Cinderella “plot holes” I am tired of hearing about
- “Why didn’t her step family recognize her?” Because royal balls were basically the candle lit equivalent of clubbing in terms of both lighting and sheer numbers. Even if they were right next to her, they probably wouldn’t get a good look, especially since it would have started after sundown. Also, she was the help; they probably hadn’t looked at her in years.
- “Looking for someone based on their shoe size is stupid!” See above.
- “Was he going to have every size seven in the kingdom try the slipper on?” Prior to industrialization most garments were made by hand to fit the buyer’s measurements, including shoes. It’s why poor people only had one pair. It’s a lot smarter when you consider that they would’ve fit her like a glove.
- “You can’t run down stairs in heels!” I know this is a misconception resulting from historical revisionism and disneyfication, but high heels were not originally women’s shoes. They were worn by men. Women wore slippers, which were basically ballet flats. So it’s debatable.
- “Glass shoes don’t make any sense!” Okay first of all, it’s called the suspension of disbelief, and secondly, they’re gold in every other version but Perrault decided to change them to something else expensive.
- “She just went to the ball to find a man!” I know this isn’t a plot hole but listen. As the daughter of a widower Cinderella would’ve been running the household finances and acting as hostess if he hadn’t remarried. By demoting Cinderella to a servant, her step-mother essentially guaranteed that she would never escape the house, because the only way for her to escape and maintain her status was to marry well, and no one was going to marry a servant. It was essentially the historical equivalent of your mom stealing your college acceptance letters out of the mailbox.
this was not an analysis i was prepared for, i’ll tell you that
Also, a lot of versions have the ball be a masque, which is another reason no one would have recognized her.
Also, also… She had an extreme makeover courtesy of the FGM. Before, Cinderella was literally a dirty, unclean servant with ashes, dust, cuts and possibly bruises on her body at all times. Im some stories she wasn’t even allowed to bathe or clean herself up. She was always miserable and seldom smiled because she was treated like the dirt she cleans.
The FGM gave her beautiful new clothes, a hairdo worthy of a queen, a good makeup job, possibly cleaned her up with her magic, and gave her a reason to smile. I’m 120% sure no one would recognize a glow-up like that, especially if the maid is meant to be cleaning your bedroom at the time of the ball.
I have just the thing for this:
Also, the shoes were not made to be glass either in Perrault’s version. In French, glass is “verre”. Cinderella’s shoes were made of “vaire”, which is very expensive fur of a specific kind of squirrel. (I know, gross. But historically accurate.) So the reason Cinderella has shoes made of glass in the Disney version is just because Disney executives don’t actually speak French and do not seem to know that you can have two different words, written differently, that can be pronounced the same way.