eneral, there are more than three hundred variants of Cinderella , including the versions written by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. In all these different versions two characters, Cinderella and the stepmother are opposed to each other, revealing the struggle between good and evil . Same opposition is shown in the tale Snow White , where the stepmother is presented as a cruel woman, while Snow White is a beautiful and kind girl, similar to Cinderella. Thus, the image of a stepmother in fairy tales is negative, demonstrating social reality in regard to families: the poor girl suffered it all patiently, and didn »t dare complain to her father, who would have scolded her, because he was completely under the [stepmother «s] sway. In Perrault »s and the Brothers Grimm« s versions Cinderella is portrayed as a real beauty, because in the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries outer beauty was associated with inner beauty ., In some other versions of Cinderella the principal female character is presented as an ugly girl who is further changed into an attractive young woman, while her stepsisters who are initially beautiful are transformed into freaks, with the exception of Perrault »s tale, where Cinderella forgives her stepsisters and finds appropriate matches for them. In the Brothers Grimm «s tale the stepsisters of Cinderella are punished with blindness for the rest of their lives.Perrault» s version of the tale much stress is put on fancy dresses and the image of the godmother, while in the Brothers Grimm «s version Aschenputtel there is no godmother; instead, there is a tree near the grave of Cinderella »s mother that helps the girl. Similarly, in Rashin-Coatie, the Scottish variant of Cinderella , there is a red calf that gives aid to the protagonist. Thus, Western culture implements the image of the fairy godmother, while other cultures mainly deal with certain magical things that possess great power.Perrault «s variant of the tale Cinderella is given the glass slippers to match her beautiful dress and when the Prince finds a lost slipper, he announces to the sounds of trumpets that he would marry the girl whose foot fit the slipper. But in the Chinese version of the tale and the Brothers Grimm »s variant the principal female character gets the gold shoes. In general, shoes and boots are crucial elements of the fairy tale; for instance, the cat in Puss in Boots wears boots that provide him with higher position and the Queen of Snow White is given the red hot shoes that kill her.the development of the fairy tale in children «s literature, we can suggests that fairy tales were created from the myths and folk stories and acquired a literary form approximately in the seventeenth century. Although at the beginning fairy tales were written for adults, gradually they began to occupy one of the most important places in children »s literature. It was in France, where fairy tales were first exposed to these changes, followed by such countries as Germany, Great Britain and America. In Russia, where fairy tales were closely connected with country «s history, they were used in children» s literature several centuries later, implicitly revealing the difference between Western and Russian cultural traditions. Al...
