FREE! Click here to Join FunTrivia. Thousands of games, quizzes, and lots more!
Fun Trivia
Home: Questions and Answers Forum
Answers to 100,000 Fascinating Questions
Welcome to FunTrivia's Question & Answer forum!

Search All Questions


Please cite any factual claims with citation links or references from authoritative sources. Editors continuously recheck submissions and claims.

Archived Questions

Goto Qn #


I was under the impression that the "glass" slipper in Cinderella was a mistranslation of the French word for fur, now I find that it was, in fact, a glass slipper after all and not a mistranslation. Any light from esteemed contributors?

Question #39061. Asked by mibmob.
Last updated Jun 03 2021.

Related Trivia Topics: Vocabulary  
avatar
TabbyTom
Answer has 3 votes
Currently Best Answer
TabbyTom
23 year member
1233 replies avatar

Answer has 3 votes.

Currently voted the best answer.
The English-speaking world got the story from translations of Charles Perrault. Perrault has a slipper of "verre" (glass), not "vair" (fur). There's a widespread idea that it should have been "vair", but no one seems to be able to prove this.

Snopes goes for glass. See link http://www.snopes.com/language/misxlate/slippers.htm

Sep 24 2003, 8:38 AM
fosse4
Answer has 2 votes
fosse4

Answer has 2 votes.
TT my references of Perrault say it's a translation of
"pantoufle de vair" so if there's any French/english experts who can translate it!

Sep 24 2003, 4:50 PM
avatar
MaggieG
Answer has 2 votes
MaggieG avatar

Answer has 2 votes.
pantoufle = slipper
vair = squirrel fur.
Comfy,n'est-ce pas?

Sep 24 2003, 4:58 PM
avatar
Flem-ish
Answer has 2 votes
Flem-ish
24 year member
894 replies avatar

Answer has 2 votes.
The French "Petit Robert" dictionary calls vair a "fourrure de petit-gris" and defines a "petit-gris" as a type of squirrel found in Russia and Siberia. The "Petit Robert" describes Perrault's "Pantoufle de verre" as an unusual spelling for "Pantoufle de vair".
Vair was very expensive and became one of the "furs" used in heraldry. See: link www.houseofnames.com . Giving somebody a pair of "pantoufles de vair" must have been like offering diamonds.

Sep 24 2003, 5:45 PM
sequoianoir
Answer has 2 votes
sequoianoir
21 year member
2091 replies

Answer has 2 votes.
Charles Perrault apparently has VERRE written down so the GLASS translation is accurate, also in Perrault's time "vair" was a word no longer used so it was exceedingly unlikely that he misheard it in a story he was told and made the error from vair to verre whilst listening or writing it down.

Flem-ish - your source is arguing that Perrault didn't mean verre, actually meant vair, and either deliberately of accidentally mis-spelled it.

Sep 24 2003, 5:58 PM
avatar
Flem-ish
Answer has 2 votes
Flem-ish
24 year member
894 replies avatar

Answer has 2 votes.
My source literally says:{"La pantoufle de vair" ( ou de verre, selon Perrault) dans le conte de Cendrillon.} To me that is very ambiguous.
But though vair in the meaning of "squirrel fur" has now become archaic, I doubt whether it was archaic in Perrault's time.( 1628-1703).
Googling for vair you may come across this quotation from 20th century:
"La capote, c'est le soulier de vair de notre génération. On l'enfile quand on rencontre une inconnue, etc." From link www.citationsdumonde.com.

By choosing the term "unusual" I tried to be cautious.What we now call wrong spellings may have been accepted variants two centuries ago. After all attempts at creating strict rules of orthography are a relative novelty.
But I do agree that le Petit Robert probably sees Perrault's "verre" as a mis-spelled "vair". How can we know whether Perrault meant glass shoes
or fur shoes? Did his stories include illustrations?



Response last updated by gtho4 on Aug 27 2016.
Sep 24 2003, 7:25 PM
avatar
Flem-ish
Answer has 3 votes
Flem-ish
24 year member
894 replies avatar

Answer has 3 votes.
I found an on-line version of the original text at the Document Gallica site.
[gallica.bnf.fr/scripts/ConsultationTout.exe?O=N089293&T=2] no longer exists

It shows how Perrault's orthography differs from Modern French. It does not solve the question whether he wrote "verre" meaning glass, or misspelled "vair" meaning fur. Apart from the word "verre" there is nothing in the description that suggests glass. No brittleness or light reflections suggested. The ladies in the story don't seem to have any problems with the glassy character of the slippers or shoes. It's just the size that doesn't fit for anyone except Cinderella. If Perrault really meant glass, then it may have been a poetic invention of his. His genius "reinventing" some details of the story, in this case helped by the phonetic ressemblence between "vair" and "verre". Glass suggesting purity and magic. But was it a (sub)conscious choice? He simply may have misunderstood an oral version of the existing popular story, and have been charmed by what he thought was a story about glittering glass slippers.

If he meant "vair" "fur" he must either have been a bad speller (very unlikely) or there must have been an eighteenth century orthographic variant for "vair".( Possible but not likely.) Anyway nobody mistranslated "vair" as "glass". It's Perrault himself who writes "verre". It should also be taken into account that in the oldest Chinese version of the story, it was a "golden" slipper. See
surlalunefairytales.com/cinderella/history.html [webpage no longer exists]

Golden suggests both "expensiveness" and "light-reflection". So both "vair" ( expensive ermine-like fur) and "verre" ( glitter) fit the poetic core of this fairy-tale, of which there exists an unending list of variants. Some even Native American.

The first edition of Perrault's stories contained illustrations, but I could not find out if there was any of them displaying Cendrillon/Cinderella 's "pantoufles de verre". Though Hugh Rawson in his "Devious Derivations" (1994)correctly signals that the glass slippers cannot have been born from a mistranslation from French to English, he does not really solve the riddle how "vair" became "verre". My own preferred hypothesis is that Perrault "mis-understood" the oral version of an existing folktale. But who can prove that it was not just a stroke of genius: Perrault sensing that a "glass" slipper had infinitely more poetic potential than the obsolete "fur slipper", and consciously re-shaping this detail?

Chi lo sa ? As long as philology has not decisively proved it was some sort of linguistic misunderstanding or orthographic error, there should remain room for "poetic invention" as the explanation. In that case we owe a wonderful detail to one man's creative genius. In this case not a metamorphosis of details brought about by the " anonymous folk", but by an identifiable author. Alas there is no proof, no certainty.

link https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/glass-slippers


Response last updated by gtho4 on Jun 03 2021.
Sep 25 2003, 4:51 AM
free email trivia FREE! Get a new mixed Fun Trivia quiz each day in your email. It's a fun way to start your day!


arrow Your Email Address:

Sign in or Create Free User ID to participate in the discussion

Related FunTrivia Quizzes

play quiz Lost in Mistranslation
(Movie Fractures)
play quiz The Slipper and the Rose
(Sl - Sq Movies)
play quiz Through the Looking Glass
('Charmed' Season 8)

Return to FunTrivia
"Ask FunTrivia" strives to offer the best answers possible to trivia questions. We ask our submitters to thoroughly research questions and provide sources where possible. Feel free to post corrections or additions. This is server B184.