Why Glass? Why Wax? Cinderella, Luxury Materials, and the Moral Weight of Objects

In February, I’ll be giving a talk titled Designing Women: The Unillustrated Moralities of Perrault’s Fairy Tales at the Stirling Maxwell Centre in Glasgow. The central question of the talk is a deliberately provocative one:

What if Perrault’s fairy-tale moralities function semiotically like devices did—like symbolic portraits that read as two sides of a coin and point to a greater truth?

This question invites us to read Perrault not simply as a storyteller or moralist, but as a designer: someone acutely attentive to how materials, objects, words, and images work together to convey inner truth. One of the places where his poetic skill becomes most striking is Cendrillon.

Why a Glass Slipper?

Perrault’s choice of glass for Cinderella’s slipper has long puzzled readers. Glass is fragile, impractical, and—at least on the surface—an odd choice for a dancing shoe. Why would a fairy godmother outfit her charge with something so unsuitable?

In seventeenth-century France, however, glass was anything but whimsical.

Glass and mirrors were among the most prestigious luxury objects of the age. Under Louis XIV, France was engaged in direct competition with Renaissance Italy—especially Venice, the great glassmaking capital of Europe. Advances in optics were transforming scientific knowledge: gigantic glass lenses were opening new views of the heavens, while refined glass objects signaled wealth, power, and technical mastery. This was the emerging age of the telescope and the microscope.

Large mirrors were particularly difficult to produce. The Hall of Mirrors at Versailles was not merely decorative; it was an economic and political statement, advertising France’s technological prowess and independence from Italian manufacture. Glass chandeliers, perfume bottles, and mirrored furnishings marked the highest echelons of court life.

Against this backdrop, a glass slipper is not a fairy-tale oddity. It is a status object.

Glass as Truth, Not Delicacy

The usual explanations for the slipper flatten its meaning: glass is magical; glass is luxurious; glass is rare. But Perrault was not a naïve fabulist. He was immersed in the visual culture of the Grand Siècle—a world of medals, mirrors, inscriptions, portraits, and devices, where materials were chosen to express inner truth through outward form.

Glass, in this context, was not merely decorative. It was philosophical.

Glass belongs to the world of optics; it is the material of mirrors, lenses, and clarity. It reflects without absorbing. It reveals without reshaping. A glass slipper does not stretch or disguise; it either fits—or it doesn’t.

In that sense, the slipper is not about delicacy. It is about truth.

Glass and Wax: Seeing and Imprinting

Perrault adds a crucial detail: the slipper fits Cinderella like wax. This comparison is precise and telling.

Wax was a material of authentication among the nobility. Sealing wax validated documents. Wax impressions were used to create miniature portraits and profiles—true likenesses taken by direct contact. A profile was like a fingerprint--unique to the individual. Before a medal or coin was struck, the image was often first modeled in wax. Wax did not invent; it received.

By likening the slipper’s fit to wax, Perrault underscores that Cinderella is the shoe’s true owner. She is not a counterfeit dressed in borrowed finery. The fit is an impression of her identity. Even stripped of her magnificent clothing, she remains the same person.

In this sense, glass and wax work together symbolically:

• Glass reflects and reveals

• Wax records and authenticates

Together, they assert that Cinderella’s nobility is real—grounded not in costume, but in character. The slipper fits her not because she is beautiful, but because she is herself. The object does not change her; it recognizes her.

What Does a Glass Shoe Say About You?

A glass dancing shoe would have been extraordinarily difficult—and expensive—to make. It would need to be crafted precisely for a single foot. This alone suggests that its wearer occupies a very high rank. But the symbolism cuts both ways.

How mobile could you be in such a shoe? Could you walk freely? Work? Dance vigorously? At Louis XIV’s court, mobility itself was a marker of status. Rank determined whether one was permitted to sit in the king’s presence, regardless of age, infirmity, or sex. To wear something so impractical suggests a life structured around appearance, ritual, and display rather than labor.

The glass slipper thus operates as a double-edged symbol. It signals refinement and privilege—but also constraint. It marks someone whose role is to be seen, judged, and recognized. Cinderella’s transformation grants her access to visibility, but it also places her within a world where image must be carefully managed.

Perrault the Cultural Designer

This is where the story folds back onto Perrault himself. As a close collaborator of Colbert and a cultural advisor to the crown, Perrault was deeply involved in the promotion of French arts and manufactures. He operated as a kind of free agent—bridging the academies, the arts, and the luxury industries of the kingdom.

The materials in Cendrillon are not accidental. Glass, wax, and cloth of gold and silver all point to France’s claim to cultural and technical supremacy over Renaissance Italy. The tale quietly advertises the excellence of French production and taste, even as it stages a moral drama about grace and recognition.

Look at all that Glass! Hall of Mirrors, Versailles. 2019. Photo credit: Jennifer Davis Taylor

The Slipper as a Moral Device

Perrault spent his career matching symbolic objects and materials to moral ideas to produce this art form. His fairy tales are not weightless fantasies. They are carefully designed instruments, crafted from substances chosen to reflect, imprint, and endure.

In that sense, the slipper asks a quiet but demanding question:

What in you is real enough to leave a true impression?