Gray-and-Gray Morality: The van den Meers want to get rich.It's possible she's living with a condition like Cerebral Palsy, which affects motor skills and speech but not necessarily intellectual development.

Diagnosedbythe Audience: Even before the reveal that Ruth is the narrator, there are clues that she isn't as mentally challenged as everyone assumes she is.Though it is revealed that Margaret had also been poisoning her. Death by Childbirth: Henrika, Clara's mother.Coming of Age Story: Iris grows more mature through out the book, starts taking up a craft, and starts having her first romantic feelings for the painter's apprentice.It's really just her dealing with the trauma of kidnapping.

Changeling Fantasy: Clara thinks she's this.

Margaret pressures Iris to try and win over the prince at the ball instead of Clara because she knows Clara would leave her step-family to rot in poverty.

Cinderella Plot: Though Clara's toiling in the ashes and dressing in rags was more out of being a brat than anything.

The Master never achieves fame and never loses his reputation. Margarethe is still alive at the end, but has gone blind. Ruth is provided for by Caspar and Iris while the latter is still alive. Clara and the prince also die young-ish, but leave a legacy for the Fishers and Cornelius. Iris marries Caspar and becomes a painter, but dies relatively early in life.

Bittersweet Ending: Despite everything, no one's ending is truly happy or sad.

The story contains examples of the following tropes: Iris sees the world through fanciful eyes, and still believes in fairy tales, causing her to question whether her new stepsister's beauty and grace may be supernatural. Taking place in 17th century Holland, Iris, her mentally challenged sister Ruth, and her mother flee an angry mob and start a new life with nothing but a determination to get a better life. A novel by Gregory Maguire (also known for Wicked and Mirror, Mirror) and, later, a direct-to-TV movie, Confessions of an Ugly Sister is a revisionist rewriting of the story of Cinderella, focusing on the point of view of Iris and how she became the stepsister of the mysteriously beautiful Clara.

Confessions of an ugly step sister