"Cinderella in the Chimney-Corner" — fourteenth illustration in "George Cruikshank's Fairy Library" (1865)

[Victorian Web Home — Children's Literature —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> George Cruikshank —> Next]

Cinderella in the Chimney-Corner

George Cruikshank

1854

etching

14.8 x 10.5 cm framed

Facing "List of Illustrations" for "Cinderella and The Glass Slipper" in George Cruikshank's Fairy Library, Part Three (1865) with illustrations by George Cruikshank.

The story was originally issued in a twenty-seven page, paperback format, 18 cm high by 13 cm wide, with ten engravings on six pages, drawn and etched by Cruikshank, in 1854, immediately after he had issued "Hop-o' My-Thumb and The Seven-league Boots" and "The History of Jack and The Bean-stalk."

[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

[You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Passage Illustrated

Poor Cinderella followed them [her step-sisters] with her eyes, as long as they were in sight, and then, when she could see them no longer, her beautiful eyes filled with tears, and she then wished, for the first time, that she also had been going to the ball; and, turning from the door, went and took her usual place in the chimney-corner.

Now you must know that Cinderella had a godmother, who was a dwarf, and who used to come to see her sometimes, and she came into the kitchen just as Cinderella had taken her seat in the chimney-corner. The little old lady sat down upon a small log of wood on the opposite side, and said, —

Why, Cindy, my darling, you have been crying?"

"Yes," she replied, with a sweet smile, "I did shed a few tears when I saw my sisters going to the Royal Ball; and I did think that I might have gone also; and I thought that I should like, above all things to go; but the thought of my poor father came into my mind, and I now feel that I should not like to go and enjoy myself, and be merry, whilst my poor father is pining in prison." — "Cinderella and the Glass Slipper," pp. 10-11.

The Context in Perrault

No sooner were the ceremonies of the wedding over but the stepmother began to show herself in her true colors. She could not bear the good qualities of this pretty girl, and the less because they made her own daughters appear the more odious. She employed her in the meanest work of the house. She scoured the dishes, tables, etc., and cleaned madam's chamber, and those of misses, her daughters. She slept in a sorry garret, on a wretched straw bed, while her sisters slept in fine rooms, with floors all inlaid, on beds of the very newest fashion, and where they had looking glasses so large that they could see themselves at their full length from head to foot. — "Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper."

Commentary

Bravely Cruikshank issued his Cinderella later in 1854, though Dickens had parodied it, as if in advance, in "Frauds on the Fairies". . . . Not only did the artist refuse to compromise his editing principles, but appended a note "To the Public" in which readers who might fall into same heresies as "my friend Charles Dickens" were advised to read his "Letter" to that gentleman. But, for whatever reason, interest in Cruikshank's fairy tales seems to have diminished; for his next contribution, Puss in Boots, though probably completed in 1853 or 1854, was not published until 1864. The artist probably held Dickens responsible for the hiatus; certainly he was still smarting from the artist's reprimand. — Jane Rabb Cohen, p. 35.

That Cruikshank had been parodied in advance must have taken some of his relish in attempting a temperance version of "Cinderella and The Glass Slipper," for his work on this story is generally inferior to his engravings for the previous entries in The Fairy Library, despite a very effective ornate title-page. Although well received by the public, his dedicated temperance works with their grim moralising, The Bottle (1847) and The Drunkard's Children (1848) had probably marked a downward turning point in his career as an illustrator of books, and, having lost his momentum, he never fully regained it. And, even in those works, it is the narrative power of the texts rather than the quality of the engraving that most engages the reader. Born in 1792, Cruikshank was already 56, and probably past his greatest period of innovation — but he still had thirty years of artistic output ahead of him, including, of course, the four components of George Cruikshank's Fairy Library (1853-65).

