It’s amazing how significant the social class lines really are and how frequently they turn up throughout life. Social class struggle has occurred in every book that we’ve read thus far. All the King’s Men, Willie struggles with the social shock of power; Streetcar Named Desire, Stanley feels intimidated by Blanche because of class; and Winesburg, the entire town is afraid to move on perhaps due to social conflict that they would have to face outside of Winesburg. On Thursday, we read Cinderella, and in the end, Cinderella turns from a working class girl into a beautiful princess. The question is; would she have become a princess had she met the prince as a peasant? I don’t think so. Yes, Cinderella was beautiful and kind, but her dirty rags of clothes would not cut it for a prince. Throughout the entire story, the only times the prince sees Cinderella is when she is magically made to look rich. One of the most climactic parts is when the clock turns midnight and she must run away as fast as possible before the prince can see who she actually is. And again in the end, when the shoe fits, her godmother makes her into a beautiful princess before she can even see the prince. The more that I think about it, the more disturbing this story really is. As far as the audience knows, the prince is never made aware of Cinderella’s actual past. Yikes. Now I wonder what the prince would have done had he known. This story makes it very clear that social class matters and that we should probably fake it till we make it in life. Also, last night I was flipping through channels and landed on “Maid in Manhattan”, yet another Cinderella story. In a heavily emotional part where the future senator tries to win over Jennifer Lopez, JLo points out that he never would have looked twice at her if she had not pretended to be rich. Of course he denies this but we all know that it is true. Would a wealthy social elitist ever think to woo a maid? Probably not. And had Jennifer Lopez not tried on that Dolce and Gabbana outfit, she too never would have tried to woo a future senator. This is because whether we like it or not, social class tends to glue us down to our rightful place in society and it takes a brave sole to break out of that hold. I suppose the glue that holds us down is our pride. Jennifer Lopez nearly does not take the life-altering option to commit to this man because she is proud. Cinderella on the other hand does not seem to have an ounce of pride, but hey, it is a fairytale after all. I definitely was not so attuned to the frequent occurrence of the Cinderella theme in movies and books but our analytical read of Cinderella reminded me of that. Cinderella portrays a classic tale of social class conflict which proves to be a regular occurrence in life and literature.
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