Category Archives: Margaret Atwood

The Real Cinderella

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“There Was Once” by Margaret Atwood is about two speakers, one who is attempting to tell the story of Cinderella, and the other who I constantly objecting to what’s mentioned in the story. At first, I was a bit annoyed by the second speaker, because they wouldn’t let the storyteller just tell a story. Instead, everything was questioned to change the way the story went until it turned into a completely different story and, eventually, no story at all. The root of the story Cinderella is that she was beautiful and poor and her stepmother was evil. It had a moral that being good defeats being evil. With the changes of her financial status, personality, even the way she looked, Cinderella was no longer a representation of being purely good, but being more realistic. After reading it a second time, I started to think about how this display of questioning everything is comparable to what is done in society. At some point, something than was done for years will eventually be questioned and possibly be changed. In a lot of ways, that’s how society tries to improve, even if the attempt doesn’t lead to success. If we were to question everything about what we read, the way society does and the second speaker in this story, we could unlock a lot of different themes in our readings. We can also get an idea and better understanding about who the author is and who the characters are.
One element of fiction that has changed for me is imagery. I started out this story, knowing how I viewed Cinderella based on prior knowledge and readings, as well as the intro to the story. By the end, Cinderella was a different person, in a different setting. Her image became more common and didn’t feel like a fairy tale, but as if this story was really happening. It was no longer a one-sided story, but I became curious of the different aspects of the characters. The stepmother wasn’t just an evil person and Cinderella wasn’t all good, so it changed the way I viewed them.

“There Was Once” Review

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I found the second speaker to be just like the voices in my head when I’m writing something. I see them as a sign of self-doubt that keep me from creating more. When you overanalyze what you’re writing, it’s really hard to move forward when working in a piece. There’s always a better, less prejudice-or-cliche-charged way of putting something down in words. Should we always pay attention to that, though? Wouldn’t that take away the luster of the writing? I definitely think that there should be an effort to insert a language free of prejudice and judgements into contemporary literary pieces. Constant revision while writing something, though, can work against you.

I also see the way Margaret Atwood approached the topic as a form of criticism to how society can be normative. Television and movies are filled with white characters being the focus of most stories, for example. That second speaker, the voice of consciousness, criticizes the need of the author to go down that same path.

Other issues are also brought up, such as how the author mentions the girl’s weight and portrays a mother-in-law as a bad person, adding more to these stigmatized matter. After a while facing the interruptions from this second speaker, I started to think of how there are so many social rules that we have to follow to be politically correct. Coming from a different culture where we don’t pay much attention to that, I used to find that habit overly dramatic. Now I do understand that being careful with how we approach certain topics is always important. If a group of people misinterpret the way you expressed yourself may have a destructive outcome.

Stereotypical fairy tale gone wrong!

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The short story “There was Once” by Margaret Atwood is humorous.  It attempts to change the stereotypical fairy tale stories that the young girls are so used to hearing.  In today’s society most women recognize being beautiful as being good and reversely being unattractive is being bad.  It also attempts to show what the perfect image for girls to have while they are growing up through fairy tale stories such as Cinderella. The message that is being emphasized on this short story is that of the importance of physical appearance within children stories where the main character is always beautiful and good. The characters in the story seem to be a middle aged man and a critical woman that constantly questions the narrative of the story.

The story starts  with the first speaker telling the story of Cinderella. “There was once a poor girl, as beautiful as she was good, who lived with her wicked stepmother in a house in the forest.”. Another character in the story criticizes every possible solution proposed by the narrator.  It is important for readers to question a writing to get more depth inside the story.

I really enjoyed reading this short story because it made me smile and think about all those stereotypes that exist in our society today.

Query

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Query- (noun)


Definition : a question or a request for information about something

Found in Line 8 in “There Was Once” by Margaret Atwood – ” That’s better. But I have to seriously query this word poor.”

I know understand that this line is trying to say that the second speakers has to really question what the storyteller considers to be “poor”. Having to sleep in the subway stations in cardboards is what truly should be considered “poor”

We Need Something Different !

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After reading “There Was Once”, by Margaret Atwood I see a disagreement between two speakers, the person actually telling the story(storyteller) and the second speaker.  I feel as if the storyteller wanted to retell the story as similar as we will expect a Cinderella story to be told whereas the second speaker wanted to add some reality and truth to it. A reality that could be more acceptable in today’s society. It starts of by saying, “There was once a poor girl, as beautiful as she was good, who lived with her wicked stepmother in a house in the forest.”  At this point it totally reminded me of the original fairytale, but as soon as it was interrupted by the second speaker wanting to change the setting to a urban area and questioning how poor she really was made me think about it as well. The second speaker made a perfect example in saying that if she was considered poor, yet living in a house, what will we consider people that come to the subway stations after dark to be? I think the second speaker wants the readers to actually think deeply in what they are reading and make sense out of it.  The second speaker wanted to change the total story including economic statues, what we consider to be beautiful and appearance. The second speaker wanted to create a story out of the ordinary and not something everyone expect it to be, something different. We are so accustomed on seeing and reading things one certain type of way that it doesn’t give us any chance to trying new things, think about things in a different perspective and that’s exactly what I think the second reader was trying to accomplish. It’s not about being have a specific color, gender or looking a certain type of way but being open and coming out of the comfort zone.

