Blah blah blah fairy tales and feminism.
The typical fairy tale uses limiting and oppressive sex-role stereotyping.
Fairy tales are often restricted to fulfilling the role of
“fictive conduct manuals for girls, teaching normative values. ”
– Jacqueline Reid-Walsh
When fairy tales portray females in ways that are reflective of the cultural-societal interpretations of women as weak, inferior, or lacking agency, they perpetrate that flawed and damaging perspective.
Females should be portrayed as they are: diverse individuals whose worthiness and value is not defined by masculinity or the lack thereof. Because traditional fairy tales often reflect the values and perspectives of the patriarchy, they are a frequent target of critique and reinterpretation.
Fortunately, literature has the ability to reclaim these fairy tales by developing female characters into unique figures with their own agency and worth, while promoting feminist perspectives and values. Through acts of rereading, reclaiming, and redirection, a retold fairy tale can have a substantially positive influence on a reader’s experiences and perspectives regarding feminism.
Gail Carson Levine’s retelling of the Cinderella story, Ella Enchanted is an excellent example of this.
In this re-imagining, Ella struggles with the fact that she was forced into obedience by a fairy’s curse at birth. Literary portrayals of girls, girlhood, and femininity are frequently consistent with promoting patriarchal and traditional gender roles, and obedience is a large part of that. Historically, viewpoints on obedience and adherence to tradition encourage these values, but in this retelling, strict obedience is depicted as an undesirable and horrifically restrictive trap.
Through Ella’s consistent questioning and creative rebellions, she dispels the assumption that women should be always obedient. She develops her own unique identity, one that asserts her right to be included, and through which she is able to supply valuable contributions to develop and enrich her world. The tale of Cinderella is a common and familiar one, but this retelling provides more depth and detail about the protagonist as she forges her own path to discover herself and break free of her curse through the use of her own intelligence, power, and creativity.
Oppression is not always familiar, recognizable, or visible, but we can give ourselves the power of the freedom to make our own choices. Like Ella.
Ella Enchanted is easy to relate to because it provides a universe that is similar to one we have already experienced, and shares many patterns and connections to the traditional Cinderella story.
However, it refreshingly includes a great deal more in the way of explanations, possibilities and self-driven opportunity. It is a great example of a way to challenge a reader to see beyond more simplistic explanations and search for new perspectives and explanations.
Because the concrete universe has already been established, by telling the same tale from a new perspective, new questions can be unearthed, alternate mindsets discovered, and previously unconsidered horizons can be expanded. The author and the reader can construct the structure and meaning together, and Levine seamlessly incorporates her structural detail into each aspect of the story:
“We don’t dig the foundation after the house is built.”
-Lloyd Alexander
This structure and interconnectivity encourages imaginative exploration as well as addresses very real concepts, dilemmas, and threats.
Levine’s reassuring attention to detail grounds the story and characters in reality. I mean, was there really only one girl in the entire kingdom whose feet could fit the glass slippers?! Seems unlikely! Thankfully, n Ella Enchanted, Ella’s rare fairy ancestry (in Levine’s mythology, fairies have significantly smaller-than-average sized feet) is responsible for the fact that the slippers fit only her. Thank goodness for this solid structural attention to detail that made the story infinitely more believable! Each explanation was logical within the framework Levine created and expanded upon. And each supportive and believable detail just drives home the believability and truth of the positive feminist ideas and messages.
This conceptual transference into the real world is inspiring and congruent with the idea that
“children’s literature can provide sources of comfort and pleasure, models for behavior, and identity, reflections of self and reality, and visions of better or less painful possibilities.”
– Eric Tribunella
If someone as seemingly average and insignificant as Ella can create such a vast and positive impact, surely this will inspire those who read about her to feel hope and optimism that they, too, can overcome significant challenges and obstacles to create a positive impact on themselves and the world around them.
This structural integrity is also applied to the characters within Levine’s constructed world. While female characters may often seem to be portrayed as developed individuals in many books, they still often accept (succumb to) traditional gender roles. Ella’s character is so refined and developed that this is specifically addressed in the final chapter. While she does marry the prince, becoming a wife and a mother, she refuses to let those terms alone define or restrict her:
“I refused to become a princess, but adopted the titles of Court Linguist and Cook’s Helper. I also refused to stay at home while Char traveled, and learned every language and dialect that came our way.”
-Ella (Gail Carson Levine)
Ella retains her unique identity and refuses to be bound by limiting conventionalities while ALSO acknowledging that this does not necessarily require the rejection of her own values and desires that happen to be consistent with traditional female roles. She has the power to choose. She doesn’t reject traditional female roles just out of spite, she keeps the aspects, ideas, and roles that she values.
Ella is an ordinary hero and her defining battle, like many of ours, is fought internally. Conflict and change are dynamic elements of any story, and the primary conflict in a fantasy or fairy tale is often a large-scale, complicated, cosmic quest or physical battle
But, as in this case, the conflict-response behavior of a single person is just as meaningful and has just as much of an impact.
