Every fairy tale ends with a happily ever after, right?
Well, not to begin with, they didnt…
If you had to recount the story of Cinderella right now, you could probably do it quite easily.
Wicked stepmother, glass slipper, stroke of midnight, blah, blah, blah.
Back in the early 1800s, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were working as librarians.
The huntsman cant do it, and lets Snow White escape into the forest.
She finds a tiny house where singing dwarves, all named for their defining characteristics, live.
They decide to let her stay to keep house for them.
And then they live happily ever after.
But originally:In the first edition of the story, it wasnt a wicked step-mother at all.
It was Snow Whites mother.
And she didnt just want Snow Whites heart, she wanted her lungs and liver, too.
Luckily, she still has the other shoe, so she gets to live happily ever after too.
But originally:The Cinderella story appeared in a volume of Charles Perraults fairy tales.
(Yup, that again.)
But curses cant be hidden from, so she ends up pricking her finger and falling asleep anyway.
Cue the happily ever after bit.
But otherwise, the story is pretty similar.
Says something when the Grimms version is nicer than the others, doesnt it?
In some of the Grimms stories, theres an unpleasant seam of anti-Semitism.
Thats jumping a long way into the future though.
Those edits created a wider audience for the Grimms books, and probably ensured that their stories endured.
After all, no one wants a bedtime story that gives them nightmares.
