Cinderella vs. Donkey Skin

I think the most interesting information that can be garnered between a comparison of two story archetypes is the cultural ramifications of one form becoming more popular than another. But first, we must first argue that the two story forms are similar enough that they can be seen as nearly equivalent options, a zero-sum game where the acceptance of one implies a rejection of the other. The links between the two types, in this case the Cinderella story and the Donkey Skin story, must be isolated and defined. In both cases we have an abused young girl, splendidly beautiful and virtuous, being abused by an older figure. We already have lines of conflict drawn along similar boundaries; young vs. old, virtue vs. greed, beauty vs. ugliness. Tartar points out that the threats to the heroine in Cinderella stories are mothers or stepmothers whom force their daughter into a constant routine of domestic labor, out of jealous and general vindictiveness. The heroines of Donkey Skin stories are forced to flee from their homes, reject domesticity, because of the sexual advances of their "unnatural" father. It is interesting that in both circumstances, the solution for the female comes from escaping domesticity. In the Cinderella story, she escapes to the ball. In Donkeyskin stories the escape comes as well, just perhaps not as literally at first. In the Donkey Skin story "The She-Bear" from the Ashliman site, the heroine Preziosa takes the form of a bear, rejecting not only her domestic identity but her physical identity, to repel the gluttonous advancements of her father the King.

Darnton would argue not to weigh the details of an individual story too heavily in a discussion of broad archetypal forms, but it is interesting that in this one particular example, the link between external beauty and virtue gets manipulated in this way. In the "typical" Cinderella story, the heroine finds her escape from the evil mother by making herself beautiful, while in "The She-Bear" she makes herself ugly.