea waves. In addition to the dress, there were many coins.
But this is not an isolated case. There are quite a lot of examples mentioning the eating of a mother by members of her family. Often the motive of so-called endocannibalism (eating a relative) is performed in a milder form, that is, there is no direct mention of eating human flesh. The mother in these versions is transformed into an animal—often a cow—and only then eaten.
Breaking a magical ban
In some fairy tales, the transformation of a mother into an animal is a consequence of breaking a magical prohibition. This is what the Serbian fairy tale “Pepelyuga” (Woislav M. Petrovitch, Hero Tales and Legends of the Serbians, Pepelyuga) tells us:
In the high mountain pastures, near deep abysses, several girls were spinning yarn and looking after the cattle. Suddenly they noticed a strange man with a long white beard reaching to his waist. He stopped and said: “Beautiful maidens, beware of the abyss. After all, if one of you drops your spindle into her, that girl’s mother will turn into a cow at that very moment!” Having said this, the old man disappeared. The girls, puzzled by his words and discussing the strange incident, approached the very edge of the cliff... They looked into the crevice with curiosity, as if they hoped to see something unusual there. Suddenly the spindle slipped out of the hands of the most beautiful of them and, hitting the stones, flew into the abyss. When the girl returned home in the evening, her worst fears came true. Instead of her mother, she saw a cow in front of the door.
The cow helps Marra (Serbian Cinderella) when her father marries an evil and obstinate woman. But the stepmother is not stupid - she tells her daughter to follow Marra and see how she manages to always be well-fed. The deception is discovered, and the stepsister informs her mother that the cow feeds the girl and helps her stepmother complete her tasks. The evil stepmother orders the cow to be killed, but she, anticipating death, tells Marra not to taste its meat, but to collect the bones and bury them in a certain place.
Quite often, a mother turned into an animal foresees her death and is not afraid of it.
Another example of punishment for a violated ban is the fairy tale “The Wicked Stepmother” (J. Hinton Knowles, Folk-Tales of Kashmir, The Wicked Stepmother) of the state of Kashmir. In this fairy tale, Cinderella's mother is the wife of a brahmin. When leaving home, the brahman urgently asks his wife not to eat anything until his return. Otherwise she will turn into a goat. If he himself tastes food outside the house, he will turn into a tiger.
Having disobeyed her husband's commandment, the wife tries food in his absence and turns into a goat. Her ex-husband remarries. In this version of the fairy tale, Cinderella has other brothers and sisters, who are rescued by a magical goat until the evil stepmother figures out their helper. After this, the new wife, pretending to be sick, tells the doctor to say that only goat meat can save her. The doctor meekly fulfills her command. The brahman at this time did not have money for another goat, so a sad fate befalls his ex-wife.
What does sacrifice have to do with it?
There are two main reasons for cannibalism as a real phenomenon: forced cannibalism associated with difficult living conditions (hunger, drought, etc.), and ritual cannibalism. In the context of this story, we can with relative confidence reject the version of eating a relative due to hunger, since fairy tales repeatedly mention fat flocks of sheep and other signs of prosperity.
The phenomenon of endocannibalism has deep archaic roots and is often mentioned in myths and fairy tales. If initially cannibalism was characteristic of the supreme deities, then as the ban spreads, it becomes a feature of lower mythological creatures: vampires, werewolves, and so on. He is usually severely punished.
Thus, in most fairy tales about Cinderella, in which there is a motif of indirect or direct cannibalism, animals, which are the spirit of the deceased mother, forbid her to try their meat.
Vengeful Cinderella from Vietnam
At times the plot turns into completely unimaginable directions. In one of the Vietnamese versions of the fairy tale “Tấm Cám,” Cinderella punishes her stepmother in the cruelest way, forcing her to taste the flesh of her own daughter.
When the Vietnamese Cinderella Tam has already married the prince, her stepsister Cam asks her how she manages to maintain her beauty. Tam replies that she is just taking a bath with boiling water. Having done as her sister advised her, Cam dies, boiled alive. Tam cuts her body into pieces and cooks the meat into food, then sends it to her stepmother. The woman starts her meal without hesitation, but then a raven lands on the roof of her house and croaks: “Yummy! A mother eats her own daughter's flesh! Is there any left? Give me a piece too!” And only after finishing it, the stepmother discovers her girl’s skull at the bottom of the pot, after which she dies of shock.
Helper animals: from cow to fish
Over time, the motive of cannibalism has gone through a long path of rationalization. The fairy tale remained for a very long time oral genre. Passing on a familiar plot from mouth to mouth, storytellers brought something of their own to the story of Cinderella, often omitting or rationalizing what was incomprehensible to the narrator. Thus, the gap between Cinderella’s mother and the good helper who appears on her path began to increase.
In many versions of the tale, the image of the mother loses its significance, but at the same time the image of an animal helper is retained, the appearance of which is not explained in any way. In the Irish, Scottish and Serbian analogues of “Cinderella”, such an animal is a sheep or a cow, which to some extent makes this fairy tale similar to the equally well-known story of “Little Khavroshechka”.
