Discuss how the father-daughter relationship is important in Cinderella, how it's relevant - Essay Example

This paper will focus primarily on the father-daughter relationship and its significance and relevance in different versions of Cinderella. For masses, the daughter-father relationship is almost absent in the story and one does not come across a direct evident relationship of the two in most of the versions. However, from a critical point of view, there exists somehow a negative relationship between the two (Neilsen, pp. 20-23), as most of the versions have shown an ignorant father who did not interfere when stepmother/s and stepsisters were mistreating Cinderella in the story.

In one of the earliest versions of Cinderella, the father is shown as a widowed one who ends up marrying a woman who always mistreats Cinderella also known as Zezolla in some of the versions of this fairytale. This version has shown an absent relationship of father and daughter as the father is always silent when it comes to mistreatment of her daughter. Later on, Zezolla plots killing of her evil mother with the governess (Nielsen, pp. 22-25) and subsequently, father marries the governess who is shown as the worst stepmother resulting in harsher treatment for the Cinderella.

Almost all versions of the story except the Disney’s film version, the father is portrayed as a cruel one who takes the side of the evil stepmother and forces Cinderella to perform all the nasty house chores while the stepmother and stepdaughters enjoy bounties of the world (Silvey, pp. 136-139). Some of the versions of Cinderella story have moved a line ahead by showing an incestuous father (Nielsen, pp. 25-28) that resulted in huge criticism from educators, as it portrayed a wrong image of fathers to children, especially daughters.

To show incestuous intention of the father, Alan Dundes briefed one of the versions of Cinderella while saying: Usually the queen on her deathbed makes the king promise to marry only someone who