quality:corruption
Identifying item

The glass slipper is unique to Charles Perrault 's version and its derivatives; in other versions of the tale it may be made of other materials (in the version recorded by the Brothers Grimm, German: Aschenbroedel and Aschenputtel, for instance, it is gold) and in still other tellings, it is not a slipper but an anklet, a ring, or a bracelet that gives the prince the key to Cinderella's identity. What matters to the story is that the identifying item will fit only one woman.

In Rossini's opera " La Cenerentola " ("Cinderella"), the slipper is replaced by twin bracelets to prove her identity. In the Finnish variant The Wonderful Birch the prince uses tar to gain something every ball, and so has a ring, a circlet, and a pair of slippers. Some interpreters, perhaps troubled by sartorial impracticalities, have suggested that Perrault's "glass slipper" (pantoufle de verre) had been a "squirrel fur slipper" (pantoufle de vair) in some unidentified earlier version of the tale, and that Perrault or one of his sources confused the words. However, most scholars believe the glass slipper was a deliberate piece of poetic invention on Perrault's part. Nabokov has Professor Timofey Pnin assert as fact that "Cendrillon's shoes were not made of glass but of Russian squirrel fur – vair, in French".

The 1950 Disney adaptation takes advantage of the slipper being made of glass to add a twist whereby the slipper is shattered by the spiteful stepmother just before Cinderella has the chance to try it on. Earlier in the film the Duke warns that the slipper could fit any number of women, but Cinderella then produces the beautiful matching slipper, proving beyond all doubt that she is the one from the ball.