Timothy's Thoughts

I got up early this morning and having nothing better to do I read several blogs. I read Eat, Pray...Hate? at Girls Write Out , the gist of which is that people don't like the "truth" of some people's stories, even going so far as to criticize Eat, Pray, Love because the woman left her husband. To that post, I wrote a response saying that it is natural for readers to feel hurt when someone hurts someone they like. In this case, the writer of Eat, Pray, Love hurt her husband, who appears to have wanted the marriage to work, whatever his failing might have been. I said that readers will feel the story is unresolved if the person doesn't admit wrong doing and apologize to not only the other person but the reader. Of course, the character can get comeuppance and that works too (sometimes even better). But what got me is that I included a link to For the Love of a Devil and to a couple of Bible verses because I felt that For the Love of a Devil was relavant to ...

T oday, I want to continue the topic of Cinderella from yesterday, but I want to discuss Cinderella’s magic. Where does it come from? We don’t normally think of Cinderella having magic of her own, but magic is used to give her gifts. It appears to be in the control of a fairy godmother or a tree, depending on which version you read. Indirectly, the magic appears to come from her mother, who is watching over her from heaven. None of the stories make a huge deal about her mother, but some do talk about God and her mother looking down on her. In the Gimms’ version, the tree is planted on her mother’s grave and watered with Cinderella’s tears. Even the fact that some versions reference a fairy godmother alludes to a higher power. I don’t know much about godmothers, but my understanding is that they are to help protect their godchildren. In terms of storytelling, the power comes from none of those things but from Cinderella. Had Cinderella not been “pious and good,” I don’t think it woul...