The Cindrella Wedding

In the ’70s,Cinderella fell out of favour. feminists found her insipid, waiting in the ashes for her prince. But they didn’t give her enough credit. Teaming with the spirit of her dead mother, Cinderella cleverly rescues herself from servitude, conjures up her own glittery makeover and then saves the prince from the same torment she endured living with her hideous stepsisters and ,

In real life, however, many of our Cinderella brides have taken tragic turns — from Jackie Kennedy to Grace Kelly to the doe-eyed Diana Spencer. Yet the power of the fairy tale was vividly illustrated once more with the luminous wedding of comely commoner Kate Middleton to a charming Prince William, and a hypnotic new film adaptation of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte’s gothic take on the Cinderella story. The newly christened Duchess of Cambridge only had to rise above a middle-class background, the hydra-headed press beast and Will’s understandable hesitation about marriage. But her task is herculean: to help save a stiff-necked monarchy sent into a shame spiral by Diana’s humiliation and confessions of herself ..

A central element of the stories of Cinderella, Jane Eyre and Charlotte Bronte herself was a mystical connection to a mother who died too young. And that was certainly present at Westminster Abbey. Diana complained that Camilla Parker-Bowles crowded her out of her marriage to Charles. And Camilla (not a wicked stepmother) was in the congregation for William’s wedding as she had been for Diana’s 30 years ago. But for the throng who turned out to see the Dress and the Kiss, Diana was the more palpable presence, hovering over her sons and Kate. The princes walked down the same long aisle where as heartbroken boys they followed behind their mother’s coffin. The first hymn sung was the last one sung at Diana’s funeral. Kate wore Diana’s sapphire engagement ring. You could sense a collective prayer that Kate was not a lamb being led to slaughter. Many assured the invading celebrity journalists that Kate was older and more grounded than the virginal and high-strung 20-year-old who married an older man who loved another woman ho was very beautiful..

Jane Eyre is not as lovely as Kate Middleton. Charlotte Bronte, who never felt attractive herself, wanted to show her sisters that a plain heroine could be just as compelling as a beautiful one. Poor little Jane also has a wedding, wearing a beautiful white dress and veil, to the wealthy man of her dreams. When the wedding is shattered by the news that there’s already a Mrs Rochester, Jane listens to her former master’s anguished explanation about his mad, vampirish wife in the attic. He begs her to stay and be “my comforter, my rescuer.” When a dazed Jane goes to bed, she looks out the window and sees the moon start to blaze as if “a white human form shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward. It gazed and gazed on me … it whispered in my heart, ‘My daughter, flee temptation’.Jane answers, “Mother, I will,” picks up her slippers and flees Thornfield Hall. In the end, after Rochester has been widowed and mutilated for his sins, Jane returns. She rescues her dark prince even as he rescues herself..

When Rochester first meets Jane, he calls her a “curious” sort of caged bird, “a vivid, restless, resolute” one. When she returns and sees him blind, with one hand gone, she describes him as a “caged eagle, whose gold-ringed eyes cruelty has extinguished.” Now on a footing of equality, because she has inherited money and is less dependent on him, and he has lost his mansion and sight and is more dependent on her, they release each other from their cages of restraint and binding .