A concept under the microscope
A key figure in popular tales who, from the Brothers Grimm to the Disney Studios, Charles Perrault, Rossini or the pop-rock group Eigthies Téléphone, delivers the moral fable of an inverted destiny, Cinderella is also the embodiment of the hidden, even stifled, greatness of a quality being that a miraculous event will one day restore to deserved glory.
The myth is comforting in that it seems to promise the recognition of the virtues of the individual beyond the prejudices attached to his appearance, and despite the many obstacles that oppose a priori its accomplishment. But a closer reading of the tale reveals much more tricky interpretations in the collective unconscious: Cinderella is also the woman who is waiting ... Prince Charming who will reveal her to herself and to the world!
This morality of female patience coupled with a vision of self-realization dependent on the prodigious intervention of a third party inspired the notion of the " Cinderella Complex" some thirty years ago by the American psychoanalyst Colette Dowling.
The " Cinderella Complex" is the concept that the blog Eve takes a closer look at this month.
Cinderella waits, waits, waits...
In 1981, the American psychoanalyst Colette Dowling, analyzing her own experience as a financially independent woman who welcomed the women's liberation movement with enthusiasm, observed that while there was nothing to prevent her from feeling perfectly autonomous (she earned her living, had a social life of her own, hobbies of her own choosing), it seems to her that her time to live fully free and to take on all the responsibilities to which she aspires has not yet arrived. She feels like she's waiting for something. But what? That it comes by itself? Come, she knows very well that nothing is given and that miracles only happen in fables!
However, in many of the women she meets, in her close circle as well as in the context of her practice as a therapist, she repeatedly observes this same latency that holds energy, more or less postpones initiatives and feeds a form of anxiety about success.
Devil! Are women secretly afraid of succeeding? At the very least, they are quietly worried, and often without being able to formulate it clearly and even less to dare to express it publicly, about what they might have to sacrifice from their vision of themselves to do so and about the effects on the gaze of others that their rise in power could have.
So, Cinderella depends, depends, depends...
Then, Dowling says, women would persist in enrolling, even when they have everything to succeed on their own, in patterns of relative dependence.
Like Cinderellas who count on a father (or a providential manager, a generous godmother) to notice the injustice done to them when they are not treated at their fair value, and then on a Prince Charming (or a Pygmalion boss, a prodigious fairy godmother) to bring them to light when he discovers their fortitude, they would tend to overestimate the exogenous factors of their accomplishment (a decisive encounter, a strong support, a bet made on her when they themselves did not believe in it, or even a stroke of luck) to the detriment of a fair consideration of what they owe to themselves (including the ability to provoke encounters, , gain support, convince others to trust them to meet challenges, and seize and transform opportunities).
Unconsciously considering that the mechanism of their success would depend on an (im)probable external intervention to be triggered, Cinderella women would thus maintain a more or less distorted relationship with the help offered by others: oscillating between excessive deference (" I owe her everything") and distrustful rejection of what could then oblige them (" I don't want to owe anything to anyone") , they tend to look at their destiny with a very affective view (we have been " nice " to them or, conversely, we have " sacked" them), which is not conducive to a fair allocation of the factors of their personal achievement...
Is Cinderella too " well-behaved "?
But why are we the Cinderellas that we would be so embarrassed when it comes to combining simple humility and legitimate pride? Following Dowling, contemporary psychosociology probes on the one hand the role of the cultural referents of femininity and on the other hand the evolution of behaviors under the impetus of recent social transformations, and particularly the generalization of women's work.
As far as cultural referents are concerned, it is not surprising to seem, in the research of Ute Ehrardt and others, that a stereotyped education tending to lead little boys to action, movement, risk-taking and little girls to patience, interiority and caution would implicitly convince women who are " too well behaved" that it would be transgressive to try to precede proposals by asking what they want, clearly, without apologizing for their audacity.
And the moral tales of our childhood, which, precisely, promise courageous patients a happy ending by the grace of a quasi-magical event, would be to comfort the minds in the idea that good things come to the one who knows how to wait... And that it would therefore be useless, and perhaps even of questionable taste, to work too actively to have one's value recognized, because recognition would in any case depend not so much on what a woman will accomplish as on the way one is willing to look at her.
" Decennial" role models!
As for the social transformations that have seen women's financial autonomy become more or less the rule, we invoke the tensions (internal and possibly with those around them) called for by the desire to " have it all" : a brilliant career, a fulfilling love and social life, an enriching social existence...
In contexts that are still insufficiently inclusive and make this legitimate objective a daily challenge (not to say a fight), it is not anti-rational for women to question themselves about their " place " in society... Even more so when they are confronted, in this questioning, with a certain lack of cultural reference points and positive referents to fully assume their multiple ambitions within their composite identity, a thousand miles away from the caricatures crudely opposing the princely muse and the ambitious stepmother.
In other words, it is " decennial" role models, much more subtle, diverse and believable than those of the moral tales and romantic comedies that perpetuate their legacy, that they also need to write their own realistic story (no, there will be no Prince Charming or a good fairy... Except yourself!) finding it perfectly normal that it includes glorious chapters and more tumultuous passages... And that the roles are not pre-cast nor the ending ever predictable!
For an optimistic critique of the " Cinderella Complex"
The concept of the " Cinderella Complex" undeniably sheds useful light on some of the invisible obstacles that still hold back the expression of assumed female leadership. It is never in vain to analyze the effects of interactions between the realities of the social context, the referents of the collective imagination and the levers of individual psychology in an attempt to understand what underground and unconscious resistance to change comes from.
However, recent work on women's aspirations and perceptions of success (for example, the PwC report on the expectations of women in Gen Y or the HEC au féminin study on the careers of men and women in four generations of leaders) suggests that the Cinderellas may be on the verge of disappearing : the women of the twenty-first century are much more numerous than those of the 1980s described by Colette Dowling, who today manage their life project with lucid pragmatism, taking the lead when necessary and affirming their pride in being themselves, complete and autonomous...
As if they were definitively swapping the chimerical " One day, my Prince (and my time) will come " for the indispensable leitmotif of feminine proactivity: " Behind every successful woman is herself".
