Contemporary Values Encounter Classic Illustrations in Rebecca Solnit’s Cinderella Liberator (2019)
Date
2023-01-09
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Forum for Modern Language Studies
Abstract
Rebecca Solnit’s retelling of ‘Cinderella’ in Cinderella Liberator (2019) transforms the fairy tale by infusing a slew of modern ideas into its ‘once upon a time’. Cinderella becomes an independent, active, empowered heroine not only freed from servitude, but able to liberate others in her community from oppression. While the rewriting targets the morals and values of traditional ‘Cinderella’ texts, it is anchored in a specific version of the tale. Cinderella Liberator reuses illustrations Arthur Rackham produced for a 1919 Cinderella gift book by C. S. Evans. This article analyses the interplay of text and image in Cinderella Liberator to establish how the particularities of the Evans/Rackham version inflect the adaptation’s wider discourse on the Cinderella narrative. It focuses on images correlated with the fairy tale’s reassessment of the value and significance of work, the separation of social classes and of external appearance as an indication of moral values.
Description
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Forum for Modern Language Studies following peer review. The version of record Ana Oancea, Contemporary Values Encounter Classic Illustrations in Rebecca Solnit’s Cinderella Liberator (2019), Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 58, Issue 4, October 2022, Pages 413–431, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqac068 is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqac068. This article will be embargoed until 01/09/2025.
Keywords
Cinderella, adaptation, modernization, illustration, Rebecca Solnit, Arthur Rackham
Citation
Ana Oancea, Contemporary Values Encounter Classic Illustrations in Rebecca Solnit’s Cinderella Liberator (2019), Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 58, Issue 4, October 2022, Pages 413–431, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqac068