What were Cinderella's shoes made of? Detailed answer

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What were Cinderella's shoes made of? Detailed answer

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What were Cinderella's shoes made of?

From squirrel fur. Charles Perrault, the author of the most famous XNUMXth-century version of the tale, simply misheard the word vair (“squirrel fur”) from a medieval story he borrowed and inserted the similar-sounding word verre (“glass”, “crystal”) into the text.

The tale of Cinderella is an ancient and universal story. Thus, the Chinese version dates back to the 340th century, and before Perrault there were at least XNUMX different other versions. Moreover, crystal slippers are not mentioned in any of them. In the "original" Chinese tale "Ye-Shen" the heroine's slippers are made of gilded thread with solid gold soles. In the Scottish version called "Rashie-Coat" they are made of reeds. In a medieval French tale adapted by Perrault, Cinderella's shoes are described as pantoufles de vair - squirrel fur shoes.

One source claims that the vair-verre error occurred before Perrault, so the Frenchman simply repeated it. Others consider the crystal slippers to be a find of the author himself and that he planned to use this image from the very beginning.

The Oxford English Dictionary is certain that the word vair, used in English as well as in French since 1300, is derived from the Latin varius, "variegated, multicolored", and refers to squirrel fur "used for trimming or dress trims.

The snopes.com website states that there was no way Perrault could confuse vair with verre, as vair "was already obsolete at the time." This statement seems to us very controversial, since the word was actively used even in English until at least 1864.

Perrault was a Parisian, a high society writer who rose to the title of director of the Académie française. His Tales of Mother Goose (1697), originally conceived for the entertainment of the royal court and published under the name of his 17-year-old son, gained instant popularity, opening up a new literary genre - the fairy tale. In addition to Cinderella, world-famous versions of Charles Perrault's classic stories include Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard and Puss in Boots.

In addition to adding gloss to the Cinderella story - adding mice, a pumpkin and a fairy godmother - Perrault greatly downplayed the peasant bloodthirstiness of the main characters. In the medieval original, the ugly sisters cut off their thumb along with the bump on the outside of the foot so that the slipper fits them, and after the prince marries Cinderella, the king takes revenge on the sisters and the evil stepmother, forcing them to dance to death in hot iron shoes . Much of this bloodlust was later restored by the Brothers Grimm.

Author: John Lloyd, John Mitchinson

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

How was the atom considered before Rutherford?

By the beginning of the 1897th century, it was known that atoms were composed of parts (the electron was discovered in XNUMX), but no one knew how many of these parts were, how they "joined" in an atom, and what shape an atom had.

Some physicists have thought that atoms should be in a cubic form, since it is this form that provides the most dense "packing", without wasting space.

However, the most common view was that the atom resembled a raisin bun, a dense, solid object that carried a positive charge and was studded with negatively charged raisin electrons.

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