Terminology
The term is from Greek οἰσοφάγος "gullet" and -itis "inflammation". References


== External links ==
After the birth of the stepdaughters first child, the stepmother may attempt to murder the new mother and replace her with her own daughter—thus making her the stepmother to the next generation. Such a replacement occurs in The Wonderful Birch, Brother and Sister, and The Three Little Men in the Wood; only by foiling the stepmothers plot (and usually executing her), is the story brought to a happy ending. In the Korean Folktale Janghwa Hongryeon jeon, the stepmother kills her own stepdaughters. In many stories with evil stepmothers, the hostility between the stepmother and the stepchild is underscored by having the child succeed through aid from the dead mother. This motif occurs from Norse mythology, where Svipdagr rouses his mother Gróa from the grave so as to learn from her how to accomplish a task his stepmother set, to fairy tales such as the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella, where Aschenputtel receives her clothing from a tree growing on her mothers grave, the Russian Vasilissa the Beautiful, where Vasilissa is aided by a doll her mother gave, and her mothers blessing, and the Malay Bawang Putih Bawang Merah, where the heroines mother comes back as fish to protect her. The notion of the word stepmother being descriptive of an intrinsically unkind parent is suggested by peculiar wording in John Gambles "An Irish Wake" (1826). He writes of a woman soon to die, who instructs her successor to "be kind to my children." Gamble writes that the injunction was forgotten and that she "proved a very step-mother."