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Passage Illustrated

An early day was then fixed for the wedding, which was solemnised in the cathedral with great pomp and splendour, all the great people in the country being present, including, of course, Cinderella's father and her step-mother. The King and Queen were seated upon a throne near the altar. Many beautiful young ladies attended Cinderella as bridemaids, amongst whom were her two step-sisters. The bride's dress was of the richest white satin, ornamented with bouquets of orange-blossoms; a large white lace veil covered her head ; her brow was encircled with a wreath of orange-blossoms, mixed with diamonds, whose sparkles seemed dimmed by the brightness of her beautiful blue eyes; and her long, waving, and clustering ringlets shadowed the rosy blush of her lovely face. A number of beautiful little girls, dressed in white, carrying baskets containing flowers, preceded Cinderella and the Royal Prince, her handsome bridegroom, and strewed their path with flowers as they approached the altar.

After the marriage there was a magnificent banquet, and festivities upon the grandest scale were kept up for several days. And they all lived to a great age in happiness and comfort. — "Cinderella and the Glass Slipper," page 27.

The Context in Perrault

She was taken to the young prince, dressed as she was. He thought she was more charming than before, and, a few days after, married her. Cinderella, who was no less good than beautiful, gave her two sisters lodgings in the palace, and that very same day matched them with two great lords of the court.

Moral: Beauty in a woman is a rare treasure that will always be admired. Graciousness, however, is priceless and of even greater value. This is what Cinderella's godmother gave to her when she taught her to behave like a queen. Young women, in the winning of a heart, graciousness is more important than a beautiful hairdo. It is a true gift of the fairies. Without it nothing is possible; with it, one can do anything.

Another moral: Without doubt it is a great advantage to have intelligence, courage, good breeding, and common sense. These, and similar talents come only from heaven, and it is good to have them. However, even these may fail to bring you success, without the blessing of a godfather or a godmother.— "Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper."

Commentary

Bravely Cruikshank issued his Cinderella later in 1854, though Dickens had parodied it, as if in advance, in "Frauds on the Fairies". . . . Not only did the artist refuse to compromise his editing principles, but appended a note "To the Public" in which readers who might fall into same heresies as "my friend Charles Dickens" were advised to read his "Letter" to that gentleman. But, for whatever reason, interest in Cruikshank's fairy tales seems to have diminished; for his next contribution, Puss in Boots, though probably completed in 1853 or 1854, was not published until 1864. The artist probably held Dickens responsible for the hiatus; certainly he was still smarting from the artist's reprimand. — Jane Rabb Cohen, p. 35.

Cruikshank concludes the story with a magnificent wedding scene, highly reminiscent of the Phiz illustration of the story-book wedding of David and Dora Spenlow, I Am Married in David Copperfield (June 1850). However, in focussing on fewer members of the wedding-party and not having a great many spectators, Phiz achieves greater clarity in the more modest interior of an English country church. In contrast, Cruikshank offers a panoramic treatment of the interior of a High Gothic cathedral, perhaps modelled on Westminster Abbey, a little at variance with the Italian square he has delineated with a Romanesque domed church (rear) and more modest church with a square Romanesque bell-tower in the middle distance of The Heralds proclaiming the Prince's wish, that all the Single Ladies should try on the Glass Slipper! (facing page 20). Complementing Cruikshank's textual description, the full-page picture of the wedding shows the bride and groom approaching the staircase leading to the dias where three priests will officiate under the watchful eyes of the King and Queen (centre). Girls are about to strew flowers before Cinderella and the Prince. Two Gothic pillars (technically pilasters, or bundles of supporting columns stretching upwards to fan-vaulting), pointed arches, and stained-glass windows create a sense of airiness, but the size of the nave dwarfs the many figures, suggesting that the weight of tradition is now governing the action. Possibly, the step-sisters and step-mother are seated in the balcony, right of centre; Cinderella's father, recently released from debtor's prison, may be the dark figure down left. Not readily identifiable is the "dwarf" or Fairy God-mother whose machinations have produced this highly satisfactory result for her goddaughter, although she should occupy a position of prominence, especially since she has just delivered a pro-temperance sermon to the King and Queen in order to have them cancel the wine-fountains that are apparently a traditional aspect of royal weddings expected by the people of this country. (For the Fairy's argument against the wine-fountains, see below.)

Cruikshank's didactic interventions — extolling industriousness, high ethical standards, courage, and intelligence — are more than occasional, and are therefore, despite the elegance of his illustrations, somewhat wearying. Cruikshank's utilising traditional fairy-tales as a podium from which to preach teetotalism utterly provoked such folklore purists as Charles Dickens, who in 1854 presented a possible series of gambits for a socially modified "Cinderella" in "Frauds on the Fairies," just as he had explored possible plot-lines for pro- and anti-slavery texts of Robinson Crusoe. In this series, unlike the previous two, there are only two full-page illustrations, Cinderella in the Chimney-Corner, and this last, The Marriage of Cinderella to The Prince. The intervening eight are each a half-page each, configured in associated pairs, such as The Heralds proclaiming the Prince's wish, that all the Single Ladies should try on the Glass Slipper! and, immediately below this, Cinderella having fitted on the Glass Slipper produces its Fellow. (facing page 20), so that the illustrations flow in both a temporal and a cause-and-effect sequence to this solemn, church-sanctioned conclusion.

