Negligent Father- Stupid Prince: Male Characters in Cinderella are Weak

In the Grimm version of Cinderella, the male figures are certainly nothing to write home about. Considering this story was written by men, it is surprising how weak the men are. The father, for example, does not seem to care how Cinderella is being treated by the new wife and her daughters. He knows she is dirty and has to work hard and sits among the ashes, but he does nothing about it. In our class discussion, someone suggested that he was afraid of the wife so he kept his mouth shut. This is possible, but during this period men were very much the head of their household. The story also says that he was a rich man, and a rich man would have had servants to cook and serve the family. So it does seem strange and cruel that he would allow his daughter to work and serve. My theory was that he was clueless as to what was going on with his children as most men are even in modern times, but he was aware of Cinderella's situation. Perhaps, as the class suggested, she wasn't his biological daughter and was just the daughter of his first wife. This would account for why he didn't care about Cinderella and why the story never says that he showed any compassion or comfort toward Cinderella when she cried over her mother's grave. For that matter, the story never says that he showed any grief at all when his first wife died. He was not a good male character, but was either cruel or very neglectful.
The prince is no hero either. He danced with her at the parties three nights, and every time she managed to get away from him when he tried to be her escort. He was the prince, and should have been strong and smart, yet she was able to fool him and slip away three times. Furthermore, he danced with her three nights in a row and "never let go of her hand." So it seems that he would have picked up on what she looked like, the size and shape of her body, and what she sounded like. But yet he almost married both of her stepsisters because he thought they were her. The birds had to tell him about the blood running out of the shoe! Seems like he would have known that these women were not the same one he had just spent three evenings with, or at least have noticed the blood! So the prince was either partially blind, ignorant, or just plain dumb. He wasn't a very strong male character, either. But it is a fairytale, and after all, strange things happen in fairytales. Without these strange flaws, it wouldn't be a fairytale!