Wicked Stepmother/Playing With

Basic Trope: A character, usually female, has a stepmother who is cruel to her.

• Straight: Alice's new stepmother, Nastina, is mean to her and treats her like an unpaid servant.
• Exaggerated: Nastina beats Alice nearly to death every morning, then makes her live in the stables and wear leftover napkins for clothing.
• Justified: Her actions are for the ultimate good of the stepchildren.
  • Her husband favors her stepdaughter blindly, and the stepmother can't take it out on him.
  • Times are hard, money is short, and Nastina wants her own children to survive and prosper, which means nothing for Alice.
• Inverted: Nastina is kinder to Alice than her original mother had been.
  • Alternatively, Alice is needlessly, pointlessly cruel to Nastina, who's done nothing to provoke her.
  • Or Nastina is kinder to Alice than to her own children.
• Subverted: Alice describes her stepmother thus, but she's also an Unreliable Narrator.
• Double Subverted: ....Nastina is actually much worse than described.
• Parodied: Like Exaggerated, but Played for Laughs.
• Deconstructed: The stepmother's continued mistreatment of Alice alienates Alice's father, who divorces her.
• Reconstructed: But because he was himself abused, he marries another woman who is equally bad.
• Zig Zagged: Nastina's treatment of Alice varies from reasonable to hostile.
• Averted: Nastina is generally supportive of Alice.
• Enforced: "You can't write a fairy tale where the stepmother is kind and generous! Why would Alice ever leave home?"
• Lampshaded: Nastina's real name is Wilma Smithe, or W.S. for short.
• Invoked: Alice's father wants her to leave home, so he marries a cruel woman.
• Defied: Nastina is careful to treat her stepdaughter fairly so that she doesn't become one of these.
• Discussed: "And that is my stepmother." "Evil?" "But of course."
• Conversed: "You notice there are never any good stepmothers in these stories?"

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