Cinderella's Glass Slipper
The glass slipper of Cinderella is the shoe lost as the heroine flees the prince's ball, the object that lets the prince find his bride because it fits no other foot in the kingdom. In the Grimms' version, Aschenputtel, the lost shoes are of gold, and the slipper motif belongs to the older tale-type in which the hero proves identity by an object that fits only the true owner. It was Charles Perrault's 1697 version, with its shoe of glass, that fixed the slipper in popular imagination, and the fragility of glass made it a perfect emblem of the tale's magic and brevity. Folklorists note that sho