A few weeks ago I was watching the new Cinderella movie. Lily James was innocently beautiful and played the iconic role of Cinderella perfectly. She went from a carefree country girl, to a daughter in mourning, to a cinder covered maid, but of course, with a little magic from her Fairy Godmother, she finally gets her happily ever after with Prince Kit.
In one of the last scenes, after Prince Kit tries the slipper on Cinderella’s foot (spoiler alert: it fits) and is about to whisk her away to his palace, Cinderella poignantly stops, looks back at her angry stepmother, Lady Tremaine, and says, “I forgive you.” As I watched her deliver that line with sincerity, I remember feeling impressed that she was able to say those words to someone who had made her a servant in her own home, mocked and humiliated her and who had tried to ruin any of her chances for real happiness. However, my thoughts were interrupted when one of the people I was watching the movie with scoffed and exclaimed with disgust, “What a mistake!” They seemed to think that Cinderella was foolish for forgiving her stepmother. I was utterly confused by their reaction. Wasn’t forgiving her stepmother a good thing?
Forgiving someone is an extremely difficult thing to do, which would explain why Mahatma Gandhi said, “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” Why does it require strength to forgive? Our natural reaction when someone hurts us is to reciprocate. We want them to feel just as much pain as they have caused us so they can understand what it felt like. We spend time plotting our revenge and debating how best to humiliate them, until they fill our thoughts constantly. This is captured perfectly in the anonymous quote that states, “Hating someone makes them important, forgiving them makes them obsolete.” It takes a lot of willpower and maturity to decide to forgive someone because when that happens we give up our revenge plots and carefully constructed comebacks. In return, we leave this person behind and move forward without them constantly in our thoughts, they truly become obsolete and insignificant.
Let’s envision a future for Cinderella, where she decides not to forgive her stepmother. We’ll use “Hating someone makes them important, forgiving them makes them obsolete” as the guideline. In this version of the story, there is no scene with, “I forgive you.” Instead, Cinderella stares down Lady Tremaine and says the medieval equivalent of, “How’s this for karma?” Cinderella has her fairytale wedding but hardly has time to enjoy it because she is too busy smugly thinking about how she snubbed her stepmother and stepsisters by not inviting them. She constantly tells Prince Kit how she can’t wait to see them humbled when they become desperate enough to beg for her favor. Even years after she is Queen she still harbors this grudge and spends her time and resources making her mother and stepsisters pay. She raises their taxes never invites them to celebrate holidays, birthdays or royal functions but makes sure to send a Christmas card each year detailing her and her family's achievements so Lady Tremaine and her daughters know exactly how well off she is now, because her marrying a prince and becoming a Queen didn’t convey the message clear enough. I’m not sure about you, but I don’t particularly care for this version of Cinderella and I know I'd rather have the person who hurt me become obsolete rather than important.
