Day 6 - Silently Sweeping

When I selected my fairy tale theme for this challenge, I ordered lots of books from the library, including Grimms' Bad Girls & Bold Boys: The Moral & Social Vision of the Tales, by Ruth Bottigheimer.  I pounced on that one as soon as it arrived, and in the chapter on Cinderella, I learned something both fascinating and sad.  There were three editions of the Grimms' fairy tales, the first put out in 1812, the second in 1819, and the third in 1857.  Over that time period, Cinderella's lines of "direct speech" were repeatedly reduced.  As Bottigheimer says, "Cinderella explains, conjectures, conjures, questions, assumes, and lies in her fourteen speaking appearances in the 1812 edition. . . . The 1857 version presents a far different picture" of a Cinderella without much of a voice.  This, of course, is the Cinderella most of us know.

I thought a lot about how to create a visual representation of silence and silencing.  I could have sewn her lips together, put a piece of cloth over her mouth, or given her no lips at all.  In the end, I decided not to mutilate Cinderella, but to illustrate the silence through empty space.  The lines left to her are lines of dirt between the floorboards, which she is charged with sweeping away.  The expression on her face tells us (I hope) how she feels about this.

This is available in my shop.