Ever After
Writing about Disney’s Cinderella got me thinking about another Cinderella retelling, Ever After, which I finally saw recently, because I think it’s a good example of a retelling of feminist retelling of Cinderella, and not just because Danielle is awesome. Although Danielle is extremely awesome. I particularly love the scene where she hoists the prince on her back because the ruffians have told her that she can walk away with anything she can carry. Good thinking, Danielle!
Also there is a scene where she wears a dress with wings, you guys, wings, how awesome is that? If only they had been functional...is that too much to ask, da Vinci? (He designed the wings, you see. Da Vinci: secretly fond of dress design.)
But along with Danielle’s awesomeness, this retelling also avoids the two main pitfalls a Cinderella retelling can fall into: retellings can suggest that women other than the heroine are always untrustworthy or evil, and that ugliness and evil are synonymous.
(Oddly, the retelling that I think falls most strongly in the first trap is Margaret Peterson Haddix’s Just Ella, which is supposed to be a feminist take on happily-ever-after, but mostly suggests that Ella is the only sensible woman in the entire kingdom. Not only her stepfamily but all the women she meets at court are fluttery morons.)
The best way to counteract the first one is to balance the evil stepmother with non-evil women in Cinderella’s life, and Ever After manages this cleverly in two ways. Danielle doesn’t have a fairy godmother per se, but she does have two fellow servants who are her friends and protectors; and there’s also the younger of her stepsisters, Jacqueline, who is inconsistently kind to Danielle - not enough for Danielle to count on her - but is an interesting character in her own right.
Jacqueline is one of my favorite characters. She’s naive and a bit slow on the uptake, often mocked by her family but rarely fast enough to come up with a comeback - but even when she can’t think of something to say, her face and her posture mirror all her feelings so clearly, even when she’s just chilling in the background of a scene.
Danielle’s stepmother Rodmilla and her older stepsister Marguerite are still pretty terrible people. Rodmilla’s terribleness is perhaps heightened by the fact that she’s sometimes almost nice to Danielle: I’m thinking particularly of the scene where Danielle brushes Rodmilla’s hair, and Rodmilla sympathizes with Danielle’s lack of a mother. You can see Danielle that maybe at long last, she and Rodmilla will start to get along...and it’s just heartbreaking when Rodmilla snaps back into her general unkindness to Danielle.
Another thing I liked is that the stepsister, Marguerite, is more classically beautiful than Danielle. Often there’s a sense in Cinderella retellings that the stepsisters are ridiculous for not realizing that they’re too ugly to aspire to the prince, which I find painful to watch: on the one hand they’re such mean people that I wouldn’t want them marrying a prince and ruling anything, but there’s a sort of secondhand embarrassment in watching them flirt with someone who is so clearly not interested - particularly when their failure to notice their own humiliation is presented as something the viewer is supposed to enjoy.
Marguerite may be barking up the wrong tree, but there’s no sense that it’s inherently ridiculous for her to aim for a prince. One can easily imagine some gormless prince falling for her pretty face, not realizing that she’s self-centered and cruel, even though this particular prince is protected because he already loves another.
Also there is a scene where she wears a dress with wings, you guys, wings, how awesome is that? If only they had been functional...is that too much to ask, da Vinci? (He designed the wings, you see. Da Vinci: secretly fond of dress design.)
But along with Danielle’s awesomeness, this retelling also avoids the two main pitfalls a Cinderella retelling can fall into: retellings can suggest that women other than the heroine are always untrustworthy or evil, and that ugliness and evil are synonymous.
(Oddly, the retelling that I think falls most strongly in the first trap is Margaret Peterson Haddix’s Just Ella, which is supposed to be a feminist take on happily-ever-after, but mostly suggests that Ella is the only sensible woman in the entire kingdom. Not only her stepfamily but all the women she meets at court are fluttery morons.)
The best way to counteract the first one is to balance the evil stepmother with non-evil women in Cinderella’s life, and Ever After manages this cleverly in two ways. Danielle doesn’t have a fairy godmother per se, but she does have two fellow servants who are her friends and protectors; and there’s also the younger of her stepsisters, Jacqueline, who is inconsistently kind to Danielle - not enough for Danielle to count on her - but is an interesting character in her own right.
Jacqueline is one of my favorite characters. She’s naive and a bit slow on the uptake, often mocked by her family but rarely fast enough to come up with a comeback - but even when she can’t think of something to say, her face and her posture mirror all her feelings so clearly, even when she’s just chilling in the background of a scene.
Danielle’s stepmother Rodmilla and her older stepsister Marguerite are still pretty terrible people. Rodmilla’s terribleness is perhaps heightened by the fact that she’s sometimes almost nice to Danielle: I’m thinking particularly of the scene where Danielle brushes Rodmilla’s hair, and Rodmilla sympathizes with Danielle’s lack of a mother. You can see Danielle that maybe at long last, she and Rodmilla will start to get along...and it’s just heartbreaking when Rodmilla snaps back into her general unkindness to Danielle.
Another thing I liked is that the stepsister, Marguerite, is more classically beautiful than Danielle. Often there’s a sense in Cinderella retellings that the stepsisters are ridiculous for not realizing that they’re too ugly to aspire to the prince, which I find painful to watch: on the one hand they’re such mean people that I wouldn’t want them marrying a prince and ruling anything, but there’s a sort of secondhand embarrassment in watching them flirt with someone who is so clearly not interested - particularly when their failure to notice their own humiliation is presented as something the viewer is supposed to enjoy.
Marguerite may be barking up the wrong tree, but there’s no sense that it’s inherently ridiculous for her to aim for a prince. One can easily imagine some gormless prince falling for her pretty face, not realizing that she’s self-centered and cruel, even though this particular prince is protected because he already loves another.