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sorchaivy · 6 hours ago

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Cinderella’s shoes: Glass or fur? The big French debate

You might have heard that “Cinderella’s shoes weren’t originally made of glass, but of fur, and the glass thing is just a misinterpretation/mistranslation”. You might also have never heard of it, then congrats you just did!

As I said in a previous reblog, @gosagacious wrote an article already covering the “glass VS fur” debate that you can read here and that provides interesting informations and points of view. But I want to push further the exploration of the glass VS fur debate from a French point of view and perspective, because this debate all started in France and is ultimately a French question.

To tell you how important this question is to the French: the French Wikipedia has an ENTIRE PAGE dedicated to the question, titled “Controversy over the composition of Cinderella’s slippers”.

So what is this debate about? Well, Perrault wrote about Cinderella wearing “glass slippers”, in French “pantoufles de verre”. The question is to known whether the French “verre” was actually the other French word “vair”, pronounced the same way, that is the term designated the fur of the grey squirrel when used for things like clothing.

# The debate begins, so to speak, in 1841, when the great French writer Honoré de Balzac writes in his novel “About Catherine of Medicis” how originally Perrault wrote “a fur slipper” (a “pantoufle de vair”), but due to the word “vair” falling out of use for “the last century”, the “current” editors (those of the early 19th century) copy versions of the story in which the shoe is made of “glass” (verre), not “fur” (vair).

Or at least this is what people like to repeat and parrot around without having read the actual book. Because one key fact often forgotten: this book is a fiction novel, not a literary analysis. It is not Balzac himself who speaks there, but actually one of the characters of his fictional stories that present this theory as the “right” and “correct” explanation. Second point… the character in question who claims that is a fur-seller himself. A furrier. And before he explains his theory about the fur slippers, he gives a lengthy lesson about the origin and trade of furs in France. It is obvious that, as a result, his own point of view would be quite biased! In fact, it is fascinating to see that the literary debate proper never began during Balzac’s lifetime - and even more, beyond this simple mention, Balzac never defended or exposed this idea anywhere else, in his books or outside of it.

# It could have stopped there, if it wasn’t for Emile Littré twenty years later. Littré is known for his “Littré”, one of the most famous French dictionaries. In 1861 he published his “Dictionary of the French Language” that would later become so used and popular it would just be called “Le Littré”, and in it, at the article of “vair”, he includes the words of Balzac’s furrier character as a citation to illustrate the word. Thus, while Littré doesn’t say anything about the topic, he helped popularized the idea of the “fur slipper” in France - especially since the citation was cut (so you didn’t know who said it) AND the author (Balzac) was not named, leaving to it the feeling it was more of a general quotation than a literary citation. Was it a subtle way to support the “vair” idea, or just a careless addition of a quotation whose effects Littré couldn’t predict? Mystery.

And thus, Balzac and Littré set out the ground from which the “fur theory” would start overflowing.

# Next step : 1885 and the famous writer Anatole France. In his “The book of my friend”, he invoked again the fur theory and one paragraph of the book became massively famous and was shared among people as another “proof” that Cinderella’s slippers were made of fur: a paragraph in which the “glass” (verre) of the slippers is questioned as being ridiculous and impossible, while the “fur” (vair) slippers are described as more practical and a much better choice to go to the ball.

So, France was a defender of the fur theory? NOT AT ALL! This paragraph mocking the glass slippers and promoting the fur slippers was in truth a cut citation. Anatole France was against all those “rationalist” interpretations of Cinderella, and what people tend to cut from his text is the second paragraph following the one quoted above: a paragraph in which the fur theory is dismissed due to “common sense not being of any use” when reading fairytales. Anatole points out how the shoes are said to be “fairy shoes”, and that the fairy origins of the shoes explicitely spelled out in the story is the only argument worth of consideration as it obliterates all the doubts one can emit towards the “practicality” of the shoes. He similarly points out how a carriage can be created out of a pumpkin specifically due to how it is “fairy work”. In fact, he concludes by saying: if things were following common sense in fairytales, THAT would be baffling.