Weddings are a commonplace in Victorian fiction; in fact, for the average Victorian reader the wedding must have been the anticipated conclusion of a romance. Sometimes a novel will have two weddings, one for the future parents, and another at the conclusion for their child. Dickens varies this practice in David Copperfield by dramatising the wedding of his eponymous protagonist and the child-like Dora Spenlow in the middle of the book, but not showing the wedding of David and Agnes Wickfield at the conclusion. In contrast, in Dombey and Son, illustrations call attention to Mr. Dombey's second marriage early in the story — Coming home from Church (Chapter 31), July 1847 — and Florence Dombey's marriage to Walter Gay at the conclusion in Another Wedding (Chapter 60), April 1848. The "happily-ever-after" quality of marriage in Victorian fiction undoubtedly stems from such fairy-tale weddings as Cinderella's in Perrault. The reader even in so mature a work as Little Dorrit must regard Arthur Clennam's marrying Amy Dorrit at the close of the story, very much through the lens of the fairy-tale wedding, even though their romance being far more complicated and more cerebral than the youthful romance of David and Dora.

Weddings Illustrated in Dickens

Left: Phiz's June 1857 culminating wedding of Amy Dorrit and Arthur Clennam, The Third Volume of the Registers for Dickens's Little Dorrit. Centre: The juvenile wedding of David Copperfield and Dora Spenlow inspired Phiz's June 1850 illustration I am Married (Chapter 43). Right: Phiz's July 1847 illustration for Mr. Dombey's second marriage, but the first in the novel, Coming home from Church (Chapter 31). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Only two more numbers of the Fairy Library were issued during 1854, the second of which, 'Cinderella', really does, as Harry Stone has commented, 'out-parody Dickens's parody'. At the end, for example, Cinderella's godmother (whom Cruikshank makes a dwarf rather than a fairy) preaches a temperance sermon to the King to dissuade him from causing the fountains to flow with wine to celebrate Cinderella's marriage with the Prince: '"The history of the use of strong drinks", the dwarf said, "is marked on every page by excess, which follows as a matter of course, from the very nature of their composition, and is always accompanied by ill-health, misery, and crime"'. No more stories appeared until 1864, when the last one, 'Puss in Boots', was published by Routledge with a renewed defence of his treatment of the tales against Dickens's criticisms appended by Cruikshank. For Dickens's later caricaturing of Cruikshank as 'Mr. Monomaniacal Patriarch', see Vol. 3 of the Dent edition, p. 311. — Dickens Journals Online, "Frauds on the Fairies." http://www.djo.org.uk/indexes/articles/frauds-on-the-fairies.html

Perhaps because of Dickens's blistering satire on how Cruikshank worked his pro-Temperance agenda into his fairy-tales, Cruikshank at the conclusion of "Cinderella" felt compelled to justify his alterations to the traditional stories in order to point valuable morals for both his child and his adult readers (that is, parents who read these tales to their children):

In conclusion, I will just take the liberty of suggesting to those gentlemen who may feel inclined to criticise my editing of these Fairy Tales, that they had better make themselves somewhat acquainted with all the old editions of these stories before they find fault with my version, * otherwise they may probably fall into some rather absurd mistakes, such as the one pointed out above, and also such as my friend Charles Dickens has fallen into, in his paper entitled "Frauds on the Fairies," in Household Words; in consequence of which I got my tiny friend, "Hop, o'my Thumb," to write a letter to him upon the subject. This letter is published separately by my friend, Mr. Bogue, of 86 Fleet Street, and may be had of him and all Booksellers "for the small charge of One Penny;" and is of the same size as the "Fairy Library."

* I have four editions of "Cinderella" now before me, all differing most materially from each other; and I may as well here observe that I did not expect it would be necessary to alter a single line of this story; but upon looking through the several books, I found some vulgarity, mixed up with so much that was useless and unfit for children, that I was obliged (much against my wish) to rewrite the whole story; in doing which I have introduced a few Temperance Truths, with a fervent a fervent hope that some good may result therefrom. — George Cruikshank, "To The Public," p. 31.

