Exploring the Trope of Evil Stepmothers
In this blog post I am going to explore the trope of an evil stepmother in three different fairy tales. The classic fairy tale I chose was the Juniper Tree.
The story starts off with a rich man and his wife trying to conceive a child but it never happens. One day the wife cuts her finger under a magical juniper tree and wished for a child “as red as blood and as white as snow”. In the nine months that follow the magical tree brings the forest to life. On the seventh month she eats berries from the tree, on the ninth month she gives birth to her child, and passes away. After the mother passes we are introduced to the trope of an evil stepmother. The man and step mother have a daughter and “whenever the woman looked at her daughter, she felt alive for her, but when her eyes landed on the little boy she was sick at the heart”. From the moment her daughter was introduced she despised the boy. “ The woman kept thinking about how she needed to get her hands on the entire family fortune.” From that moment on she started acting horribly toward the boy. In the story it says “the devil seized hold of her so that she began to hate the little boy, slapped him around and pinched him.” Compared to the boy’s birth mother she is evil. The stepmother tricks the boy into reaching for an apple and decapitates him with a chest. Even worse she tricks her own daughter into believing she killed her brother and ends up cooking him up in a stew. With the help of the Juniper Tree the boy turns into a bird and ends up dropping a “millstone on her head and crushed her to death”. This story clearly illustrates the evil step mother figure. She
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The contemporary retelling I chose was the “A Cinderella Story” movie starring Hilary Duff. A Cinderella Story is a modern version of the fairy tale set in a typical American high school. Sam (Hilary Duff) has a rough childhood. Her father died in an earthquake leaving her to live with a stepmother Fioana and two awful daughters. Just like in the Juniper Tree the stepmother is evil, wanting all the inheritance to go to her and her daughters. She purposefully omitted knowledge of her husband’s will forcing Sam to work at their diner. She makes her do all the house chores from cleaning to picking up her dry cleaning. Sam meets her prince charming at a school dance and instead of leaving her slipper she drops her cell phone. Following the dance, her evil stepmother Fiona tricks her into believing she was rejected from college by creating a fake rejection letter. She does this to keep Sam working at the diner forever. In the end she and the Prince end up together, but not before finding her fathers will. The will states all his money was actually left to Sam to which she used to go to college with the prince. Just like the evil stepmother in the Juniper Tree Fiona only wants the inheritance for her children.
(Screenshot taken from the movie A Cinderella Story 2004)
Then the fairy tale related story I chose was Harry Potter and Sorcerer’s Stone. Harry’s parents are both killed by Voldemort. As a result he goes to live with his aunt and uncle who become his evil step parents. They are extremely cruel to him just like Fiona making him essentially their maid. In addition they force him to live under the stairs while physically and verbally abusing him. Similar to how Fiona created the fake rejection letter his evil step parents throw away all his Hogwarts acceptance letters. In addition they hide the fact that Harry’s parents left them their wealth just like Fiona did with Sam. Overall the trope of evil step mother is apparent in all these different stories.
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