Once Upon a Time…

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The short story, “There Was Once,” by Margaret Atwood, shows that fairy tales are not at all like reality and that people need to realize this when reading them. Modernized fairy tales depict an oversimplified world. The story starts with someone beginning to read the story, “Cinderella,” to another person. The reader had just read the first sentence of the story before being stopped by the listener. The listener disagreed with the setting of this story. It took place in a forest, much like many other fairy tales. She wanted to hear a story in a more realistic, updated setting. The reader then changed the sentence to accommodate the listener’s request. However even after changing it, the listener was unhappy with other parts of that one sentence. She then wanted to change the status of wealth, the labels of good and evil, the importance of the physical attractiveness and that it was a stepmother in the story. She even disliked that fact that the sentence mentions the protagonist is a young “girl” even though she marries in the end, and that the story is set in the past, not the present.

The listener tore that sentence apart word by word. Though we are accustomed to seeing this kind of writing in fairy tales, maybe it is right to not accept them blindly. Especially when children hear these stories, they are deceived into believing in them. The listener thought about the falsities she would have to listen to in this story and she decided it needed to be more believable. She is trying to teach us that we should rid this literature of all its clichés and eternal happy endings and hear more truth.

Cinderella, Cinderella.

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In the short story “There was Once” the author Margret Atwood took many risks in the writing of this story. “There was Once” has two speakers in it. The audience is not given a description of them; we are more so just thrown off into the deep end of dialogue. The story starts off with the first speaker telling the story of Cinderella. “There was once a poor girl, as beautiful ash she was good, who lived with her wicked stepmother in a house in the forest.” This is when we meet speaker two he interrupts the storyteller by asking a bunch of questions. “Forest? Forest is passe, I mean I have had it with all this wilderness stuff. It’s not a right image of our society today. Let’s have some urban for a change.” This brings us to the first change that the speaker prompts the story teller to make. The next change the speaker prompts the storyteller to make is when the storyteller is describing Cinderella as “a middle-class, girl as beautiful as she was good.” The speaker tells the storyteller to cut beautiful because we are dealing with to many intimidating physical role models. Thus leading the storyteller to revise his story to “There was once a girl who was a little overweight and whose front teeth stuck out.” We see that the storyteller has made her out to be the farthest from beautiful.

Cinderella in reality?

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The text “There Was Once” by Margaret Atwood, certainly reminded me of our regular folktale Cinderella. But, was quickly intervened with the second speaker who had a lot of thoughts and opinions to share. The story began with the repetitive line “There Was Once” and soon got interrupted by the second speaker. The first speaker was beginning to tell a story similar to our Cinderella tale by stating that there was once a girl who was beautiful and poor, whom also had a wicked stepmother. But the second speaker quickly disagreed by saying if she was poor then how do they have a house and fireplace. Which I agreed upon, because if someone was poor I consider them to have absolutely nothing. The storyteller took into consideration of what the speaker said and changed her story by saying “There was once a middle-class girl”. As the speaker began to continue the rest of the story, the second speaker proceeded to cut in and give constructive criticism in my eyes. The second speaker was basically trying to break the formal story of Cinderella by it always being a white, beautiful, and poor girl. But rather be more realistic in a sense. Instead of keeping up with the regular story of her being “beautiful” why not cut that out and make the character more average and less intimidating. So once again, the first speaker decided to change it up and be more truthful by saying “There was once a girl who was a little overweight and whose front teeth stuck out” but the second speaker didn’t mean for the first speaker to change the story into making fun of someone. The second speaker continued to interrupt by asking what color is the girl? And that she’s tired of this continuous dominant culture. I conclude that the author Margaret Atwood was trying to imply that we should all try to change up the story sometimes. That not every folktale or story should always be based on the “normal” or “expected” way people believe it should be. Furthermore, that it’s not always about beauty, looks, ethnicity, and financial status. And that we should encourage our kids, teens and other women to uplift and inspire each other, rather than to degrade and humiliate each other.

The Truthful Tale of Cinderella

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“There Was Once” by Margaret Atwood is a retelling of a classic tale, without actually getting to the story. In the short story, the first speaker is reading the beginning of Cinderella, but not too much later is interrupted by the second speaker. The second speaker challenges the statements, such as economic status, culture, beauty, and even age of the girl. The second speaker introduces reality into the fairy tale. For example, the second speaker states that the setting is wrong, and an urban setting would be more fitting for societies image. Then argues if the girl was “poor” as the story is often portrayed her to be, it wouldn’t be anything to compared to the actual poor of the homeless that live in the subway stations. The first speaker complies and adds in the changes from the second speakers objections. When the second speaker criticizes the word beautiful to describe the girl, the first speaker responds by saying the girl is “a little overweight and whose front teeth stuck out” which makes the second speaker respond that it wasn’t nice to make fun. I believe this points out that the idea of the fairytale princess being anything else but beautiful is bizarre; if she isn’t, she must be overweight or have bad teeth. The second speaker states “description oppresses” and to omit it. This is important since beauty is relative to the individual and projects the notion that the image of the girl is what defines beauty, and if girls don’t look like that, they aren’t beautiful. I believe this short story serves to teach a lesson by constantly changing the defining characteristics of the story as often told. Atwood again uses the second speaker to protest the the description of the girl that feeds into “negative female images”. Finally she states that she doesn’t want to hear about the past and wants to talk about now. Atwood clearly challenges many of the notions that are commonly told in fairy tales by adding in a truthful depiction of her own, and that now is the time rather than the past.

Puritanical

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Puritanical – Adjective

Very strict especially concerning morals and religion.

Found in: “There Was Once,” by Margaret Atwood.

  • “Another thing. Good and wicked. Don’t you think you should transcend those puritanical judgmental moralistic epithets? I mean, so much of that is conditioning, isn’t it?”

This passage means that “good and wicked” are just people’s labels on what they think is moral and immoral. However, it does not mean that these labels are absolutely true, or that people are born belonging to either label.