The story as it is told
The story goes that the "real" Cinderella is the Grimms' version, much darker than the gentle one that came after. Her mother dies, her father marries a woman with two daughters, fair in face but foul at heart, and the girl is stripped of her fine clothes, given an old grey frock, and made to sleep among the ashes by the hearth, which is why they call her Ashputtel. When her father goes to the fair, the stepsisters ask for fine clothes and pearls and diamonds, and she asks for the first twig that brushes against his hat. She plants it on her mother's grave and waters it with her tears, and it grows into a tree where a little bird brings her whatever she wishes for.
When the king holds a feast to choose a bride for his son, her stepmother throws a dishful of peas into the ashes and says she may go if she has picked them all out in two hours, and the birds come and do it. She goes to the ball in a dress from the tree and slips away again and again. At last the prince goes house to house with the golden slipper, and each of the stepsisters cuts her own foot to make it fit, and each time doves call out that there is blood in the shoe. The stepsisters mutilate their feet and, at the end, are blinded by doves. The gentle version with the forgiving heroine, the story goes, was invented later to clean it up.
What we can confirm
The gentle version is older. Charles Perrault's Cendrillon, printed in Paris in 1697, ends with forgiveness. The stepsisters throw themselves at her feet. Cendrillon lifts them up, embraces them and says she forgives them "de bon cœur" (with all her heart). After her wedding, she lodges them in the palace and marries them "the same day to two great lords of the court."
The Brothers Grimm published their Aschenputtel as tale no. 21 in the first volume of Kinder- und Haus-Märchen, which came out in Berlin on December 20, 1812. In that first edition, the stepmother tells the first daughter to cut off part of her heel to fit the golden slipper. She does. Doves above the gate call out, "Rucke di guck, rucke di guck! Blut ist im Schuck" (Blood is in the shoe). The second daughter is told to cut off her toes instead: she "bit her teeth together and cut a large piece off her toes." Again the doves call out, and the prince sees her white stockings stained red. Then Aschenputtel's foot fits, the doves sing that there is "no blood in the shoe," and the 1812 tale ends. Nothing more happens to the sisters.
The second edition of 1819 adds a new ending. The two white doves settle on Aschenputtel's shoulders. When the wedding is held, the false sisters come to curry favor. On the way into the church, "the doves pecked one eye out of each of them," and on the way out, "the other eye." The 1819 text spells out the moral: they were "punished with blindness for the rest of their lives for their wickedness and falseness" (our translation, page 123).
In this tale, the Grimms added violence between editions. In their 1812 notes, they said Perrault's Cendrillon was "not among his best-told tales."
The facts
- KHM vol. 1 published Dec 20, 1812; second edition 1819 from the same publisher. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
- 1812 text: heel and toe cutting, the dove rhyme, and the ending with no punishment of the sisters (pp. 88 to 101). de.wikisource transcription of the 1812 edition
- 1819 text: the doves peck out the sisters' eyes at the wedding (pp. 122 to 123). de.wikisource transcription; page 123 scan viewed
- 1812 notes: Perrault's Cendrillon "gehört nicht unter seine am besten erzählten Märchen." 1812 Anhang, p. XVI
- Perrault 1697: forgiveness; sisters married to "deux grands Seigneurs de la Cour." fr.wikisource, 1697 text
Sources
- Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, "Die Erstausgabe der Kinder- und Hausmärchen": staatsbibliothek-berlin.de
- Wikisource (de), Aschenputtel (1812), KHM vol. 1 pp. 88 to 101 and notes pp. XV to XVI: de.wikisource.org)
- Wikisource (de), Aschenputtel (1819), KHM vol. 1 pp. 114 to 123: de.wikisource.org)
- Wikimedia Commons, 1819 vol. 1 p. 123 scan: commons.wikimedia.org
- Wikisource (fr), Histoires ou Contes du temps passé (1697), full text: fr.wikisource.org)/Original/Texte_entier
- Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191: openjurist.org
- Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, "Ashputtel," in Grimm's Fairy Tales, tr. Margaret Hunt (1884), Project Gutenberg #2591, gutenberg.org the opening (mother's death, stepmother and daughters, old grey frock, ashes, the fair and the hazel twig, the grave, the bird, the king's feast, the peas) was read in the text. The ball, the slipper and the foot cutting follow the standard plot.