[[quoteright:331:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/confessions_stepsister.jpg]]

A novel by Creator/GregoryMaguire (also known for ''Literature/{{Wicked}}'' and ''Literature/MirrorMirror2003'') and, later, a direct-to-TV movie, ''Confessions of an Ugly Sister'' is a revisionist rewriting of the story of Literature/{{Cinderella}}, focusing on the point of view of Iris and how she became the stepsister of the mysteriously beautiful Clara.

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.

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.
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!!The story contains examples of the following tropes:
%% * BookEnds: The Prologue and Epilogue go hand-in-hand quite nicely.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Despite everything, no one's ending is truly happy or sad. Iris marries Caspar and becomes a painter, but dies relatively early in life. Clara and the prince also die young-ish, but leave a legacy for the Fishers and Cornelius. Ruth is provided for by Caspar and Iris while the latter is still alive. Margarethe is still alive at the end, but has gone blind. The Master never achieves fame and never loses his reputation.]]
* CinderellaPlot: Though Clara's toiling in the ashes and dressing in rags was more out of being a brat than anything. 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.
* ChangelingFantasy: Clara ''thinks'' she's this. [[spoiler: [[FreudianExcuse It's really just her dealing with the trauma of kidnapping]].]]
* ComingOfAgeStory: 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.
* DeathByChildbirth: Henrika, Clara's mother. [[spoiler: Though it is revealed that Margaret had also been poisoning her.]]
* DiagnosedByTheAudience: [[spoiler: Even before the reveal that Ruth is the narrator, there are clues that she isn't as mentally challenged as everyone assumes she is. It's possible she's living with a condition like Cerebral Palsy, which affects motor skills and speech but not necessarily intellectual development.]]
%% * FallenPrincess: After her family loses all of their massive wealth due to the Tulip stock crash.
* GrayAndGrayMorality: The van den Meers want to get rich. The Fishers want safety and comfort. [[TraumaCongaLine Fate has other ideas]].
* InspirationallyDisabled: Averted, Ruth is not heartwarmingly disadvantaged, she isn't a savant trying to overcome the odds, and she isn't meant to tug at our heart strings. She is just a severely mentally disabled girl.
* KiddieKid: Henrika deliberately keeps Clara in a childlike state in spite of her actually being in her mid-teens.
* LackOfEmpathy: Aside from basic loyalty to her biological parents, Clara's exile from the world has left her with an almost animalistic sense of self-preservation and indifference towards her step-family. [[spoiler: Subverted at the finale when she performs her first genuinely selfless action]].
%% * LonelyRichKid
* MamaBear: Margaret is not above anything when it comes to giving her and her daughters a better life. [[spoiler:Also qualifies as a KnightTemplarParent.]]
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: The book starts off with its grip on reality being slightly loose, but it seems to generally be a normal world seen from the eyes of a over imaginative child. Eventually confirmed by WordOfGod: The book is HistoricalFiction presented as a fairy tale.
* MeaningfulName: Iris (the eye and flower) for her insight. Clara (clarity) in spite of her blindness. Ruth (pity and distress) because of her visible disability.
%% * MistakenForGay. Caspar. [[spoiler: [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] by Margarethe, [[WellIntentionedExtremist who implied he was gay so Iris would choose someone with better prospects]].]]
%% * MyBelovedSmother: Henrika, Henrika, ''Henrika''.
* NoodleIncident: What happened to Clara in the windmill is alluded to several times, but the two accounts are both rather vague and contrary. It's never made certainly clear.
* ObfuscatingStupidity: [[spoiler: Either Ruth wasn't as mentally handicapped as she let on and her contemporaries in 17th century Holland assumed, or she eventually had a large breakthrough later on in life. It's possible she was living with a disability which affected her motor skills and speech but not her intellectual development.]]
* PerspectiveFlip: A retelling of Cinderella, from the point of view of one of the stepsisters.
* PottyEmergency: Clara has to desperately pee while ice skating with Iris. She is finally able to in an abandoned windmill, and this is accompanied by a descriptive sentence:
-->''Clara lifts her skirt to pee. The piss steams over an ancient pile of bird shit.''
* TheReveal: [[spoiler: Ruth isn't as intellectually disabled as everyone assumed. She, not Iris, is the narrator.]]
* SheCleansUpNicely: Iris is still plain faced and homely, but she does end up having a quiet elegance to her when she goes to the ball.
* ShrinkingViolet: Iris and Clara, in different ways. Iris remains oblivious to her own brilliance while Clara, despite her perfect beauty, hates being looked at.
* SoBeautifulItsACurse: Played with. On the one hand, Clara [[{{Wangst}} wangsts]] at length about how she hates being looked at and that her beauty comes at such a high cost. Iris has limited sympathy, but has to admit that Clara's beauty ''has'' come at a fairly high price.
* TrueArtIsAngsty: The Master, and his entire room full of paintings of deformed ugly people. [[invoked]]

!!The TV Movie version contains the following tropes:
* AdaptationalAlternateEnding: The movie avoids the BittersweetEnding of the book, instead going for a HappilyEverAfter ending like in the original fairy tale and sparing the lives of [[spoiler: Iris]], [[spoiler: Clara]] and [[spoiler: the Prince.]]
* AdaptationalAttractiveness: Iris is repeatedly described as painfully plain faced, but is played by a genuinely lovely looking girl in the movie.
* AdaptationalHeroism: [[spoiler: Margarethe]] doesn't kill [[spoiler: Henrika]] in this version due to the latter having died many years before the start of the movie.
* AdaptationalIntelligence: Ruth is much less mentally disabled (and much more talkative) in the movie.
* AdaptationalNiceGuy: Clara is a total NiceGirl in the movie, with no trace of the [[LackOfEmpathy uncaring,]] [[EntitledBastard entitled]] [[SpoiledBrat brat]] she was in the book.
* DeathByAdaptation: [[spoiler: Henrika]] in this version has been dead for a quite a few years before the plot starts.
* DoingInTheWizard: The movie jettisons the novel's MaybeMagicMaybeMundane approach for total realism.
* FairyGodmother: The movie adds a non-magical version of the TropeNamer back into the story.
* LoyalAnimalCompanion: The movie gives Clara a pet mouse.
* SparedByTheAdaptation: [[spoiler: Iris]], [[spoiler: Clara]] and [[spoiler: the Prince]] are all still alive by the end of the movie.
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