"Her godmother simply touched her with her wand, and, at the same moment, her clothes were turned into cloth of gold and silver, all decked with jewels"
About this Quote
The materials do the heavy lifting. “Cloth of gold and silver” and “decked with jewels” are not generic prettiness; they’re the literal vocabulary of aristocratic legitimacy in late 17th-century France, when sumptuary rules and court etiquette treated appearance as a political language. Perrault is writing for an audience that understood fabric as hierarchy. This isn’t “be yourself”; it’s “be seen as someone.” The heroine’s body is unchanged, but her reception by society is engineered through surface.
The subtext is bracingly transactional: virtue alone won’t get you admitted. What gets you through the door is the right look, bestowed by the right benefactor, at the right moment. Perrault’s fairy tale flatters the fantasy of sudden elevation while quietly admitting how brittle that elevation is. If identity can be conjured by wardrobe, it can also vanish at midnight.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Perrault, Charles. (2026, January 18). Her godmother simply touched her with her wand, and, at the same moment, her clothes were turned into cloth of gold and silver, all decked with jewels. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/her-godmother-simply-touched-her-with-her-wand-20210/
Chicago Style
Perrault, Charles. "Her godmother simply touched her with her wand, and, at the same moment, her clothes were turned into cloth of gold and silver, all decked with jewels." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/her-godmother-simply-touched-her-with-her-wand-20210/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Her godmother simply touched her with her wand, and, at the same moment, her clothes were turned into cloth of gold and silver, all decked with jewels." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/her-godmother-simply-touched-her-with-her-wand-20210/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2026.






