Rebuttal to Toni Morrison's Cinderella's Stepsisters.
Although I agree with many of the points that Toni Morrison made in her address, Cinderella's Stepsisters, to the students at Barnard College, I find myself in sort of a quandary. I do not wont to pretend to be as versed in women's rights and social issues as Morrison is, and at the same time I find myself having conflict with some of the statements she made in her address. I agree with the sentiment and intent of her address, and at the same time disagree with the expectations of it. I will try to show that while, in theory, it would be great if women in the work place would not use other women to get ahead or abuse them to make themselves look better, but at the same time I will point out that this is not a theoretical society, it is a factual society where human traits govern the way one interacts with others in the work place, male or female, and that the law of nature supersedes any idealistic views one might have about the corporate workplace in America.
In Morrison's address to the women at Barnard Collage she is trying to provoke the career minded feminist women to not use other women as stepping stones to further their own career. Morrison refers to this as abuse or violence (". Professional violence, competitive violence, emotional violence.) She then illustrates this by using the folktale of Cinderella, and specifically point's out the stepsister's abuse of Cinderella by inadvertently saying that they used her to get ahead. Morrison does not let the blame solely lie on the .
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stepsisters though, she includes the step mother in her audio visualization by pointing out that the abuse that was now being carried out by the stepsisters was a learned trait that had been passed down by Cinderella's true captor, their mother. The author then explains that while this is a medieval tale it is not unlike the corporate workplace in modern time.