44 3.9 Presenting Your First sPeech
This story helps keep the
audience interested and
supports the speaker’s central
idea.So to begin, I would like to discuss the differences in characters
between the Disney and Brothers Grimm versions of Cinderella. Disney
both added in and changed characters from the Brothers Grimm version
of Cinderella. For example, the fairy godmother character did not exist
in the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella. It was actually a tree that
Cinderella would go to for help and there were birds that lived in the tree
that would help her out with whatever she needed. So, for example, when
Cinderella was getting ready to go to the ball, she needed to make sure
that she finished up her chores and she had a dress to wear. And so the
birds that lived in the trees whenever she asked for help would help her
finish her chores and also they gave her a dress to wear to the ball.
Another change that Disney made was to add in the other animal
characters to Cinderella. So in the Brothers Grimm version, there are
the birds that serve as the fairy godmother’s role, but the Disney version
not only had birds, but also they added in a dog, a cat, and a horse as
well as mice to make it more appealing for kids. Neeley Tucker from the
Washington Post discusses that most fairy tales were not originally for
children but they were mostly written for adults. And so most fairy tales
have actually been changed to be more appropriate for kids and this was
definitely the case for Cinderella.
So now that I’ve discussed the differences in characters between the
two versions, I would like to discuss the differences in the royal ball scene. If
you recall from Disney, there’s one royal ball scene where Cinderella meets
her prince, but in the Brothers Grimm version there is a royal festival that
includes three different royal balls in three days. At each royal ball, Cinderella
dances with the prince, then she runs away and hides from him before
the end of the night and she doesn’t lose her slipper until the third night.
According to Sharron McElmeel and her book on children’s literature, there
are a couple of other changes in this scene as well; one of them is that in
the Brothers Grimm version, the shoe was golden and then in Disney, of
course, it was a glass slipper. And then Disney also added the midnight
curfew; so in the Brothers Grimm version, Cinderella did not need to be
back by the stroke of midnight. She was simply trying to get away from the
prince so that he wouldn’t figure out that she was a housemaid. She was
trying to hide her true identity. Also, the prince spreads pitch out along the
steps of the castle on purpose on the third night, so that Cinderella will get
stuck and he will be able to get her shoe and figure out who she is later on.
The summary and preview
help the audience follow the
organization of the speech.So now that we’ve talked a little bit about the differences in the
characters between the two versions and the differences in the royal
ball scene, I’d like to discuss the way that Disney omitted some violence
from its version of Cinderella compared to the Brothers Grimm version.
The Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella is much gorier than Disney’s
version. For example, when the prince is trying to figure out who Cinderella
is and he’s having all these women trying to try on the slipper, he comes
to Cinderella’s stepsisters and both of them have feet that are too big.
The first stepsister actually cuts off her toe to make the shoe fit, and the
second stepsister actually cuts off her heel to make the shoe fit. So it’s
very bloody and it’s actually kind of funny because the prince doesn’t