In a modest manor house, a girl sits by the dwindling light of a window, her head resting against the cool glass. Her father, a good but timid man, has just remarried, and the house is suddenly full of new, sharp voices. Before the fire has even died on the night of the wedding, the girl finds her simple bed taken, her place at the table gone. She is ushered to the attic, a small, cold room under the eaves, where she sleeps on a thin mattress of straw.

In the weeks that follow, the house transforms. The new Lady of the manor and her two daughters, proud and beautiful in an unkind way, remake everything in their image. The girl, whose real name is lost to them, is given an old, grey dress and set to work. She scrubs the floors until her knees are raw, she lugs the heavy water pails from the well, and she tends the fire that keeps everyone else warm. By evening, the cinders from the great hearth cling to her clothes and dust her hair, and her stepsisters, seeing her sooty and tired, begin to laugh and call her... Cinderella.