Cruikshank's didactic interventions — extolling industriousness, high ethical standards, courage, and intelligence — are more than occasional, and are therefore, despite the elegance of his illustrations, somewhat wearying. Cruikshank's utilising traditional fairy-tales as a podium from which to preach teetotalism utterly provoked such folklore purists as Charles Dickens, who in 1854 presented a possible series of gambits for a socially modified "Cinderella" in "Frauds on the Fairies," just as he had explored possible plot-lines for pro- and anti-slavery texts of Robinson Crusoe. In this series, unlike the previous two, there are only two full-page illustrations, this and the last, The Marriage of Cinderella to The Prince; the remaining eight are each a half-page each, configured inassociated pairs, such as Cinderella scouring the Pots and Kettles and, immediately below the first, Cinderella helping her Sisters to Dress for the Royal Ball (facing page 8).

Cruikshank ably introduces the domestic circumstances of Cinderella while hinting at her deliverance in the elegant frontispiece with half-title. In the mediaeval hearth, the fairy-godmother (depicted on the cover of the George Bell 1865 edition) is seated to the right. The magic slipper (glass in Cruikshank and Perrault, gold in Grimm) rests on a regal cushion, bottom centre, flanked by liveried trumpets which foreshadow the Prince's proclamation regarding the testing of the slipper by the kingdom's marriageable maidens. Above the mantelpiece, a clock with Roman numerals reads 11:55 — presumably, five minutes to midnight, the hour at which Cinderella's coach will return to its prior shape, a pumpkin (the form above the clock, surmounted by a crown):

Her godmother then conducted her to the coach, telling her, as she entered and took her seat upon a beautiful, soft, amber-coloured cushion, to be sure to leave the palace before the clock struck TWELVE, and that if she disobeyed or neglected this injunction, the charm would be broken, and she, and everything else about her, would change back again to their former condition" (14). The rat, mice, and lizards have become (respectively) a coachman, "milk-white steeds" and "tall footmen, with their green and gold liveries. — p. 13.

Fanciful touches typical of Cruikshank's sometimes whimsical style are six faces embedded in the supporting columns that form the right and left sides of the frame. Slightly impish, but good-natured, two are round, moon-like shapes, two are bearded elders, and the bottom two seem to be regarding each other. The draw the eye into the frame, Cruikshank has highlighted the heads of both Cinderella and the Fairy Godmother, while the sooty wall behind the large cooking-pot suggests the protagonist's present depression at being left behind by her ugly step-sisters.

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas; Michael Slater and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.

British Library. "George Cruikshank's Fairy Library." Romantics and Victorians. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/george-cruikshanks-fairy-library

Cohen, Jane Rabb. Part One, "Dickens and His Early Illustrators: 1. George Cruikshank. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1980. Pp. 15-38.

Cruikshank, George. Cinderella and The Glass Slipper. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. The third volume in George Cruikshank's Fairy Library. London: David Bogue, 1854. (Price one shilling) 10 etchings on 6 tipped-in pages, including frontispiece.

Cruikshank, George. George Cruikshank's Fairy Library: "Hop-O'-My-Thumb," "Jack and the Bean-Stalk," "Cinderella," "Puss in Boots". London: George Bell, 1865.

Guildhall Library blog. "A Gem from Guildhall Library's Shelves: George Cruikshank's Fairy Library by George Cruikshank published by Routledge in London (c. 1870)." 8 August 2014. https://guildhalllibrarynewsletter.wordpress.com/2016/08/08/a-gem-from-guildhall-librarys-shelves-george-cruikshanks-fairy-library-by-george-cruikshank-published-by-routledge-in-london-c1870/

Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University. "George Cruikshank." http://library.tulane.edu/exhibits/exhibits/show/fairy_tales/george_cruikshank

Hubert, Judd D. "George Cruikshank's Graphic and Textual Reactions to Mother Goose." Marvels & Tales, Volume 25, Number 2, 2011 (pp. 286-297). Project Muse. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/462736/pdf

Kitton, Frederic G. "George Cruikshank." Dickens and His Illustrators. London: Chapman & Hall, 1899. Pp. 1-28.

Perrault, Charles. "Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper." Fairy Tales and Other Traditional Stories. Lit2Go. http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/68/fairy-tales-and-other-traditional-stories/5089/jack-and-the-bean-stalk/

Vogler, Richard, The Graphic Works of George Cruikshank. New York: Dover, 1979.

Last modified 29 June 2017