On the handouts, circle all the words which caught your attention in "Ashputtle" by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and in "Cinderella" by Anne Sexton. Search for these words online and describe what you found.
Having just taken a German fairy tales class last semester, I was excited to read another version of Cinderella. The first words I googled from Anne Sexton's "Cinderella" were "charwoman" and "Bonwit Teller." According to the Internet's most reliable source (Wikipedia) a charwoman is an English house cleaner, and the prefix "char" is defined as a turn of work in the 16th century.
Bonwit Teller, I was surprised to learn, used to be a department store in New York, specialzing in high-end women's apparel. I also looked up the term "marriage market" and found a few different blogs concerning the differences between arranged marriages and marriages of free choosing. Both types of marriages used the word market to describe the process and atmosphere of meeting a potential partner.
After re-reading the Grimms' "Cinderella," I decided to research the excerpts about the blood in the shoes. According to a few psychoanalytic interpretations I found, the sisters' actions of cutting off parts of their feet may be symbolic of self-castration. Additionally. the blood that stains their stockings shows that they are impure and not virginal. This is the opposite of Cinderella, whose stockings remain white and without blood. I also googled the line about Cinderella remaining by the ashes in the kitchen. According to one interpretation I found, the kitchen represents the warmth her mother once provided, and the dirt and the ashes show tha Cinderella is mourning the loss of such nurturing.
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