Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Female Stoic Podcast.
Today's episode is entitled,
How to Deal with Injustice as a Stoic.
We will be referring to the fairy tale Cinderella by Charles Perrault.
I received a message from Kyra in London saying she's been betrayed recently by a close friend and to add insult to injury,
This friend then turned the whole situation around on her so she was somehow held to blame.
Kyra says she always tries her best to be stoic in situations like these but injustice is so triggering for her as she suffered it from her family too.
Thank you Kyra for sending that to the podcast.
So as you know,
Each week we refer to one of the audiobooks available on Insight Timer and today's audiobook is Cinderella,
Part of my Fairy Tales,
Myths and Legends series.
Check out the playlist.
So there are many versions of Cinderella but arguably the best was written by Charles Perrault.
This was published in 1697 entitled Centrillion but earlier versions date back as far as 7th century BCE.
So how does justice,
Injustice and the stoic treatment of such feature in Cinderella?
Well let's recap the story.
Cinderella is a kind young woman who acquires a whole new family after her other mother dies and her father marries again.
She is then mistreated by her cruel stepmother and stepsisters rather unjustly but she's not portrayed as having done anything wrong,
They just don't like her.
With the help of a fairy godmother she magically attends a royal ball,
Falls in love with a prince and flees at midnight leaving behind a glass slipper.
The prince then searches the kingdom for the woman whose foot fits the slipper.
He eventually finds Cinderella and marries her.
So the instances of injustice in Cinderella are many.
She is enslaved by her stepmother,
Stepsisters,
Forced to do chores and sleep in the ashes earning her name Cinderella.
She is not permitted the luxury her sisters are afforded and her stepmother says she cannot go to the ball.
Her father meanwhile refuses to acknowledge what's going on and to add insult to injury Cinderella is then hidden from view when the prince comes to find his girl.
As we know in each of the stories I read there are stoic threads running through them and here we see Cinderella transform what might be seen as a passive story into this narrative of profound inner strength,
Resilience and moral clarity in the face of injustice.
This is not only a rags to riches story it's a lesson maintaining virtue,
Patience and dignity under extreme adverse conditions,
A lesson for us to learn from.
So to go back to the question Kyra says she has suffered injustice from more than one source in her life and this resonates here.
Quote,
The poor girl bore all patiently and dared not tell her father who would have rattled her off for his wife governed him entirely.
Marcus Aurelius says you can also commit injustice by doing nothing and this is what Cinderella is experiencing at the hands of her father.
The lack of familial support when one key member has ostracized her the others follow.
And this behavior we understand as stoics is of course outside of her circle of control and even though she has decided to embrace this stoic positivity and understands there's nothing she can do about this she still finds that there are many challenges that she has to almost bite her tongue when faced with.
When we look at the quote from Marcus Aurelius he suggests that passive inaction in the face of wrongdoing is morally equivalent to causing it yourself.
So here we see her father is in a way as much to blame.
Remaining silent Aurelius says makes one complicit in injustice.
So what should we do when faced with this?
Well it is up to us to understand that people are weak and weakness is not limited to people who are further away from us it can also happen within our family setting.
Anyone can be weak anyone can also choose to enable and support others who ostracize family members.
It is within their power to choose who they want to be and with the same token it's within our power to choose who we want to be and as stoics we understand the dichotomy of control dictates only what sits within our inner citadel is what we have control over.
That being our virtue in the way we react to external forces we can choose who we want to be.
How do we deal with this situation?
Well as I always say the power is in the paws.
Reactivity is remaining too close to and therefore beholden to the behavior of others.
If we are reactive to their behavior we are allowing their action to dictate our well-being therefore they have control over us.
In the case of Cinderella she was very much at a distance from what was going on around her.
Her power was in her paws.
She was maintaining the walls of her inner citadel by creating a distance between the action of others and her reaction to that.
That doesn't mean she was ignoring the emotion.
She was still portrayed as feeling emotion but she allowed it to resonate in its given place and didn't allow it to dictate her reactions to the injustice.
She had to come to the sad realization her father was weak and he enabled her stepmother to be abusive for the sake of an easy life.
So let's have a look at the character of the stepmother.
She could not bear the qualities of this pretty girl and of course these qualities made her own daughters appear the more odious.
She felt threatened by Cinderella's beauty and demeanor and her stoic positivity so she attempted to destroy this by employing her in the meanest work of the house.
Quote,
Cinderella scrubbed madam's chamber and those of missus her daughters then she lay up in a sorry garret upon a wretched straw bed.
The question is here exactly what power did Cinderella have at this time when she faced injustice?
What could she have done differently?
As we know in stoic philosophy the answer always lies within ourselves.
This is the fundamental way to achieve happiness,
Peace and virtue.
While Cinderella could not control the external actions of her father and her stepfamily she had absolute authority over her own mind,
Judgment and response to their actions and this is depicted so beautifully in this story.
From the outside looking in it appeared she had no power at all and yet she still triumphed.
Perrault was quoted as saying of her attitude to helping them anyway.
Cinderella was likewise called up to them to be consulted in all matters.
She had excellent notions and she advised them always for the best regardless and offered her service to dress their heads which they were very willing she should do.
Anyone but Cinderella would have dressed their heads awry he said.
Fairy tales here are serving to educate us,
Entertain us and emotionally guide us by teaching moral lessons,
Fostering our imagination and processing complex emotions like fear or loss or in this case injustice.
They are acting as cultural tools that are instilling values,
Kindness,
Bravery,
Honesty,
Courage and of course in the case of modern day fairy tales they provide comfort through this familiar happy ever after structure.
When we look at the phrase Amor Fati which is a phase in Stoic philosophy meaning love of fate,
We understand that there is an acceptance we must come to of our lot in life and we must find meaning within our lot in life rather than desiring for things to be different.
Stoic philosophy emphasises that while we cannot control external injustice we must maintain our integrity,
We must act with justice ourselves and avoid passive complicity.
The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injustice says Marcus Aurelius and he also says often injustice lies in what you aren't doing not only in what you are and that is the key here.
Cinderella takes action by choosing to remain true to her virtue because ultimately this is the thing that affords her a way out.
Thank you for listening now see you next time.
