2015 - Sold

The Cinderella Construct

The story of Cinderella is so ubiquitous, that all across human history, geography, and different cultures, it continues to exist and remains virtually unchanged.

There are close to a thousand different incarnations of the Cinderella fable around the world dating back to ancient antiquity. The earliest known version was recorded in the 1st century BC by a Greek historian Strabo, and inspired by an enslaved Greek girl-turned courtesan named Rhodopis, who according to his account, was freed from sexual servitude and went on to marry an Egyptian King.

While it appears that Rhodopis was the original allegorical Cinderella, she certainly wasn’t the first orphaned, abused, and exploited female in the world, nor the last. Over thousands of years of human history there have been, there are, and there will be many more Cinderellas – with and without a happily ever after. Every culture and generation imprints its own ideals and values on the Cinderella construct, altering it somewhat, but keeping the basic Rags-to-Riches narrative intact.

The moving mechanism at the heart of Cinderella story appears to be a conflict of interests that arises between individuals in an evolutionary struggle for limited economic resources. This very survival instinct is probably what sometimes turns perfectly decent women into abusive Stepmothers. It is puzzling though why the fathers in this situation allow this pattern of abuse to perpetuate, as though having gained a new wife capable of bearing new offspring, they are no longer emotionally or even genetically invested in the survival of their own biological children from previous partners.

The reason this fairy tale is still so compelling and powerful, is because its underlying themes are still as relevant today as they were two thousand years ago, when Strabo first penned that tragic story of a slave girl with a Happily Ever After.

The Cinderella construct appears to be a collective existential portrait of the human condition – As long as there are people, there will be Cinderellas.