~ A Glimpse Behind the Pages ~
The following article is part of a collaboration with my dear friend, Caitlin Gemmell.
Before we step into her world, I want to share a little more about Caitlin. Like Cinderella, she shines with a gentle strength and kindness. We met online many years ago and became fast friends, bonding over our shared love of natural magic, storytelling, and enchanted-yet-ordinary moments. Caitlin is an artist and wordsmith, sharing her creative gifts with the world through her writing, poetry and fibre art. She has published many of her poems in magazines, and in beautiful books such as True North and The Wistful Wild. She is also the author of an enchanting newsletter called Musings of a Selkie Witch, which I always enjoy reading over a cup of tea.
This story is a really special one. What Caitlin has shared is deeply personal, like pages from a beloved diary. Yet, through this little gilded window into her world, we may find a view into our own hearts. It’s a story that will speak to anyone who has felt a bit soft, or sensitive, or out of place. What she offers is nothing more or less than an empowering new perspective on a tale as old as time…
Reclaiming Cinderella as a Story of Empowerment
~ by Caitlin Gemmell
My gentle nature is my strength.
My gentle nature is my strength.
These are the words I repeat to myself, a mantra uttered in times when I feel pressured to be someone I am not.
For many years, I’ve been on a journey to discover my personal mythology. Pieces of stories have wended their way to the sanctuary of my heart, yet the story that has been with me from the beginning is one I refused to acknowledge as belonging to me.
As someone who grew up with bold, adventurous parents, my gentle, timid ways were buried as I forced myself to live up to the Gemmell family name.
I grew up hearing stories about my great-grandfather who traveled across the ocean from Scotland to Australia at the tender age of twelve. The notion that we are gutsy people who go after what we want was deeply ingrained in me.
But when I was honest with myself, I didn’t want a life of adventure, of packing up the entire household and moving to another country. I only wanted a peaceful, quiet life. It’s the simple things that bring me joy. The quiet things. I wanted to find a place where I belong and sink my roots into the ground.
For years, I forced myself to be a little bolder, a little louder, a little more extroverted than what comes naturally to me. The idea that as a woman living in the world today, I was required to adopt a warrior spirit to get ahead in life replaced my natural inclination to embrace my femininity*. And yet, it was through my femininity that I discovered my magic. When I reached menarche at twelve, at the same age my great-grandfather went on an external journey, I journeyed inward and discovered I am a witch.
Quietly, and unobtrusively, I began practicing witchcraft. I healed wild birds who found their way to me in times of need. I protected myself from men who would otherwise have claimed me as one of their possessions. I learned to read tarot and had prophetic dreams. I allowed plants to talk to me and accepted their medicine. And I pushed aside the fairy tale that is a major part of my personal mythology, because I told myself it didn’t make sense in light of who I thought I was becoming.
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The one fairy tale I loved with all my heart since a young age ultimately made me feel ashamed of who I was, in a world where I was supposed to be a feminist Superwoman. But what if I didn’t want to be a highly successful, career-oriented Superwoman? What if I wanted to live in a cottage where I spend my days baking bread, gardening, feeding the songbirds and chipmunks, tending to my children? What if the traditional feminine role that is looked upon with disdain in this day and age is actually what my heart desires? And what if embracing my gentle, feminine nature is what actually empowers me?
These questions haunted me for years. They cropped up when I was pursuing my undergraduate degree, because I was expected to go after my dreams and find myself in the world of higher education. They followed me after I became a mother who was blessed to stay home with my child at first, but was forced to leave my cozy nest and venture into the loud world while pursuing a graduate degree because the father of my child couldn’t keep his promise, hold down a job, and I had to become the Superwoman I didn’t want to be.
As an undergrad, I discovered Joseph Campbell and the concept of personal mythology. As a graduate student, I took this further and developed a course called Unearthing Your Story that helped the participants find the pieces of their personal stories to begin weaving them into their personal myth.
Yet, as I delved into unearthing my own story threads, I continued to refuse to accept that the story that empowers me is Cinderella. Instead, I talked about how this story was one of my shadow stories, that it highlights the more negative aspects of my personality, that by recognizing my damsel in distress archetype I can overcome it and become bold. I now realize how erroneous this assumption was.
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What empowers us is following the map that leads us to our true north. Each of our journeys will be different, because we are all different individuals. How boring if we shared the same personality and the same life goals! By being confident in my quiet way and showing up in the world as I truly am, I am following my true north. To force myself into a traditionally masculine role as a feminine woman is what oppresses me. But when I embrace my true nature, my spirit sings. We should be celebrated for being authentic, whatever that means for each individual.
As soon as I realized this, and accepted that I can be both a wise witch and a gentle Cinderella, and that I don’t have to be a fierce warrior or a successful-cutthroat-businesswoman, it was as if an egg around my being cracked to reveal the true me buried beneath. Instead of looking at the Cinderella story as an aspect of my personal story that I was ashamed of, I accepted it as a core part of my being.
Now, I remember my first Barbie was a Disney Cinderella one. Joyfully, I remember how much I loved not only the Disney animated Cinderella as a child but also every single live action Cinderella I ever watched. The highlight of visiting Disney World as a child was meeting Cinderella. Receiving a letter from Cinderella on one of my birthdays is still one of the magical highlights of my life. My highschool nickname, Cinderella, is no longer one that embarrasses me, but one I embrace and encourage others to use for me.