While internal conflicts such as the one found in Ella Enchanted may seem to lack cosmic significance, the mental and emotional adventures and battles still have consequences that are cosmically momentous to the characters experiencing them. And this consequential impact, while it may seem small-scale, has the potential to have a much larger-reaching affect on the world in many ways.
Ella is a self-rescuing hero whose outwardly small triumph affects the entire kingdom, ultimately saving many more – monumental results stemming from seemingly insignificant beginnings. You don’t need a confrontational ninja battle or an evil uncle with a talking snake and a devious plan to depose the prince, (***LOOKING AT YOU ELLA ENCHANTED MOVIE***) for the story to be meaningful, relatable, or enjoyable.
⇒ For more about Ella Enchanted:
Literature and all forms of storytelling have an immense impact on society and the assumptions about a woman’s characteristics, roles, and overall place in the world. Literature seems to frequently struggle with how to portray feminism and equality. Even when a protagonist is female, the story itself may not be in line with feminist ideas.
To determine whether or not a work of children’s literature can be deemed feminist in nature, there are a variety of aspects to observe and analyze. A close reading of the text and illustrations is necessary. Does the way the character is depicted take advantage of or conform to unhealthy gender stereotypes? Do the things the character says reaffirm typical gender roles and inequalities or do they support female worthiness, value, and empowerment?
Movies have a way to evaluate gender bias and positive female representation – it’s called the Bechdel test. To pass this test, a movie has to meet these three requirements:
- Two female characters (preferably named),
- Who talk to each other,
- About something other than a man.
It’s not perfect, but it IS eye-opening!
“Why the Bechdel Test Fails Feminism”:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/anna-waletzko/why-the-bechdel-test-fails-feminism_b_7139510.html
Why is the original Cinderella story acceptable, but if genders were switched, it would be deemed unacceptable, as in the below version of Cinderella, CinderFELLA?
Even though Ella is the main character in her own Cinderella story, she is limited severely by a number of barriers and restrictions. She fulfills both powerful and powerless roles, sometimes simultaneously. She both speaks, and is silenced, she acts, and is acted upon, she fights for honor, but also suffers.
In the end, through her journey, she becomes someone who does indeed have the freedom to act as she chooses and make her own decisions. However, this culmination is a difficult one full of strife and struggle in many forms. Through her struggle towards understanding of her own role as a female, a reader can gain insight into reciprocal and familiar struggles in their own life, especially those regarding gender and gender roles.
“gender has historically (whether overtly or covertly) been a tool of negotiation between our understandings of bodies, and meanings derived from and attributed to them.”
– Erica Hately
We have access to the the power to use this tool to shape and promote certain viewpoints and perspectives. Literature often reflects and shapes peoples’ understandings of themselves and others and the associated gendered identities, usually in adherence with the
“specific binary logic of gender relations, which historically subordinated the feminine to the masculine.”
-Erica Hately
Like traditional binary gender roles, fairy tales have been around for a long time. And like interpretations of acceptable gender roles, fairy tales continue to change and grow over time. Ella Enchanted is a distinctive example of a retold fairy tale, still attached to a familiar and long-standing framework, that promotes changing perspectives on both of these ideas.
This story is valuable in so many ways, especially because it addresses the real-life issues of the importance of being strong by making your own decisions, standing up for what you believe in, and the worth of sacrifice in relation to love and the protection of those you love.
I’ve said it before, but I would tell everyone I know to read this book, and if they were Ella at the beginning of her story, they would be forced to obey.
As it is, both she and everyone else, has the freedom to choose:
“Decisions were a delight after the curse. I loved having the power to say yes or no, and refusing anything was a special pleasure.”
-Ella (Gail Carson Levine)
References/For further reading!
Alexander, Lloyd. (1981). The grammar of story. In Betsy Hearne and Marilyn Kaye (Eds), Celebrating children’s books: Essays on children’s literature in honor of Zena Sutherland. (pp. 3-13). New York: Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard Books.
Hately, Erica. (2011). Gender. In P. Nel & L. Paul (Authors), Keywords for children’s literature (pp. 86-92). New York: New York University Press.
Meek Spencer, Margaret. (2003). What more needs saying about imagination? In Reading research quarterly (Vol. 38, pp. 546-551).
Reid-Walsh, Jacqueline. (2011). Girlhood. In P. Nel & L. Paul (Authors), Keywords for children’s literature (pp. 92-95). New York: New York University Press.
Tribunella, Eric L. (2011). Boyhood. In P. Nel & L. Paul (Authors), Keywords for children’s literature (pp. 21-25). New York: New York University Press.
Whitley, D. (2000). Fantasy narratives and growing up. In Eve Bearne and Victor Watson (Eds), Where texts and children meet. (pp. 172-182.) New York: Routledge Press.
Zipes, Jack. (1999). Hans Christian Andersen and the discourse of the dominated. In When dreams came true: Classical fairy tales and their tradition (pp. 80-110). New York: Routledge.
Also… this picture, created by ImEevee in Spain, is amazing.
