I'm currently taking a feminist fairy tales class this spring semester - despite the amount of writing I have to do, sometimes being an English major is pretty cool.
The topics we discuss in class are source of great pondering for all of my peers. Elaborating thoughts and putting them into written words is arguable one of the hardest things human beings can do with language, and doing it with such grace as some of the authors we read is just magnificent. Some of the works are classic fairy tales told in childhood, some are revisions, some are in the form of poems.
Today, I would like to bring to you all one of those poems. It's about Cinderella, a familiar story, read in a post-feminist key and written by a contemporary author, Julia Alvarez.
Julia Alvarez is the Dominican-American author of "How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent" and "In The Time Of The Butterflies," the latter was made into a movie. She travels across the country teaching creative writing. When asked about becoming a writer, on her website, she tells the story of when as a child had to move from the Dominican Republic to New York City: "Non understanding the language, I had to pay close attention to each word -- great training for a writer. I also discovered the welcoming world of the imagination and books. There, I sunk my new roots". Close attention and cautious choice of words are two things dear to Alvarez. She's also involved in the environment. In fact, her and her significant other started a sustainable farm-literacy center called Alta Garcia in the Dominican Republic where they grow organic coffee.
The poem "Against Cinderella" makes the reader question the self. It suggests independence from anyone that might hold you down or try to control your life, present and future, and to count on yourself. I personally see it as a motivational piece to all women, to all the Cinderellas out there that need to be freed of some sort of oppression and their savior isn't a prince in a shiny armor riding a horse, but only themselves. I picture this freedom not as punishment of a form of isolation, but a much awaited emancipation in which the Cinderella of the world can grow into mature human beings.
Against Cinderella
I can't believe it.
Whoever made it up is pulling my foot
so it'll fit that shoe.
I'll go along with martyrdom:
she swept and wept; she mended, stoked the fire,
slaved while her three stepsisters,
who just happened to oblige their meanness
by being ugly, dressed themselves.
I'll swallow that there was a Singer godmother,
who magically could sew a pattern up
and hem it in an hour,
that Cinderella got to be a debutante
and lost her head and later lost her shoe.
But there I stop.
I can't believe
that no one but one woman in that town
had that size foot, could fit into that shoe.
I've felt enough of lost and found
to know that if you lose your heart
to anyone you've crowned into a prince,
you might not get it back;
that the old kerchief trick,
whether you drop a shoe, your clothes, your life,
doesn't do much but litter up the world.
That when the knock at last comes to your door,
you might not be home or willing.
That some of us have learned to go barefoot
knowing the mate to one foot is the other.
by Julia Alvarez