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As a graduate student, I researched the various Cinderella stories and found that I don’t see her as a damsel in distress. No, she is someone who has had a hard life but through her own agency and magic changes her life for the better.
Even in the version that is most widely known, the one that inspired Disney’s animated Cinderella but was originally recorded by Charles Perrault, and the one in which she is the most helpless, it is clear that her kind nature is what ultimately empowers her and brings about positive changes in her life. Would her fairy godmother have ventured to help her had she been an ungrateful, miserable child? It was because of her kind nature that her godmother acknowledged she deserved to go to the ball.
In Aschenputtel, the Cinderella story that was recorded by the Brothers Grimm, and the one that I most consider to be a part of my personal mythology, Cinderella asks her father for a hazel twig which she plants beside her mother’s grave. She waters this twig with her tears so that it grows into a hazel tree (hazel is a symbol for wisdom) and a white dove appears in the tree. In this version, Cinderella is allowed to go to the ball if she finishes her chores on time. She speaks a cantrip, calling her animal friends to her and they help her complete her tasks. But of course her stepmother says she can’t go after all as she has nothing decent to wear. She watches her stepmother and stepsisters leave for the ball and then visits the hazel tree by her mother’s grave. She speaks another cantrip and the white bird in the tree throws a fine gown down to her that she dresses in and hastens to the ball.
There are so many threads to pick apart in this story, as there are in countless versions of Cinderella (there are at least 300 versions that have been recorded, the earliest is assumed to be by a Greek geographer in 7 BCE in which the heroine marries the King of Egypt).
For one, in Aschenputtel, Cinderella clearly has some magical ability. She could very well be a witch, for she speaks a cantrip. She also engages in ancestral worship, through visiting her mother’s grave and planting the hazel twig which she then waters with her tears (another magic spell). And her animal helpers could be thought of as her familiars.
In one Swedish version of the Cinderella story, The Little Gold Shoe, instead of doves as animal helpers, it is a pike who helps when Cinderella sheds tears in a spring. He tells her to venture along a birch tree lined path to an old oak tree in the woods where she will find the gown she is to wear to the event where she can mingle with the prince. In this version, she also speaks a cantrip. “Light before me! Darkness after me!”
In another Swedish variation, Crow-Cloak, Cinderella is so beautiful that her stepmother and stepsisters force her to wear a cloak of crow feathers to conceal her beauty. Instead of an animal helper, there is a little old man (fairy godfather) who helps Cinderella because she was kind to him. He brings her to the woods and conjures magic through his pipe that makes her glorious outfit materialize.
There are several variations of this Crow-Cloak story including one in which she asks for a crow cloak to wear to disguise herself as a scullery maid. She does this because she is the King of Denmark’s daughter who is in love with the King of England’s son and they are not allowed to wed. She visits her mother’s grave to ask for advice and is told to demand three gowns of her father (two fine ones and one crow cloak) and then journey to England to work as a scullery maid in the castle, only going to church dressed in finery to see the Prince of England. She speaks a magical cantrip to avoid capture as she flees to England, following the advice her ancestor gave her.
So, yeah, this is my argument that Cinderella was a witch.
Once I realized this, it became easier to fully welcome the Cinderella story as my core personal myth. I actually got tingles when I realized how much power Cinderella actually had as a witch capable of weaving magic and changing her destiny.
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These days, I claim Cinderella as my personal mythology. When wild animals venture close to me, I speak dove-like to them and offer them my services anytime they need a bit of magic. When engaging in ancestral magic, I remember that Cinderella honored her ancestor too. When donning a fancy dress to wear just around the house, or for working in the garden, I remember Cinderella found dressing up a thrilling experience too. The other day, I even stumbled upon a window display that was so clearly the scene from the Disney animated Cinderella in which her animal friends were piecing together a dress for her to wear to the ball. The display was so cleverly put together, and it was all the more magical because I happened upon it so unexpectedly.
The stories that speak to our spirits will differ from person to person, and from one phase of life to the next. Cinderella has always been one of the main threads that makes up the tapestry of my personal mythology. I’m glad I found the courage to admit that it is a story that empowers me and helps me to make meaning of my life.
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*I want to provide a note about gender. I have not changed anything in Caitlin’s text, as I feel it is important to let her speak for herself, and I believe that the gendered terms she uses are ones that hold layers of personal meaning and intent. I would like to speak to my own principles for a moment, to reaffirm that I recognise the diversity inherent in the expression of gender, including the spaces between and outside the traditional terms ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine.’ These words hold meaning - traditionally assigned values and concepts of what it means to to be either a masculine or feminine person. Of course, the characteristics assigned to each have changed much over time, and our understanding of gender continues to change and expand, but here the terms are used in their more traditional sense. I believe the discussion of femininity is one that still holds great significance, as the values traditionally associated with femininity are often segregated, looked down upon or made inferior. It is exactly through this kind of story-retelling that we can reclaim those characteristics and see their worth, allowing ourselves and our society to be whole beings, each in our own way, all respecting each other.
