I don't know if you have an analysis on this, but how do you feel about 1950s Cinderella (the character) versus 2015 Cinderella? I personally have a little more sympathy for 1950s Cinderella because of the implication in the 2015 film that Cinderella could willingly leave. I'm hoping I read that scene wrongly, but the hint she may be choosing to stay versus having no choice in staying to avoid homelessness made me a little iffy.
Personally, I do have more sympathy for the 1950 Cinderella character than the 2015 version. Maybe it’s because her past with her parents’ deaths and the revelation of her stepmother’s cruelty is not shown too much as it is in the new film. That offers fans a lot of speculation as to what happened. We can really only guess, but it may not be too hard to figure out the whats and the whys.
The 1950 Cinderella was only a child when her father (and her mother, even though it’s not shown) passed away, leaving her more vulnerable to the Tremaines’ cruel treatment following the tragedy. She has lived with this abuse for about ten years, a lot longer than her 2015 film counterpart. The narrator in the prologue said that after the death of the father, Lady Tremaine’s true nature was finally revealed. She probably didn’t do this before because Cinderella was a small girl and would have told her father if her stepmother was mean to her. Her father would have been around so much and kept an eye on things to make sure they were going well. But upon his death, there was no one who was above Lady Tremaine as the head of the home, so she did not have to conceal things any longer. So then this differs in the new film because Cinderella is a teen when her father remarries. Because she is older here, Cinderella does not have the naïveté or innocence of a young child. She begins to see the darker sides of her stepfamily much sooner, especially after her father departs, then it gets worse after his death.
My sympathy for the 1950 Cinderella also comes from the fact that we don’t know how her father died, unlike in the 2015 film. No specific details about his death are said by the narrator, and since he looked fairly young for a possibly middle-aged man, I think he was in good health and did not die of an illness. I’ve heard fans speculate that Lady Tremaine may have had something to do with his death, like she may have murdered him. That’s certainly a possibility to me, because she obviously wanted to get rid of him, hoard his wealth, and abuse his little girl. I know that for hundreds of years, female killers have killed people very close to them and poison (specifically arsenic) has been a very common method. Taking all of that into account for the old film, we clearly learn that Lady Tremaine had nothing to do with her husband’s death, since he was traveling at the time it occurred.
So I think I have much more sympathy for the 1950 Cinderella since she lost her parents as a child and ended up dealing with her stepfamily’s for a longer amount of time than that of the 2015 Cinderella.