Most often, a female acts as an animal helper, but there are also male variations that go far from the idea of a mother-savior. And if in the Malay folk tale “Bawang Putih Bawang Merah” the fish also admits that she is the girl’s mother, then in the Vietnamese “Tam and Cam” the fish clearly symbolizes a male figure - according to some versions, the girl is helped by Buddha himself.
Fish appears in Asian fairy tales for a reason: it often symbolizes God.
Other animals also help Cinderella: the bull takes her away from her evil stepmother in the Norwegian fairy tale “Katie the Wooden Cloak”; A red calf in a Scottish Rashin-Coatie leads her through the forest. There are also characters from the “lower world”: a mouse, a toad and others.
At the next stage of rationalization, birds or a tree that grew on the mother’s grave act as Cinderella’s assistants. According to the Brothers Grimm, Cinderella made a pilgrimage to the burial place of her mother and there watered the earth with her tears until a tree grew in that very place. As soon as Cinderella shook it, nuts fell from the branches, in which magical gifts were hidden for her. Joseph Jacobs' Cinderella does exactly the same thing when she plants a hazel tree. A bird flies to her and advises her to shake the tree so that a nut falls from it.
In the Italian fairy tale “Cinderella” (Thomas Frederick Crane, Italian Popular Tales, Cinderella), the father brings youngest daughter the little bird Verdelio, which gives Cinderella her beauty. The image of a bird is ubiquitous in the myths of various countries. human soul. Thus, deceased relatives come to the living in the form of birds and help in trouble or warn of misfortune. The bird is a heavenly inhabitant, close to the gods. It is the birds who warn the prince about deception when Cinderella's stepsisters, wanting to marry a royal person, cut off part of their foot so that the shoe fits.
Why exactly hazel becomes Cinderella’s protector is also clear. Among many peoples, hazel (hazel) was considered closely connected with the afterlife. In some places in Europe, on Christmastide, homeowners scattered nuts on the floor and in corners to feed the souls of the dead. In the German fairy tale Aschenputtel, Cinderella asks her father to bring her the first branch that will knock off his hat so that she can plant it on her mother's grave. This branch turns out to be a hazel branch. In addition to connecting with the afterlife, the hazel tree also endows its owner with great wisdom; among the Druids this tree was considered sacred.
Birth of a Fairy
If the images of birds or trees as magical helpers already embodied the spirit of the deceased mother only purely symbolically, then later this image completely lost its original meaning. At this stage, Cinderella's assistant is either a being of divine nature or a human friend.
In the well-known fairy tale by Charles Perrault, Cinderella is helped not by animals or birds, but by a fairy godmother who appears out of nowhere. In the Georgian Cinderella, “The Little Ragged One” (Conkiajgharuna), the poor girl is helped by a devi - a mystical creature, one of the forms of the mother goddess. She does this in a rather creepy way:
One day, when Little Ragged was tending a cow, she accidentally ran onto the roof. [Note author: in some areas of the Caucasus, peasant houses are dug into the ground, so it is quite possible to accidentally walk onto the roof]. The girl followed the cow to return it to the road, but accidentally dropped the spindle into the house. Looking inside, she found an old woman there and asked her: “Good woman, give me my spindle.” “I can’t, my child,” answered the old woman, “go in and take it yourself.” This old woman was a virgin. When Tattered Girl picked up the spindle, the mistress of the house turned to her with a request: “Daughter, daughter, come to me and look at my head, I’m almost eaten.” The girl came closer and looked at the old woman's head. Her heart sank when she discovered worms crawling inside. But Tattered Girl gathered her courage and cleaned off a few worms, after which she said: “What is there to look at? Your head is clear!”
The gods help not only Tattered Man. Goddess Bhagavani took pity on Mugazo, the heroine of the Vietnamese fairy tale “The Golden Slipper.”
Cinderella is also supported by just women - kind and not so kind. Zezolla, the Italian Cinderella from the fairy tale by Giambattista Basile (1575−1632), conspiring with her nanny, breaks her stepmother’s neck with the lid of a chest. The kind neighbor from the Georgian fairy tale orders her birds to collect all the millet that the stepmother scattered and ordered her stepdaughter to collect.
And in the Greek fairy tale already mentioned above, Cinderella is directly helped by God. Finding herself in the desert, she prays: “Lord, give me a hole in the ground so that only I can stick my head there, so as not to hear the howling of wild animals.” After Cinderella’s request was fulfilled, she asked for a larger hole, one that would fit waist-deep. And only for the third time Cinderella prayed for a hut where she could live.
Thus, the image of Cinderella’s mother, hidden behind layers of numerous transformations and distortions, acquires a mystical, sacred meaning.
Having rejected the later, softer versions, where Cinderella forgets or forgives her evil stepmother and sisters, we encounter a common motif in which the spirit of the dead mother cruelly avenges her grievances. The stepmother breaks her neck, birds peck out her daughters' eyes, Cinderella forces her stepmother to taste the flesh of her own child...
In light of all of the above, the question arises: who is really the main character in this story? Isn't Cinderella just a tool, a conductor, with the help of which the spirit of the deceased mother administers its, sometimes bloody, justice? Dying, she does not completely leave the world of the living, but is invisibly present in it, conveying her will to her daughter and showing her the way.
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