Footbinding is widely condemned as perverse & as symbolic of male domination over women. This study offers a more complex explanation of a thousand year practice, contending that the binding of women's feet in China was sustained by the interests of both women and men.

The history of footbinding is full of contradictions and unexpected turns. The practice originated in the dance culture of China's medieval court and spread to gentry families, brothels, maid's quarters, and peasant households. Conventional views of footbinding as patriarchal oppression often neglect its complex history and the incentives of the women involved. This revisionist history, elegantly written and meticulously researched, presents a fascinating new picture of the practice from its beginnings in the tenth century to its demise in the twentieth century. Neither condemning nor defending foot-binding, Dorothy Ko debunks many myths and misconceptions about its origins, development, and eventual end, exploring in the process the entanglements of male power and female desires during the practice's thousand-year history. Cinderella's Sisters argues that rather than stemming from sexual perversion, men's desire for bound feet was connected to larger concerns such as cultural nostalgia, regional rivalries, and claims of male privilege. Nor were women hapless victims, the author contends. Ko describes how women—those who could afford it—bound their own and their daughters' feet to signal their high status and self-respect. Femininity, like the binding of feet, was associated with bodily labor and domestic work, and properly bound feet and beautifully made shoes both required exquisite skills and technical knowledge passed from generation to generation. Throughout her narrative, Ko deftly wields methods of social history, literary criticism, material culture studies, and the history of the body and fashion to illustrate how a practice that began as embodied lyricism—as a way to live as the poets imagined—ended up being an exercise in excess and folly.

Think you know the story of Cinderella? Think again... This laugh-out-loud picture book turns the traditional tale TOTALLY upside down!

Winifred and Prudence are kind and sweet--unlike their step-sister, Cinder-Ella. She is horrible! She'll do anything to get her own way, and even orders a spell to make her sisters really ugly. But spells don't last forever, so maybe Win and Pru will get a happy ending after all. This funny retelling of the fairytale classic is a must for all Cinderella fans.

Is this new land a place where magics really happen? From Gregory Maguire, the acclaimed author of Wicked, comes his much-anticipated second novel, a brilliant and provocative retelling of the timeless Cinderella tale. In the lives of children, pumpkins can turn into coaches, mice and rats into human beings.... When we grow up, we learn that it's far more common for human beings to turn into rats.... We all have heard the story of Cinderella, the beautiful child cast out to slave among the ashes. But what of her stepsisters, the homely pair exiled into ignominy by the fame of their lovely sibling? What fate befell those untouched by beauty . . . and what curses accompanied Cinderella's exquisite looks? Extreme beauty is an affliction Set against the rich backdrop of seventeenth-century Holland, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister tells the story of Iris, an unlikely heroine who finds herself swept from the lowly streets of Haarlem to a strange world of wealth, artifice, and ambition. Iris's path quickly becomes intertwined with that of Clara, the mysterious and unnaturally beautiful girl destined to become her sister. Clara was the prettiest child, but was her life the prettiest tale? While Clara retreats to the cinders of the family hearth, burning all memories of her past, Iris seeks out the shadowy secrets of her new household--and the treacherous truth of her former life. God and Satan snarling at each other like dogs.... Imps and fairy godmotbers trying to undo each other's work. How we try to pin the world between opposite extremes! Far more than a mere fairy-tale, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is a novel of beauty and betrayal, illusion and understanding, reminding us that deception can be unearthed--and love unveiled--in the most unexpected of places.

Seated in her nest of ashes, Cinderella embodies human misery. The essence of inner and outer nobility, she is the envy of her cruel stepmother and her ugly sisters. Using this familiar story, Ann and Barry Ulanov explore the psychological and theological aspects of envy and goodness. In their interpretation of the tale, they move back and forth between internal and external issues - from how feminine and masculine parts of persons fit or do not together to how individuals conduct their lives with those of the same and opposite sexes, how they conflict, compete, or join harmoniously.

Through a discussion of the Cinderella fairy tale, the nature of envy is explored from the viewpoints of psychology and theology

Cinderella may be beautiful but she is a miserable little madam When her Fairy Godfather makes her go to the ball, she is in a very bad temper. She stamps on the prince's foot and eats all the food. But Cinderella is about to have a big surprise.

A CLASSIC FAMILY SAGA FROM BESTSELLING AUTHOR DILLY COURT East London, 1880 Lily Larkin is the youngest and least important member of her family. When tragedy strikes, she is left at home to look after the house whilst her older siblings go out to work. As she goes about her daily chores, her head is full of dreams, and she longs for the day she might have a life of her own. When a fire threatens to destroy the nearby docks, Lily's act of kindness towards a handsome foreigner has disastrous consequences for the whole family. Losing their home, the family struggle to make ends meet. And just when things might finally be looking up for them, Lily makes a terrible error of judgement. Forced onto the streets, Lily wonders if she'll ever see her family again . . .

OF COURSE you think Cinderella was the sweetest belle of the ball. You don't know the other side of the story. Well, let me tell you...