# After Anatole France, the fake “vair supporter”, we got a “real” vair supporter with Pierre Larousse, the writer of the other big dictionary rival of the Littré, the Larousse. When Pierre published his “Great Universal Dictionary of the 19th century” between 1866 and 1876 (what would be known as the “Petit Larousse”, Small Larousse), he explicitely talked about the vair VS verre issue and claimed “vair” was the right explanation. He claimed that while Perrault like the “magical”, he wouldn’t have in his right mind given Cinderella glass shoes, while “vair” was very common in his day. Larousse theorized that a later editor, upon seeing “vair”, thought it was a typographic mistake and rewrote it to “verre” - and while Larousse also theorizes that maybe “vair” was willingly changed to “verre” for the sake of the “marvelous”, he rather pushes forward the theory of a “correction by ignorance”. He also invoked the fact that people forgot about “vair” due to the term being used for heraldry, and the heraldic language having slowly lost itself to the common culture (we’ll return to that).

# And the fight was on. You had those that defended the “verre/glass” explanation, others who used the “vair” one. Authors of the 19th century either wrote about “verre” or “vair”… And sometimes you have funny cases where an author will actually mock or play with the whole debate. At the very beginning of the 20th century (1909 to be exact), Emile Bergerat wrote a “Cinderella in an automobile” and in it reinvented the whole debate as being born from how the scientists and scholars of the court (in the story of Cinderella) were unable to explain how it was possible to create the glass shoes Cinderella wore, and so instead of confessing their lack of results simply decided to write about “vair” shoes, fur shoes, to cover up the mystery they couldn’t solve.

# As a personal note, from having encountered this on my study time, another defender/spreader of the “vair” idea was André Breton, the leader of the surrealism movement in France. In his book “L’amour fou” (Crazy love) he wrote extensively about Cinderella’s shoe, describing a project he had of making a “cendrier Cendrillon” (Cinderella ash-tray) based on discovering a shoe-shaped spoon at a flea market - and in it he also talked about the “vair” topic, and pushed the idea that “vair”/”fur” was the original word used by Perrault.

Now, all of that being said, the answer is definitively: glass. Pantoufles de verre is the correct writing, they were always glass slippers in Perrault’s tale, and the fur slipper defenders are wrong.

Mind you, it is always interesting to see the argument of both sides. And what were the arguments of the “fur” partisans? “Verre” and “vair” sounds identical. It is more logical and rational to have slippers made of fur instead of made of glass. Glass shoes would be very hard to wear. “Vair” was a material for rich people, especially used for luxury clothing since the 14th century. But overall the main argument is: “in the name of reason”, “let’s be reasonable”, “let’s be logic”…

And with the same logic answer those that defend the “glass slippers” (and who are right). The idea of a “later correction by editors” seems absurd due to Perrault having published his tales when he was alive, so he knew he wrote “verre”. Some might invoke the fact that “verre” could be another spelling of “vair” in medieval texts, or that Perrault made a mistake himself writing “verre” erronously but… we are not in the Middle-Ages anymore, we are in the Renaissance, and Perrault isn’t just a renowned writer he is also a member of L’Académie Française (The French Academy, aka the institution whose ENTIRE JOB AND PURPOSE is to fix grammar and ortographs and who say what is part of the French language and what is not). That Perrault would have written “verre” over all his story when he wanted to write “vair” is an entirely ridiculous argument, when we know how careful he was when writing his tales (and when we have several earlier drafts of the stories).

But even beyond that other arguments can be pushed forward, such as how “vair” was a word mostly known in heraldry at the time of Perrault and not truly used anymore by Perrault’s time ; how there is no record or testimony of shoes of any kind being made of “vair” fur in real life (as the vair was kept for more visibly parts of the costume, and smaller due to being quite costly) ; and finally, one can invoke the symbolism of the slippers being made of glass. Glass was by Perrault’s time a rare and costly material put at the same level as crystal ; it was renowned for being thin, elegant, light and fragile. As a result, to wear such shoes, a person must be just as grateful and as elegant as the material - if the glass slippers only fit Cinderella, it is because she is the only one worthy of such an exquisite material. PLUS there’s also the fact that the glass industry was one of the rare industries where aristocrats and noblemen were allowed to work without being dishonored. And of course, from the same “practical” thought: if the shoe is made of glass, it makes much more sense that it would fit only a specific girl whose feet is the exact shape of the glass encasing ; instead of a “fur” shoe that could be worn by a lot more people.

Ultimate sign of the “verre” truth winning: a century after the Petit Larousse’s original publication, the quotation about “vair” being the right term was changed. Now you can read in it: “It has been theorized that the shoes of Cinderella were made of fur, vair, instead of verre as Perrault wrote it: but in a fairy tale, such a research of reason seems useless”.

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