Related Materials

• "Frauds on the Fairies" (1 October 1853)
• Editor's Note on "Frauds on the Fairies"
• Defending the Imagination: Charles Dickens, Children's Literature, and the Fairy Tale Wars
• George Cruikshank and Charles Dickens
• Fairy Tales: Surviving the Evangelical Attack

[Cruikshank's] willingness to insert anti-alcohol lessons into the fairy stories was far more contentious. . . . the Fairy Godmother insists that Cinderella's wedding is celebrated by the destruction of all the intoxicating liquor in the kingdom. All this led to harsh words from Charles Dickens. In 1853, in his magazine Household Words, Dickens attacked his former collaborator for tampering with the fairy tales and forcing them into tawdry service as propaganda for a worldly cause, whatever it may have been. 'In an utilitarian age, of all other times,' Dickens wrote, 'it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected', for 'a nation without fancy, without some romance, never did, never can, never will, hold a great place under the sun' (Dickens 1853). Cruikshank responded in the form of a letter signed 'Hop o' my Thumb' which appeared in his own work, George Cruikshank's Magazine in February 1854 (he was also responding Dickens' 'Whole Hogs', an earlier article in Household Words (3 [1851], 505-7), which had attacked all fanaticism, whether for temperance, vegetarianism or any other cause). (For more on the Dickens-Cruikshank controversy, see Stone 1973-74 and Kotzin 1972). — The Hockliffe Project, http://hockliffe.dmu.ac.uk/items/0038A.html

The Pro-Temperance Passage Preceding the Wedding

"My dear little lady," exclaimed the King, good-humouredly, "your arguments have convinced me: there shall be no more fountains of wine in my dominions." And he immediately gave orders that all the wine, beer, and spirits in the place should be collected together and piled upon the top of a rocky mound in the vicinity of the palace, and made a great bonfire of on the niorht of the wedding; — which was accordingly done, and a splendid blaze it made!

"With all deference to your majesty," said the dwarf in reply, "most assuredly not; for such is the POWER of the CREATOR, that if it had been necessary for man to take stimulating drinks, the ALMIGHTY could have given them to him free from all intoxicating qualities, as he has done with all the liquids and solids necessary and fit for the support of man's life; and as he knows that all men cannot take these drinks alike, such is his goodness and mercy, THAT HE WOULD HAVE SENT THEM TO US WITHOUT THE INTOXICATING PRINCIPLE; and when people talk of these intoxicating drinks, that do so much deadly mischief, being sent to us by the ALMIGHTY, we might as well say that He sends us gunpowder, because man converts certain materials into such a deadly composition. And as to moderation, pardon me, your Majesty, but so long as your Majesty continues to take even half a glass of wine a-day, so long will the drinking customs of society be considered respectable and be kept up; and it thus follows, as a necessary consequence, that thousands of your Majesty's subjects will be constantly falling by excess into vice, wretchedness, and crime; and as to people not being able to do without stimulating drinks, I beg your Majesty to look at Cinderella, who never has taken any in all her life, who never will. — p. 26.

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas; Michael Slater and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.

British Library. "George Cruikshank's Fairy Library." Romantics and Victorians. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/george-cruikshanks-fairy-library

Cohen, Jane Rabb. Part One, "Dickens and His Early Illustrators: 1. George Cruikshank. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1980. Pp. 15-38.

Cruikshank, George. Cinderella and The Glass Slipper. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. The third volume in George Cruikshank's Fairy Library. London: David Bogue, 1854. (Price one shilling) 10 etchings on 6 tipped-in pages, including frontispiece.

Cruikshank, George. George Cruikshank's Fairy Library: "Hop-O'-My-Thumb," "Jack and the Bean-Stalk," "Cinderella," "Puss in Boots". London: George Bell, 1865.

Guildhall Library blog. "A Gem from Guildhall Library's Shelves: George Cruikshank's Fairy Library by George Cruikshank published by Routledge in London (c. 1870)." 8 August 2014. https://guildhalllibrarynewsletter.wordpress.com/2016/08/08/a-gem-from-guildhall-librarys-shelves-george-cruikshanks-fairy-library-by-george-cruikshank-published-by-routledge-in-london-c1870/

Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University. "George Cruikshank." http://library.tulane.edu/exhibits/exhibits/show/fairy_tales/george_cruikshank

Hubert, Judd D. "George Cruikshank's Graphic and Textual Reactions to Mother Goose." Marvels & Tales, Volume 25, Number 2, 2011 (pp. 286-297). Project Muse. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/462736/pdf

Kitton, Frederic G. "George Cruikshank." Dickens and His Illustrators. London: Chapman & Hall, 1899. Pp. 1-28.

Kotzin, Michael C. Dickens and the Fairy Tale. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1972.

Perrault, Charles. "Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper." Fairy Tales and Other Traditional Stories. Lit2Go. http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/68/fairy-tales-and-other-traditional-stories/5089/jack-and-the-bean-stalk/

Schlicke, Paul. "Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1999. Pp. 231-232.

Stone, Harry. Dickens and the Invisible World: Fairy Tales, Fantasy, and Novel-Making. Bloomington, IN: Indiana U. P., 1979.

Vogler, Richard, The Graphic Works of George Cruikshank. New York: Dover, 1979.

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