C I N D E R E L L A , H U M B L E , H A U G H T Y C H I L D

by Claude Cahun

She let fall one of her glass slippers, which the Prince

carefully picked up.

PERRAULT

My father remarried and I was very happy about it all. I’d always dreamed

of having a stepmother. But heaven overwhelmed me, giving me two sisters

by marriage. They were deliciously cruel. I especially loved the elder, who

despised me delightfully: When she saw me always sitting in the cinders by

the fireplace, whose warmth penetrated me with delight (sometimes even

burning me), did her dear familiar voice not call me Kitchenella? Never was a

word so sweet to my ears.

Sadly, they were pretty girls, marriageable maidens; they left us soon,

leaving me with my parents, who, devoted to one another, regarded the world

with a drunkard’s tenderness—and included me in their superb universal

indifference. I will do anything to avoid a marriage like that . . . But how

would I do it? I with my loving nature, and so submissive? . . .

Moreover, I was feeling my pleasure diminishing day by day, and my feelings

of ecstasy growing weak. I understood the reason for it (being devoted,

for lack of anything better, to solitary reveries, I reflected a great deal on it):

Such pleasures grow dull from force of habit. I was too lowly at present, too

humiliated, to enjoy, vigorously, my daily humiliation. One has to climb up

on the shores, on a high bank, to plunge again into the infinite sea of human

pleasures. Daughter of a king, ah! if I were queen! . . . To wed, publicly to wed,

the lowliest of my vassals, to make it seem that he forced me to abdicate, he

mistreated me, he preferred the chattel of his village to me! . . . How to make

such fantasies real?

My very wise godmother, Fairy Godmother, to whom I confessed my

desires, came to my rescue. She knew our Prince very well (once upon a time,

she’d assisted at his baptism), and revealed to me by which curious particularities

one could seduce him:

He had a passion for women’s shoes. To touch them; to kiss them; to let

himself be trampled underneath their charming heels (pointed heels painted

scarlet to look like splashes of blood); it is a modest joy that he has sought

since he was a child. On this, though, the ladies of the court have not satisfied

him: clumsy and timid, afraid of harming the heir to the throne, they dressed

up in slippers. And, fearing he would kiss them in a vulgar manner, with every

sign of respect they raised a foot up to his august but bitter mouth with its

fixed smile . . . For this royal lover one must be the haughty mistress, the pitiless dominatrix in hard heels, someone I could be—I who understand! . . .

“Godmother, you demand the most terrible sacrifice of me! This man is

the opposite of what my heart wants.”

—“I know that very well, my little one. But there’s a reason. Every sacrifice

has its own reward: You will feel in playing your part an emotion more profound

than those you’ve so far known all too well. But blasé Cinderella,

believe me: the most acute sweetness on earth (for you, the most vivid happiness)

is to oppose this instinct, to violate and to chastise by turns. . . .”

Persuaded by my good godmother, I accepted her presents: three pairs of

gray horses the color of cinders, a carriage, a coachman, six footmen; clothes of

velvet and gold, dainty delicate slippers of squirrel fur (he adores fur) that she

entrusted specially to me. . . .

She recommended that I be proud and fierce, as mysterious as the ideal,

and to flee without fail on the stroke of midnight, the second night losing

(but in full view of the Prince, who would be following me), my little left

slipper.

(I have such small and compact feet, they seem stunted—because I regularly

squeeze them into a vise of stiff linen and rigid lace, as the Chinese do.

This exquisite, and habitual, torture fills me with pleasure . . . )

I obey. I saw the Prince, yesterday, and he importuned me vociferously.

Alas! I guessed only too well his thoughts! and noticed the essential details

. . . He blushes at the subject of boots. He blushes, he naively told me, if he passes in

front of a display of shoes, which seems to him the worst indecency; but a display of

flesh does not touch his tolerant and modest soul: It amazes him that anyone

could complain about games so silly, and even a little repugnant.

I agree with him. And perhaps I could truly love him if he wanted sometimes

to reverse our roles . . . One must not even dream of that: If I destroyed his illusions, he would quite quickly return the cricket to the hearth!—I must

deceive him to the grave.

What’s important is to be Princess. When I become Princess, godmother

helping it, I know quite well that I will have myself beaten by the least of my

manservants.

Then I will don again my garb of the slovenly maid, those precious rags,

with their color and smell of cinders, and every day, secretly, I will cover my

crazy head; I will go out into the night. I will approach passersby (there’s no

lack of poor men or ugly men or even dishonest men), and the better I play

my role for the dear Prince, the more marvelously intense for me will be this

contrast and these humiliating encounters.