#cinders

Cinders wip is under the cut (hopefully I'll finish it soon)

Drawing of cinders I made! I love her truly!

I got characters from here and Instagram and I hope I drew your little guys well!

Last time I analyzed how Cinderella relates to the symbol of cinders/ashes/soot throughout different iterations. You can find that post here:

However I failed to mention one more way in which she does, a very important one: her picking lentils out of the cinders (or another type of grain, depending on the version). I'll explore this a little bit further down this second part, but first let's look at the symbol on it's own.

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I'll start by saying that sometimes different languages will have categorizations that don't exist in other languages. For instance, the word "glass" and "crystal" share the same word in spanish, but they are different kinds of objects, even if people tend to mix them up. I mention this because this is also the case between ashes and cinders. You might initially think that Cinderella as a character archetype is more linked to cinders, but etymologically what more cultures have associated it is with ashes. It's important to note the distinction between those two words is not present in a lot of languages. In french the word is cendres, which is closer to cinders phonetically, same case with asche in german, closer to ashes. Languages like spanish, once again, use the same word for both concepts. I mention this because at some points I might use the words ashes and cinders interchangeably. I acknowledge there's a difference between the two (even if not a very big one) but for symbolism analysis, they tend to share meaning.

Being raised catholic (not one anymore though), I've always been very aware that ashes are an important symbol and that being the predominant religion at the time of most fairy tales being written, means that symbolism starts to be shared across cultures.

In both Perrault and Grimms' historical contexts, catholicism still played an important part in shaping European literary traditions. Some versions of Cinderella will have her stepsisters and stepmother going to church instead of a ball, as this was a social environment and not just a religious one.

I mention this because catholicism has provided a lot of the symbolism related to the notion of ashes. In February there's "ash Wednesday", which still happens up to this day. A day in which Catholics will wear a cross made of ashes on the forehead, made out of burnt plants used in a ceremony from the previous year. Ashes are both a symbol of mourning and penance (this second meaning being the usual one behind ash Wednesday). Many bible texts reference both being covered in ashes and dressed in rags or sackcloth as a way of either repenting or display that a painful situation has happened. Not only the death of a loved one, but also falling into any kind of disgrace and/or being subjected to demeaning treatment by other people (these last two in particular being very relevant to the Cinderella story).

However they're also linked to mourning and grief of course. The first fact being that cremation is one of the oldest practices in most human cultures. And in almost every case the ashes left after cremation are either sacred or given a very important place (either by keeping them in a special place or by spreading them in a special place). What's more, the practice of turning ashes into glass has also been prominent, including cremation ashes. It's more common than you would think to see people turning their loved ones ashes into a glass object.

We've now come full circle back to another symbol: glass slippers. But we won't get into that one on this post (maybe in a different post).

One last symbolic meaning I'd like to bring up is the myth of the Phoenix bird. For most people this might be THE symbol related to ashes. Yet, many people seem to ignore how evident the connection with the Cinderella story is. Being reborn out of ashes, the ultimate symbol of rebirth. The Grimm's Cinderella in particular will even have one more, and very important, symbol that other versions don't include: her mother's grave, from which the tree grows. I bring it up since it reinforces both the grief symbolism in that version and the life coming out of death symbolism as well.

Thus, let us see the meanings associated up to this point: penance, mourning, grief, rebirth. We could add the potential for beauty since ash can turn into a delicate rare glass.

Like I said, last time I explored how Cinderella herself relates to ashes/cinders. Yet I forgot to mention one more and very important way in which she does throughout many versions (mostly Grimm).

-Sorting grains out of the ashes:

Many versions (most prominently the Grimm's version) has Cinderella pick up lentils out of the ashes, more than once in the story. They will mention the step family just throwing some sort of grain into the ashes for her to pick up, a lot of times just to be mean. However there will come a point in the story where she will be given the task of sorting "good lentils from the bad" (or same case with any other kind of grain) as a condition to go to the ball. This will even happen twice in a row. This on its own kind of deserves it's own analysis as well, since picking up grains or small particles one by one and sorting "good" from "bad" are notions that have their own set of symbols (for instance, the grain aspect is shared in some aspects by vampires who have to count rice or other mythical creatures that must pick sand or salt) which, once more, would be better explored on a different post.

So having established both the ways in which Cinderella herself relates to ashes and what some of the main symbols regarding ashes are, let's see if we can make some conclusions by cross referencing both sets of data.

Sleeping next to the fireplace is usually a situation that happens temporarily (like Lily James due to cold or like Drew Barrymore due to just falling asleep reading) or permanently (like the Grimms' version where she is explicitly not allowed anywhere else to sleep but there). In both cases it's implied that it happens because of her looking for warmth. Now, as we'll see in the next post of this series, fireplaces and fire in houses tend can represent family, so it is a situation of her looking for a family embrace, for that home warmth, but ultimately waking up next to a dead fire, among the ashes. It is clearly her dealing with grief, the loss of one or both parents, but also her identity and place in the family (literally). Sleeping among the ashes is a state of mourning, the feeling of cold and wanting to get away from that cold.

Sitting among the ashes provides a similar case, but while being awake. This is important because it tends to reflect a more meditative state of mourning. Looking at a flame is a way to regulate the nervous system in many cultures. This carries the same meaning of mourning, but it almost seems like a later stage of grief. A period intersecting the sadness and the acceptance. Here we have most of the Rodger's and Hammerstein's versions who have a not as sad Cinderella (the Grimm version is literally watering the grave of her mother with her tears, while this one just sings a little about her sadness but looks forward more often) who is more focused on imagining different and better possibilities and circumstances for herself.

When she is just casually dropping the origin of her nickname in some versions, she seems to be fully in the last part of the Kübler-Ross model on the five stages of grief: acceptance. She kind of assumes her grief as a part of herself through her name.

When her relationship with ashes just comes by being covered in them, I think this is the clearest example of potential for beauty and the cinders-glass connection, since in versions like Leslie Caron or Aylin Tezel's it almost seems as if people underestimate her or see her as plain, or even ugly, because of this, making the contrast with the ballgown moment (her beauty shining through finally) even more striking.

We are left with two of the most important associations then. Cleaning the fireplace and picking a grain out of the ashes. In both cases the element of penance seems to be very present. Now you might be wondering, penance for what? She never did anything wrong. And that is correct. The same can't be said about the rest of her family, and this is where the notion of "escape goatism" is very important. The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas talks about something called "sacrificial violence", a phenomenon where a community will blame all of their problems onto one individual. This resembles the ancient jewish ritual of sacrificing a goat at the altar that would be given all the sins of the community and then be sacrificed; thus, "killing" the sins. I think the Jesus imagery is evident here as well. In this sense, is not her own penance, is her being given penance for the misdeeds of her step family and, in many cases, her father's negligence.

As a general rule, the rebirth symbolism applies to all previous cases, it might be the biggest and most obvious symbolism about ashes/cinders in the Cinderella story.

I think this leaves us with an important question. What about all those versions where there is literally no relationship with cinders, despite being in the name of the main character? Here we have very famous versions like Disney's animated Cinderella or even The Slipper and the Rose. In the case of The Slipper and the Rose, at least there's fireplace imagery and subtle soot stains, but Disney's original version separates absolutely from the symbol and because of it's fame has kind of made people forget that the symbol was there at all (something the live action remake fixed). And, as much as I love that version, I do firmly believe that it loses one of the quintessential elements of the story, present from the title and the main character's name.

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I'm sorry this post took me so long, the next part probably will take some time too, but I appreciate y'all reading. Let me know what you think about the analysis of the symbol of ashes/cinders in the context of the Cinderella story ✨✨