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As Is Her Will: Pagan Nature Worship and Female Agency in "Aschenputtel"

When it comes to fairy tales, the popular imagination is replete with conceptions of damsels in distress: humble heroines who are saved by princes or powers outside of their control and protagonists who exert their virtue through patriarchal ideals of femininity. These heroines are gentle, sensitive, pretty, faithful, optimistic, and virtually uncomplaining even in the face of terrible abuse and violence. This image is shared among the works of Walt Disney, Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and other fairy tale “taste makers” of the 19th century onward, where this character type is invariably tied to a sense of Christian duty. Cinderella arises as one of the most emblematic of this dynamic, whether we imagine her in glass slippers or golden ones. In the Grimm brothers’ adaptation of “Cinderella” (or “Aschenputtel”), the story’s Christian elements eclipse an embedded Pagan subtext and remove Cinderella’s agency as a heroine. A reading of “Aschenputtel” which views her as a “cunning woman” (a benevolent magickal practitioner of medieval European folklore) not only makes her a more compelling protagonist, but returns the power to her hands and affirms a positive attitude toward nature-based spirituality.

“Aschenputtel,” along with all of the fairy tales collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, occupies a territory of self-contradictory double-spirituality resulting from the gradual assimilation of Germanic pagans into Christianity. The brothers themselves were pious Christians, but they held a great respect for and fascination with the beliefs of their Germanic ancestors. They believed that recovering these old traditions through the collection of folk tales was a way to claim a sense of belonging as Germans, and that “the pagan remnants of religious beliefs [...] found shelter within the context of Christianity” (Rogers 14). Thus, the stories they published contain strong pagan themes; however, due to their own faith, they overlooked the ways in which the introduction of Christian elements fundamentally changed the implications of these stories. The transition from paganism to Christianity was not a harmonious process or a clear evolution. It was violent by nature and turned to persecution when assimilation didn’t work. Like most other European regions, Germany has a tradition of folk magick originating in its pagan roots, and these “traditions of healing and divining were passed down predominantly by women in European cultures, and ‘village experts’ in such crafts were at risk when a witch-hunt began” (Ellis 21). The abilities of these female folk magicians threatened the authority of the church, thus, women who once would have been considered crucial fixtures of their communities were outcast, executed, or forced into hiding (Ellis 21-23). In Europe, the erasure of paganism cannot be extricated from the oppression of women. Fortunately, many rural communities were able to maintain their pagan stories, often with only the thinnest veneer of Christianity. “Aschenputtel” is one of those stories, hiding in its Godly trappings a cunning-woman of great fortitude, if only we’re willing to see her.

The text of “Aschenputtel” is peppered with vernacular such as “Lord,” “heaven,” and “pray,” all of which serve to Christianize the text and paint Cinderella as a pious and humble Christian girl. In the very opening paragraph of the story, Cinderella’s dying mother’s last words are “dear child, if you are good and say your prayers, our dear Lord will always be with you, and I shall look down on you from heaven and always be with you” (Grimm & Grimm 148). Though “prayers” and “heaven” are concepts that can be assigned to a multiplicity of religions, the capitalized “Lord” leads readers to infer that Cinderella’s mother is referring to the Christian God as opposed to a single “god” out of a pantheon of many. Thus, prayer and heaven are both being used in a biblical sense. By starting the story in this manner, the Grimm brothers are situating this advice as the main idea of the text. By being “good” (in a Christian sense) and worshiping God, miracles will befall you and God will get you past any adversity. Cinderella takes her mother’s advice to heart and “every day [she goes] to the grave of her mother and [weeps]. She [is] always good and [says] her prayers” (Grimm & Grimm 148). In Victorian England, publishers of the Grimms’ and Perrault’s tales enhanced these details as part of their effort “to sanitize children’s literature” which led to “the intrusion of religious motifs, such as praying and church architecture” in accompanying illustrations (Cullen 61). It’s clear that within the Christian framework favored by both the Grimm brothers and much of their bourgeoisie audience, Cinderella is nothing but dutiful and faithful. She is the very epitome of virtuous femininity, passively submitting herself to a higher power.

Yet, despite the Christianity-laden dialogue and narration, if one focuses purely on Cinderella’s actions in the story and the results achieved from those actions, a different narrative unfolds, one which exists in direct tension with the Christian overtones. To begin with, Cinderella’s relationship with the hazel tree on her mother’s grave contains traces of nature worship and folk magick. In a moment perhaps fueled by divination or psychic intuition, Cinderella asks her father for a branch from the first tree that brushes against his hat. When he comes home with a hazel branch, Cinderella plants it on her mother’s grave and waters it with her tears. Then, “three times a day [she] went and sat under it, and wept and prayed. Each time a little bird would also fly to the tree, and if she made a wish, the little bird would toss down what she had asked for” (Grimm & Grimm 149). Cinderella directly nurtures and forms a relationship of respect and mutuality with this tree as she waters it with her very own body. In a ritualistic manner, using a number of magickal significance (three) she communicates with the tree, engaging in acts of stewardship and nature veneration. It is then important to emphasize the switch from the word “pray” to the word “wish.” A wish has nothing to do with faith or God; rather, it is an expression of a desire or personal will. Cinderella manifests her desires through communing with a tree and its animal inhabitants in a spiritually loaded way. This represents the kind of nature-based magick that, by the time this adaptation was written, would have been systematically eradicated by the Christian church.

