Parenting & Family Quote by Charles Perrault

Perrault slips a small grenade of social instruction into a sentence that looks like pure glitter. Cinderella doesn’t simply return; she returns “more magnificently than before,” as if virtue alone isn’t enough until it’s translated into spectacle. In the late 17th-century court culture Perrault is writing around, appearance isn’t decoration, it’s currency. Magnificence is legible status, a language everyone at the ball can read instantly. The fairy tale’s magic, then, isn’t just supernatural; it’s a crash course in how class is performed.

The line about the sisters going “and so did Cinderella” is doing quiet moral bookkeeping. It places her on equal logistical footing with the women who mistreat her, then snaps the hierarchy back into place through wardrobe. This isn’t democratic fantasy; it’s aspirational mobility under strict rules. She may rise, but only by mastering the aesthetics of the elite.

Then comes the prince: “always by her side,” a phrase that turns romance into surveillance. His “pretty speeches” never cease, not because he knows her, but because he’s intoxicated by the refined image she projects. Perrault’s courtly world prized conversation as performance - compliment as social ritual, flirtation as proof of breeding. The subtext is slightly chilling: desire is triggered by polish, sustained by chatter, and rewarded by proximity to power.

It works because it’s both wish fulfillment and a wry map of the system. The fantasy isn’t escaping hierarchy; it’s learning to be correctly seen by it.