The Cinderella Myth at work

When first given this assignment, I thought of The Little Princess, a book for children written by Frances Hodgson Burnett in 1905. In it, a little girl enters into an English private school while her father fights in the first world war. When news comes that he is dead, Sarah goes from student to servant - partly in order to work off the debt she incurred while at the school as a student, and also so the school saves face (it wouldn't look good for them to throw her out). By the end of the novel, though, a rich man who was friends with her father ends up taking her in, and lifts her out of poverty back into a position of wealth and privilege.

Cinderella stories begin with a girl whose birth right is one of nobility and wealth. The social order that has been disrupted in the course of the story has to be re-established by the time the story ends. Sarah Crewe is meant to regain her status by the end of the novel. It's a popular story, and a popular novel, especially with young girls - Sarah is smart and kind, but she is also a "princess" - she comes from wealth, and she is meant to go back to wealth.

While looking around for images that could make this post interesting, I came across this photo of a statue on the Danube Corso, in Budapest, titled "The Little Princess". The statue is wearing a jester's cap, although I found information suggesting that vandals broke off one of the cap tips. It is a wonderful statue - so sweet and realistic. It's basically a kid playing dress-up, and caught up in daydreaming.

So I looked up more bronze statues, and came across this: Giant Hares in O'Connell Street. I had to include this because the pictures are kind of bizarre - like characters that escaped from Alice in Wonderland. (Alice, by the way, is another Cinderella figure in literature, arguably - considering she returns to her world after some harrowing experiences in Wonderland).