Trees were of great spiritual significance within pre-Christian, pagan religions and represented a diverse web of beliefs, all of which are reflected in “Aschenputtel.” To Germanic pagans, trees were a symbol of salvation and rescue, a symbolic meaning shared by Cinderella’s hazel tree. Within a pagan framework, the tree operates as a reincarnation of Cinderella’s mother, who has returned to help her daughter overcome the difficulties facing her in the wake of her passing (Roots 189). Simultaneously, it can be understood that the tree contains a spirit of its own, a prominent belief for pagans who “did not build temples because they considered trees the dwelling place of gods” (Roots 185). As its own spiritually sentient being, the tree may choose to help humans who respect and care for it, but does not owe Cinderella anything before she engages in a relationship with it, lending a newfound weight to her choices in nurturing and speaking with the tree. Broadly speaking, concepts of reincarnation and animism are not shared by Christians, thus these values of ancestor and nature veneration are easily lost upon audiences brought up in heavily Christian cultures. When these values cannot be seen, neither can Cinderella’s power.

In addition to her relationship with the tree, Cinderella also forms a magickal relationship with the doves in the story. This evokes the idea of a cunning woman’s “familiar,” as they protect her and carry out both her conscious and subconscious desires. When requesting help with sorting the lentils, Cinderella “went out the back door into the garden and called out: ‘O tame little doves, little turtledoves, and all you little birds in the sky, come and help me

put the good ones into the little pot,
the bad ones into your little crop’” (Grimm & Grimm 149).

She repeats something similar later when requesting clothes for the royal festivities. While audiences today might see this as quaint or indicative of Cinderella’s good nature, commoners in rural Germany and Switzerland would have been telling “Aschenputtel” alongside stories of clever mediums transferring their consciousness into animals (Ellis 39). At certain points, such superstitions were so strong that even keeping a pet was considered suspect, as that pet could be a witch’s familiar (Orton 1). Cinderella’s daily communion with the doves conveys an allyship nearly identical to the cunning woman-familiar relationship of medieval European folklore, especially as the doves go on to help her with various tasks and manifest her desires. It’s also interesting that she phrases her request in a rhyme scheme, similar to how we often think of a witch’s spell (ie. “double, double, toil and trouble/fire burn and cauldron bubble.”) Not only that, within this rhyme, she doesn’t just ask for help, but also offers something in return to the doves. A “crop” can refer to a throat, specifically the gullet or throat of a bird, so Cinderella is telling them that they can eat anything from the pile that her stepmother doesn’t want. She forms a contract of mutual benefit, similar to the way cunning women would have interacted with nature and wildlife while performing their spellwork or practicing medicine.

Given the precedent of the doves acting as Cinderella’s familiars, the fate of her stepsisters transforms into an act of revenge willed into reality by the heroine. By the end, the doves have manifested Cinderella’s conscious wishes (sorting the lentils, giving her nice clothes) and her subconscious ones (telling the prince that the stepsisters cut their feet in order to fit the slippers). So when “the doves pecked one eye from each [stepsister]” and then “pecked the other eye from each one,” we are left with the understanding that the doves carried out Cinderella’s subconscious desire to see the stepsisters punished (Grimm & Grimm 153). This act of revenge reflects the understanding that folk magick “practitioners could not only react to the threat of misfortune but initiate actions intended to punish the source of this misfortune” (Ellis 78-79). If one were to pursue a biblical interpretation of the story, this event appears as divine punishment delivered by God. Following a pagan thread leads to a different conclusion: this event is Cinderella’s vengeance. Her revenge coincides with her ascension into a station of power as a princess and, presumably one day, a queen. Altogether, it creates a powerful and striking image of a woman risen above oppression and delivering judgment of her own. Under this interpretation, there is no possible way we could continue to see Cinderella as a passive and humble damsel in distress. Rather, she manipulates and transforms the world around her through spiritual practices that operate in harmony with nature and subvert Christian ideals.

The recovery of Germanic paganism in “Aschenputtel” offers a new cultural narrative to readers and listeners, one of interdependence with nature and all of its mysteries, as well as one of female empowerment to break down oppressive systems. As we embark on projects of decolonization in the Christianized West, it is important to remember that the very first people to be colonized by Christian Europeans were their own pagan neighbors. To lift up those pagan stories once more is not just a fascinating project for scholars, it is a reclamation of lost wisdom and power for all. Even the Grimm brothers themselves understood their collection of stories as part of an effort to revitalize a culture that felt lost and disparate (Roots 175). From the beginning of such endeavors, it was understood that “tales of the folk, their misfortunes reversed by magical transformation, were inherently subversive and utopian” (Cullen 59-60). These stories offer ways of seeing, understanding, and healing. This is not a unique phenomenon. Colonized peoples from all over the world have long understood the crucial effort of preserving and unearthing their folk tales. This sentiment is poignantly described by Potawatomi activist Robin Will Kimmerer when she states that “we can’t meaningfully proceed with healing, with restoration, without ‘re-story-ation’” (9). To heal our relationship with our histories, the land, eachother, and ourselves, we have to start telling ourselves new stories — or see our old stories with new understandings.

By changing the angle at which we view “Aschenputtel” and understanding Cinderella as a nature worshiping, pagan cunning woman, she transforms into a woman of great agency, far beyond what our culture has allowed her over the past few centuries. This is a microcosmic representation of the greater social process of simultaneously suppressing both nature-based spiritualities and women, as these two things have always been closely tied together. It raises the question of how many of our cultural stories have been appropriated by the patriarchy and by Christianity, even if they were originally meant to transmit messages of nature worship, magick, and womens’ heroism in the face of adversity; but it also shows how these original meanings could be recovered and once again celebrated and enjoyed by all — and how they could even help us transform our culture, in the same way Cinderella transforms her circumstances.

Works Cited