Lustful Fathers and False Princes: ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Donkeyskin’ Motifs in Edith Wharton's Summer and Katherine Mansfield's Short Stories

Abstract

Although their work was stylistically different, Edith Wharton and Katherine Mansfield shared a concern over the danger of fairy-tale fantasies of rescue for their female readership. Wharton's Summer and several of Mansfield's stories – ‘A Cup of Tea’, ‘Her First Ball’, ‘The Young Girl’, and ‘A Dill Pickle’ – all subvert the fairy tale of ‘Cinderella’ by exposing how lustful fathers and false princes are detrimental to self-actualisation. Both Wharton and Mansfield's bittersweet narratives highlight the inequities of male and female sexual agency and show that in order for the female figure to grow, she must step away from the dominant male, whether father or prince. Wharton and Mansfield force the reader to question the ‘fantasy of deliverance by a man’ that ‘Cinderella’ projects, which is as Elizabeth Ammons puts it, ‘a culturally perpetuated myth of female liberation which in reality celebrates masculine dominance, proprietorship, and privilege’ (96).