I thought The Baba Yaga story from Ashliman's site was very interesting. In this Russian tale, There is no stepsister, only a stepmother who attempts to kill the girl by sending her to the woman's sister. The girl realizes that her step-aunt is a Baba Yaga, or a witch who likes to eat small children so she goes to her other aunt to get advice. This aunt gives her tools to escape the Baba Yaga by feeding the Baba Yaga's dogs and cats who would harm her, oiling doors that would squeak and alert the Baba Yaga that she is escaping, and other things of that nature. When the girl goes to the Baba Yaga like her stepmother makes her she does these things and escapes. She returns home and her father finds out what her stepmother attempted to do, shoots her dead, and the father and daughter live on and flourished.
I thought the absence of a stepsister was significant. That seems to focus the conflict between the stepmother and the girl. Another interesting thing was the lack of a prince figure. There was no love story in the tale unlike the other Cinderella tales we have read. A similarity between this tale and the others is that the stepmother is defeated in the end, but a new twist is that the father himself shot the woman and took a more active role in protecting his daughter.
Audra Crosby
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This story reminds me of the Little Red Riding Hood versions like Thurber where she pulls out a gun and kills the wolf. It is very interesting how much the story changes without the Prince searching for the girl who fits in some article of clothing.
ReplyDeleteThis is so much different than the Cinderella stories we've heard! Aside from defeating a step-mother, how is this a Cinderella story at all? Very interesting.
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