When it came time to choose a short story to research this semester, I had a hard time. The only thing I was certain of was that I wanted to do a children’s story or one that could be considered gothic. I liked “The Happy Prince” and “The Terribly Strange Bed”, so I wanted to find something similar to those.
I started looking at children’s literature first. I went to the Haithi Trust and searched through some children’s journals. All of the stories I looked at, though, seemed a bit ridiculous. They had no in-depth characters and were largely plot driven. At the end, there was always some obvious morale. I didn’t really see how I was going to be able to give a presentation to the class without some major themes or at least interesting characters to talk about.
I decided to move on to find a gothic/horror story, but that was difficult as well. The stories I looked at were extremely long and boring. The endings were predictable and though there were some I enjoyed, I didn’t like them enough to want to spend the rest of the semester talking about them.
It was only by chance that I found the story I picked, “Cinderella’s Daughter”. I was looking through The Strand magazine for a mystery story and discovered that they did children’s stories. I found one that had many interesting themes and an exciting plot that was unlike most of the other stories I had read. I was relieved to find something I actually really enjoy reading.