Gregory Maguire, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
As the title suggests, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is a rewriting of the well-known fairytale, Cinderella, from the point of view of one of her stepsisters. Except that Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is no fairytale at all. Set in the seventeenth century Holland, the story has been robbed of the vagueness of its "once upon a time" and with it, of its corresponding "happily ever after"…
Maguire revisits the myth to reveal what could have been the true story behind it. What if Cinderella was not a poor exploited girl but originally a spoilt and troubled child, who likes to do the chores to divert her from ennui? What if she viewed her beauty as a curse, a monstrosity? What if she covered her face in ashes to hide this beauty from the world?
Iris, the heroine of this story, arrives in Holland with her sister Ruth, an idiot, and their mother Margarethe. They had to flee England and hope to live with Margarethe’s father, but they found out that he died and that his house has been repossessed. They first work as maids for Schoonmaker, a painter, grumpy yet charitable and kind, but their lives soon become intertwined with the Van der Meer family, a wealthy tulip merchant, his wife, and their beautiful and secretive daughter Clara.
Clara, who thinks she is a Changeling, will progressively lower her defenses and let Iris be her friend and teach her English. Iris herself is caught between her duties to her family and her retarded sister and her desire to spend time in the Master’s studio, to see and ultimately to paint. In the meanwhile, Margarethe shows her true nature: a woman obsessed with wealth and social status.
A realist version of the Cinderella‘s fairytale, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is part gothic tale, part composite of other literary inspirations. It reminded me at times of Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. Dwelling on the theme of beauty and its antithesis, ugliness, and their representations in Art, the novel draws conclusions such as beauty is in the eye of the beholder or in the rare and gratuitous act such as charity. Thus Clara will eventually be able to create beauty as opposed to the one she was born with and that she carries as a burden, and Iris will be entitled to love despite her plainness.
Nothing really new or original in this story pleasant enough to read. It was good, but nothing to make a fuss about…
Rating: 3/5
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