Profs & Pints Northern Virginia: Cinderella's Story

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “Cinderella’s Story,” on the origins and evolution of a fairytale heroine and cultural icon, with Kitty Maynard, former professor of French at Washington College, director of the Faculty Hub at the University of Richmond, and scholar of early modern France.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/nv-cinderella-story .]

Cinderella is arguably the most famous fairy tale of our time, its elements feeling so familiar that they seem to express universal experiences and human values. But while Cinderella might seem timeless, the version of her known to us today has a very specific origin in seventeenth-century France and the political climate of that time. Moreover, she has changed dramatically over the centuries to appeal to new audiences.

Get to know the plucky young heroine whose tale has become part of our everyday culture and language by coming to Profs and Pints at Crooked Run Fermentation, where lifelong learners have a ball.

Dr. Kitty Maynard will take us back to the court of Louis XIV, where courtier Charles Perrault wrote Cinderella in 1697 to offer real lessons to a real audience consisting of fellow courtiers rather than children. You’ll learn how French society at that time had a particular version of social mobility in which its aristocratic structure allowed the advancement of meritorious and industrious male members of the bourgeoisie but limited female agency to marriage.

We’ll look at how one of Perrault's contemporaries, Madame d'Aulnoy, came up with a very different take on a Cinderella story, in which Cinderella found her man and symbolically proposed to him. We’ll touch upon the Brothers Grimm's dark version of the tale and discuss how Cinderella has been pliable enough to stretch into other eras because basic tropes in her story appeal to our love of underdogs and sense of justice.

When Walt Disney brought Cinderella to the screen in 1950, he transformed Perrault’s version dramatically to reflect the ideals and expectations of a postwar American audience and the ethos of the American Dream. You’ll get to know the Disneyfied version of her, as well as those in Dina Goldstein's “Fallen Princesses” photo series and in a smattering of recent remakes of Cinderella such as Ever After, the live-action Cinderella, and comedic takes like Cinderfella.

Among the questions Dr. Maynard will tackle: Where does Cinderella really come from? And what makes her story so compelling to us today?
Don’t worry. The talk will end long before midnight. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: From an Elizabeth Tyler Wolcott illustration of Cinderella from about 1920.