Once upon a time, fairy tales, such as Cinderella, were written for adults, not children. In order to create a more memorable message, the older versions combined sex as well as violence. Most people wouldn’t think such beautiful love stories could be so dark and gruesome. Truth is, Disney adapted older tales told by the Grimm brothers. To ensure that kids go home happy after watching a movie instead of being mortified, Disney altered the endings to several fairy tales.

When the Cinderella story first came out, it wasn’t about a prince and a princess ending up blissfully married. In the oldest versions of the story, Cinderella was as cruel as the stepmother. She killed her first stepmother so her father would marry the housekeeper instead. Although, it came to a shock when the housekeeper’s six daughters moved in and Cinderella became the slave. However, she still ends up marrying the prince. When the king’s son turns up to find the foot that fits the shoe, blood ran through the shoes. One of the sisters cut her toe off while the other sliced her heal to make the shoe fit, both attempts were given away. As a vengeance to the stepsisters, Cinderella’s bird friends poked each of the women’s eyes, punishing them with “the blindness of their days.”

For those of you who don’t know who the Grimm brothers are, they are two men, Jacob and Wilhelm who were determined to preserve folktales. One of them being Cinderella. In the early 1800’s, the Grimm brothers were considered entertainers.

If you are interested in a fuller version of the story, the following is a link with the full story with audio: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/grimm/cinderella.html

Furthermore, if you are curious to learn more about the Grimm brothers, her is the trailer of a 2005 movie inspired by them, The Brothers Grimm.

This movie is NOT about their lives, but it is about their tales. The film highlights the various tales from our childhood such as Hans and Grettel, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Ridding Hood, The Gingerbread Man, Little Miss Mophet, Snow White and of course Cinderella.

Cinderella was shown through the glass slipper. In the movie, they connect all these Disney stories and mush them all together so that it follows a story line. For the princess to wake up from her Rapunzel like tower and be beautiful, she needed to find twelve young beautiful girls and kill them for their beauty, once that was done, they would put the girls in a coffin and put glass slippers on their feet. This is an homage to cinderella not only by the the glass slippers but the importance of beauty and awaiting prince charming.