“Cinderella” takes place in a ballroom: a “tall glass palace hall” (Line 5) where couples are dancing, drinking, and listening to music. The scene is immediately characterized by light, color, and motion. Although there are other people in the scene (“glided couples all in whirling trance” [Line 9]), they are distant and unfocused. There are similarities between the setting of this poem and that in another of Plath’s works, “Mad Girl’s Love Song.” There is a suggestion that this ball may not be a real place at all, but a construct of the speaker’s mind.